semilingual

Semilingual is a historical label used in linguistics and education to describe someone whose language development is incomplete or uneven, particularly a child who has not achieved full proficiency in either their first language or a second language. In some usages, semilingualism refers to a level of linguistic competence considered insufficient for academic tasks or social communication, spanning aspects such as grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and literacy. The term has appeared in research and policy discussions to describe apparent gaps between language capabilities in different domains or contexts.

However, semilingual has been widely criticized as stigmatizing and imprecise. Critics argue that it casts language development as a fixed deficit rather than a dynamic, context-driven process shaped by exposure, instruction, and sociocultural factors. It can obscure strengths in everyday communication and fails to account for bilingual or bidialectal repertoires. In policy and practice, the label is largely obsolete in favor of more specific descriptors of proficiency, such as limited English proficiency or emergent bilingualism, and of analytic approaches that assess language ability by domain and context.

Contemporary research tends to describe bilingual development as interacting trajectories, recognizing that academic language in school may lag behind conversational fluency, or vice versa. Labels are increasingly avoided in favor of detailed assessments of oral language, literacy, and academic English proficiency, as well as descriptions of language use in home, classroom, and community settings.