Unexpected bilingualism (UB), also known as spontaneous foreign language acquisition or unexpected non-interactive foreign language acquisition, is a phenomenon observed in people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), wherein they spontaneously develop proficiency in a language that is not spoken around them. Persons with UB acquire foreign languages by exposure to screens through media like television, YouTube or video games. The phenomenon has seen a rise in prevalence since the advent of the internet, due to the increased presence of screens; the extensive lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic may also have contributed to this increase. The exact number of autistic people with UB is not yet fully known, but research suggests it might be more common than originally thought. In one study it was found that 25% of the autistic participants exhibited unexpected bilingualism in a total sample of 46 autistic children. Spontaneous language development can be viewed as a manifestation of splinter skill.
Description of phenomenon Since the interest in unexpected bilingualism has only recently emerged due to the increase in cases, there is not yet one universally accepted definition nor any established inclusion criteria for unexpected bilingualism. Generally, UB is characterized by the spontaneous acquisition of a language not used by the person's parents or used in their residential area, but rather through the use of screens. People with UB often prefer to speak their chosen language over the language(s) spoken around them to a greater or lesser degree, and might sometimes almost exclusively communicate in their chosen language. The preferred language might also in some cases be notably more developed than their ambient language, with some switching to their chosen language when they cannot express themselves using other languages. Because of the substantial presence of English-language media on the internet, many people with UB from non-English-speaking countries acquire English as their chosen language. Cases of people learning other languages have also been reported. There have been accounts, both academic as well as unofficially within the autism community, of autistic individuals speaking in a different dialect than the ambient one because of media exposure, a phenomenon that has been linked with unexpected bilingualism. Many autistic children in Arab countries have also been documented to spontaneously acquire a mastery of Modern Standard Arabic and use it in everyday settings, something normally uncommon for children to do. People with UB often have a special interest in the language (and corresponding culture) they acquired spontaneously. This special interest often arises from the availability of content in different languages on the internet, or on streaming platforms where it is possible for the people to switch the language of the show or movie they are watching. It has been found that people with UB frequently not only show an interest in their acquired languages, but in languages in general, and regularly engage in watching and seeking out content in many different languages simultaneously. These languages are often ones with substantial presences on the internet, most often English but also Russian, Spanish and Japanese. Other times individuals with UB have special interests which they engage with specifically in their chosen language.
Language development and use Generally, children with unexpected bilingualism have a different acquisition pathway, relying more on the structural properties of the language input, as opposed to socio-communicative interactions crucial to typical language development. UB children acquire structural morpho-syntactic and grammatical properties of their chosen foreign language despite the absence of reciprocal communication, instead purely through screen and non-interactive input. In contrast to this, previous evidence has suggested that passive screen exposure to linguistic input is not sufficient for typically developing children to acquire core linguistic understandings of new languages. On top of this, one study found that despite autistic children with UB having shorter periods of exposure to their chosen languages, they had obtained comparable mastery to children who had acquired the language naturalistically. In the same study the parents of the children with UB even reported higher levels of proficiency in their children than the parents of both typically developing children and autistic children with a naturalistic language acquisition of the given language. The ability in the expected language does not necessarily dictate the ability in the chosen one; in some children the ambient language might be dominant, but in many others the spontaneously acquired one will be the most dominant one. In one study researching the unexpected acquisition of English in native Hebrew-speaking children with ASD compared to native bilingual Hebrew/English children (with and without ASD), there was not found any significant differences in the English of the three groups, but found great variation in the mastery of Hebrew in the children with UB. While some of the UB children were proficient in both languages, others did not fully acquire Hebrew and instead switched to English when their Hebrew was not sufficient. Other children preferred solely to speak in English. In some cases, children with UB display word retrieval problems, accent changes and morphological errors in their ambient language, worrying some parents and caregivers and posing the question as to whether to encourage the use of the non-ambient language. Some children with UB might even produce their first words in English, as opposed to the language spoken around them.
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