Multilingualism

Multilingualism is the ability to speak more than one language. The ability to speak two languages is "bilingualism," a type of multilingualism. Many immigrants are bilingual and speak languages of both their old and their new country. Multilingualism is useful in many kinds of work, partly because international trade is more common than in past centuries. Some countries and organizations having more than one official language hire people who speak more than one, so they can work with more people.

Most people have a first language that they learned as babies. Other languages are usually learned much later.

People who learn many languages can find it easier to learn more languages if the new language is like the ones they already know. But sometimes, learning a new language can be hard if the person remembers old languages they learned before. Sometimes, learning a second language can make it hard to remember words. People used to think that speaking two languages made you better at certain thinking tasks. But some new research says this isn't true. Those who speak two languages are better are not better at learning languages than those who only speak one. People who are very good at speaking two or more languages were once thought to have better thinking skills and get certain diseases like dementia later in life. But recent studies don't agree with this.

Some linguists think there are more multilingual people in the world than monolingual people, who speak only one language

People who can speak several languages are called "polyglots". Those who can speak many, such as Heinrich Schliemann and Ghil'ad Zuckermann, are called "hyperpolyglots".

As a result of wars, boundaries change. That may put some people in a country which uses a different language from theirs. For example, as a result of being in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Hungary was on the losing side of WWI. Much of the eastern part of their country was given to Romania after the war. Hungarian is not just a different language, it is in a completely different language category from most other European languages.

Multilingualism Media

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  Multilingual sign outside the mayor's office in Novi Sad, Serbia, written in the four official languages of the city: Serbian, Hungarian, Slovak, and Pannonian Rusyn.

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  A stenciled danger sign in Singapore written in English, Chinese, Tamil, and Malay (the four official languages of Singapore)

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  The logo of the Swiss Federal administration, in the four national languages of Switzerland (German, French, Italian, and Romansh)

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  Frontage of the Constitutional Court of South Africa written in South Africa's 11 official languages

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  Bilingual no trespassing sign at a construction site in Helsinki; upper text in Finnish and lower text in Swedish.

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  "Pvt. Lloyd A. Taylor, 21-year-old transportation dispatcher at Mitchel Field, New York City, who knows Latin, Greek, Spanish, French, German, and Japanese, studies a book on Chinese. A former medical student at Temple University, he passes two hours a day studying languages as a hobby."This picture was taken during WW2.

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  Croatian-Italian bilingual plate on a public building in Pula/Pola (Istria)

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  A bilingual sign in Brussels, the capital of Belgium. In Brussels, both Dutch and French are official languages.

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  A caution message in English, Kannada and Hindi found in Bangalore, India

• A Welsh Government video of an English medium school in Wales, where introducing a second language (Welsh) has boosted the exam results

Related pages

• Code-switching
• Diglossia
• European Parliament - uses many languages
• Multialphabetism
• Multiculturalism
• Second language