Tore Janson, author of Speak: A Short History of Languages, reflects on the rise of multilingualism and the decline of monolingualism
A traveller in Europe 100 years ago could expect to find people speaking a foreign language only in
international hotels and tourist resorts and among a quite small group of well-educated people. The foreign
language they might be acquainted with varied from country to country. In Central and Eastern Europe, from
Romania to Sweden, people would know some German. In Italy and Portugal, French was understood in many
places, and in countries around the North Sea, such as Norway and the Netherlands, there was a fair chance of
finding someone speaking English.
Nowadays, a stranger in a European country stands a very good chance of meeting someone who has
mastered a foreign language to some extent wherever a need for communication may arise. Furthermore,
among younger people at least, the language is English in the great majority of cases.
During the last 100 years, then, there have been two great changes. In the first place, many more people
have learnt an internationally useful foreign language, in Europe and in many other parts of the world. In the
second place, there was a choice among several languages a century ago, but now the foreign language (or the
first foreign language) that is learnt is almost always English. Those two things are of course related to a
certain extent, but they really have very different causes.
To begin with the increase in the learning of languages; this has to do with the fact that both school
education and international contacts are more important in the lives of most people nowadays than they were
100 years ago. When industrial societies emerged in Europe, and a little later in other parts of the world, one of
the consequences was an increasing demand for education. General elementary education for all children
became a reality in many countries during the nineteenth century, and during the twentieth century almost
all countries have been able to offer their children a few years of school. In the most affluent countries many or
most attend school for ten or twelve years, and a third or more may go on to some kind of college or university.
All this means that there are ample opportunities to include language instruction on the curricula in many
countries.
Contacts across linguistic as well as national borders are much more frequent now than 100 years ago. At
that time, most Europeans lived in the countryside and worked on farms. Most of the others were industrial
workers. Only a tiny percentage had any reason to ever use a foreign language in their profession. Few people
travelled abroad, except for those who emigrated to America, but that was mostly a one-way trip. It is true that
there were substantial linguistic minorities in almost all European countries, but in most cases the minorities
lived in fairly restricted areas. Minority-language speakers had to learn the majority language, but
majority-language speakers did not learn a minority language.
Nowadays most Europeans live in cities, and more people are employed in the service and communications
sectors than in industrial production, not to speak of agriculture. This means many more casual encounters,
including with people from other countries. Most people have been abroad, some for long periods. Many have to
use one or more foreign languages in their work. In their leisure time, all except English-speaking people hear
a foreign language -English- almost daily in pop music, in TV news reports, and in many other contexts.
Everyday life in most European countries is not monolingual but multilingual.
The same is true for many, probably most countries all over the world. Everywhere people move into cities,
and almost every way education is longer than it used to be and includes at least one foreign language.
Generally, contacts between countries and between linguistic areas are increasing, and more people migrate
from one country to another. The consequences vary, depending on the local circumstances, but almost
everywhere the net result is that more people learn at least one foreign language and fewer remain
monolingual.
The exceptions are found in the countries where the majority language is so large and dominating that all
contacts can be handled in that language. To a great extent this is true for Chinese in China and Spanish in
Latin America, as well as a number of other large languages. The ones who are least liable to need a foreign
language are majority speakers of English in the United States, Britain, and several other countries. As a
matter of fact, though, language contacts are becoming frequent even there. The United States now has a
significant Spanish-speaking minority that did not exist thirty years ago. Britain has had considerable
immigration from many countries, and contacts with the European Union are more extensive than earlier.
So, monolingualism is retreating in favour of multilingualism all over the world. Don't get left behind!
This article is an extract from Tore Janson's book, Speak: A Short History of Language. To find out more
about the development of language and the future for languages throughout the World buy the book. Also read
about the threat to minority languages in Vanishing
Voices.
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