On the Flathead Reservation in northwestern Montana, the remaining fluent
speakers of Montana Salish ± fewer than sixty tribal members as of 2000,
almost all of them elders ± speak Salish to each other. But they usually speak
English when others are present, whether the others are outsiders or younger
tribal members who speak little or no Salish. Describing this as a language-
contact situation requires no hard thinking. The same is true of the village of
Kupwar in India, where extensive multilingualism has led to convergence
among local dialects of two Indic languages (Marathi, Urdu) and one
Dravidian language (Kannad.
a); of the Republic of Singapore, an island
nation of just 238 square miles which boasts four official languages (Chinese,
Malay, English, and Tamil); of the Aleuts who used to live on Bering Island
off the east coast of Russia and speak Russian in addition to their native
Aleut; and of innumerable other situations around the world. But although
recognizing language contact in such obvious cases is easy, defining it
precisely is more difficult, for several reasons.
In the simplest definition, language contact is the use of more than one
language in the same place at the same time. It isn't hard to imagine a
situation in which this definition might be too simple: for instance, if two
groups of young travelers are speaking two different languages while cooking
their meals in the kitchen of a youth hostel, and if each group speaks only one
language, and if there is no verbal