Bilingualism

Bilingualism

Bilingualism is the ability of an individual or the members of a community to use two languages effectively. Adjective: bilingual.
Monolingualism refers to the ability to use a single language. The ability to use multiple languages is known as multilingualism.
More than half of the world's population is bilingual or multilingual: "56% of Europeans are bilingual, while 38% of the population in Great Britain, 35% in Canada, and 17% in the United States are bilingual," per statistics referenced in "Multicultural America: A Multimedia Encyclopedia."
FEATURED VIDEO
Examples and Observations
Bilingualism as the Norm
According to "The Handbook of Bilingualism," "Bilingualism—more generally, multilingualism—is a major fact of life in the world today. To begin with, the world's estimated 5,000 languages are spoken in the world's 200 sovereign states (or 25 languages per state), so that communication among the citizens of many of the world's countries clearly requires extensive bi- (if not multi-)lingualism. In fact, [British linquist] David Crystal (1997) estimates that two-thirds of the world's children grow up in a bilingual environment. Considering only bilingualism involving English, the statistics that Crystal has gathered indicate that, of the approximately 570 million people worldwide who speak English, over 41 percent or 235 million are bilingual in English and some other language.... One must conclude that, far from being exceptional, as many lay people believe, bilingualism/multilingualism—which, of course, goes hand in hand with multiculturalism in many cases—is currently the rule throughout the world and will become increasingly so in the future."
Global Multilingualism
"The political history of the 19th and 20th centuries and the ideology of 'one state—one nation—one language' have given rise to the idea that monolingualism has always been the default or normal case in Europe and more or less a precondition for political loyalty. Facing this situation, it has been overlooked that the vast majority of the world's population—in whatever form or conditions—is multilingual. This is quite obvious when we look at the linguistic maps of Africa, Asia or Southern America at any given time," according to Kurt Braunmüller and Gisella Ferraresi, editors of the book, "Aspects of Multilingualism in European Language."