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RR/99/83
Encyclopedia of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education
Colin Baker and Sylvia Prys Jones Multilingual Matters
Clevedon
1998
758 pp.
ISBN 185359 3621
Keywords Education, Language
I was a bit hesitant about reviewing this at first, but after careful examination I discovered that it was all in English except for a few bits of Welsh poetry which can be safely skipped, so I agreed to take it on. I suspect that the editor guessed by my name that I might be bilingual and therefore picked me out on spec. In fact even my father suffers from what is referred to in the text here as "Consecutive bilingualism", namely that he spoke Bengali at home and at primary school, but went to an English-medium secondary school, came to the UK at the age of 18, in 1938, joined the RAF, and never went back except for rare holidays; so he is still not entirely fluent in English, however, he speaks to his young nephews and contemporaries in baby-talk - a source of great amusement...