ABSTRACT
There is no reason to believe that monolingualism is the normal state of affairs in human society. In fact, bilingualism is more widespread, since more than half the world’s population can claim to be bilingual. At the societal level multilingualism is quite common, particularly in the continents of Africa and Asia. Bilingualism in the individual results from a person’s contact with two (or more) languages. Multilingualism comes about when speakers of different languages are brought together within the same political entity. In the history of the world, the organization of human society into states has rarely followed ethnic or linguistic groupings.
