Multilingual and monolingual nations

Monoglottism (Greek monos, "alone, solitary", + glotta, "tongue, language") or, more commonly, monolingualism or unilingualism is the condition of being able to speak only a single language. In a different context unilingualism may refer to a language policy which enforces an official or national language over others.

Native-born persons living in many of the Anglosphere nations such as the United Kingdom, Australia, United States, and New Zealand are frequently typecast as monoglots, owing to a worldwide perception that English speakers see little relevance in learning a second language due to the widespread distribution of English and its competent use even in many non-English speaking countries in Europe, Africa, and South Asia. A similar observation can be made in communities that speak other global languages, for example, the Hispanophone world in the case of Spanish and the Francophone in the case of French.

Monolingual is also said of a text, dictionary, or conversation written or conducted in only one language, and of an entity in or at which a single language is either used or officially recognized. Societal multilingualism is a very widespread phenomenon indeed. The Cambridge encyclopedia of Language (David Crystal, 1997) quotes that there is no agreed total number of languages spoken by humanity in the world today. Most reference books give a figure of 5,000 to 6,000, but estimates have varied from 3,000 to 10,000. However, other scholars provide the world's top 40 languages, which more or less answer the requirements of different multilingual communication of civilized nations.

Multilingual nations exist in all the parts of the world. Difficulties only arise when one attempts to locate a nation genuinely monolingual. Even in Europe there are not many true examples, although we are accustomed to thinking of most European nations as monolingual. Most people would accept the statements as true that the Germans speak German, the French speak French, the British speak English. There are good reasons to believe this, but the reality is somewhat deceptive. Nearly all the European countries contain linguistic minorities - groups of speakers who have as their native variety of the language other than that which is the official, dominant or majority language in the nation. In some cases, where the minorities are relatively large, the nation-state usually has more than one official language. Examples are Belgium (Dutch, often known as Flemish, and French); Switzerland (German, French, Italian and Roman); and India (English, Hindi and a hundred more of minor languages).

Where the minority is less influential, its language is unlikely to have an official status, and the speakers, often out of sheer practical necessity, will tend to be bilingual. National multilingualism in Europe is illustrated in the following lists:

Language Spoken by linguistic minority in.

German Denmark, Belgium, France, Italy, Slovenia, Serbia, Rumania,

Russia, Hungary, Czechia, Poland, etc.

French Italy, Canada, Africa, Viet-Nahm.

English All over the world.

If this situation were to continue, the minority languages of Europe would fall a long way behind the major languages, as regards the availability of commercial speech and language products. This situation will accelerate the decline of those languages that are already struggling to survive, as speakers are forced to use the majority language for interaction. To break this vicious circle, it is important to encourage the development of the basic language resource.

Дата добавления: 2014-01-11