In bilingual communities the [act that different people speak different languages corresponds to a division in different communicative networks. Take for instanee West Berlin. The (native German) Berliners will tend tospeak to ether Berliners, and rhe 300,000 Turks living rhere will tend to speek to other Turks. The seciel division allows the linguistic separation to continue, and is symbolically expressed by it. At the same time rhe linguistic separation helps to maintain the social division. Ignorance ofGerman for Turks means being cut off from access to desirable jobs; ignorance ofTurkish for Germans implies, amcng many orher things, net knowing what goes on in the Turkish community.

The two language groups are not independent: they live in the same city, and form part ofthe same economy. This leads to frequent con/acts, even if these centacts are often limited in range and depth. This chapter is dedicated to the nature of centacts such as these between Turks and Berliners. In many bilingual communities the two groups ofspeakers do not have equal status. In Berlin, ofcourse, the Turks have fewer opportunities for social advancement, worse jobs with lower wages, a higher unemployment rare, and smaller and older houses than the native Berliners.

This inequahry is reflected in the patterns of interaction. German rather than Turkish is used in inrererhnic centacts. Only a few Berliners (social werkers, teachers, lawyers, researchers, an occasional shopkeeper perhaps﹜ know some Turkish, the majority of Turks speek some German at least. The use of German, however, poses problems for both participante in the interaction.

• a. The native speakers have to adapt their speech to make themselves understood to foreigners. In sectien 12.1 we wil1 srudy in detail what forms of adaptation we find, centring the discuesion around what is called ‘foreigner talk’ (Ferguson, 1975).

• b. The non-native speakers face innumerable problems in making themselves understood 10 native speakers. Therefore we will discuss problems and misunderstandings in native/non-native interaction in section 12.2.

In sectien 12.3 we wiU attempt 10 integrate the perspective in terms of adaptive strategies (section 12.1), and the perspective of communicative problems (section 12.2).

Ofcourse foreigner talk and inter-culrural misunderstandings are only two aspecrs ofbilingual interaction. When the two groups have roughly equal status or when all intertocutors are to some extent bîlingual, the situation changes drastically.