Your mention of Urdu brought to mind a surprising factoid I picked up from the CIA factbook. I already knew that Urdu, the language taught alongside English at my Dad's alma mater, was a minority language in Pakistan, despite being the official language of the country. What surprised me was how much of a minor language it is there. Many non-Maaori here are upset that a language spoken by, at the very most, 8% of the population should have dual status with English. According to the CIA, that's the percentage of Pakistanis for whom Urdu is their first language. That seems a vfery low percentage for a language designated as the sole official tongue of a nation. On the subject of equilingual, I'm with you and RhubC on this one , or as Steven Wright said, "Im a bilingual illiterate, I can't read and write in two languages."