Multilingual Societies News Today

The African continent is home to some of the world's most multilingual societies. Roxane 134/ShutterstockLanguage is a uniquely human skill. That’s why studying how people learn and use language is crucial to understanding what it means to be human. Given that most people in the world – an estimated 60% – are multilingual, meaning that they know and use more than one language, a researcher who aims to understand language must also grasp how individuals acquire and use m...

In the Nordic countries, widespread proficiency in English is positioned as a positive and even critical component of overall global competitiveness and competence. Indeed, maps illustrating who speaks the “best” English in Europe show a swath across the Nordic countries, and the number of people in the Nordic countries claiming proficiency in English is only a few percentage points below those in places such as the UK and Ireland. At the same time, the Nordic countries are routinely listed ...