Multilingualism in the context of Language acquisition

The European Union (EU) has 24 official languages, of which the three most natively spoken ones are German, French and Italian. Previously, English, French and German were considered "procedural" languages, but this notion was abandoned by the European Commission, whereas the European Parliament accepts all official languages as working languages. Today, English and French are used in the day-to-day workings of the institutions of the EU. Institutions have the right to define the linguistic regime of their working, but the Commission and a number of other institutions have not done so, as indicated by several judicial rulings.

The EU asserts that it is in favour of linguistic diversity. This principle is enshrined in Article 22 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights (art. 22) and in the Treaty on European Union (art. 3(3) TEU). In the EU, language policy is the responsibility of member states, and the EU does not have a common language policy; EU institutions play a supporting role in this field, based on the principle of "subsidiarity"; they promote a European dimension in the member states' language policies. The EU encourages all its citizens to be multilingual; specifically, it encourages them to be able to speak two languages in addition to their native language. Though the EU has very limited influence in this area, as the content of educational systems is the responsibility of individual member states, a number of EU funding programmes actively promote language learning and linguistic diversity.

As of 2025, Afghanistan has an estimated population of around 49.5 million people. The country is characterized by a highly diverse, multi-ethnic, and multilingual society, reflecting its historical position at the crossroads of Central, South, and Western Asia, along ancient trade and invasion routes. The four major ethnic categories in the country are Pashtun, Tajik/Farsiwan, Hazara, and Uzbek. In addition, Afghanistan has a plethora of minor ethnic categories, including Turkmen, Baloch, Aimaq, Nuristani, Arab and many others. Together they make up the contemporary Afghan people.

Approximately 43% of the population was under the age of 15, and about 74% of Afghans lived in rural areas as of 2016. The country has one of the highest fertility rates in the world outside of Africa, with the average woman giving birth to five children over her lifetime. Around 6.8% of infants die during childbirth or early infancy. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the nation's average life expectancy was estimated at about 63 years as of 2019. The prevalence of HIV remains very low, affecting only about 0.04% of the population.

Dutch (endonym: Nederlands [ˈneːdərlɑnts] , Nederlandse taal) is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, spoken by about 25 million people as a first language and 5 million as a second language and is the third most spoken Germanic language. In Europe, Dutch is the native language of most of the population of the Netherlands and Flanders (which includes 60% of the population of Belgium). Dutch was one of the official languages of South Africa until 1925, when it was replaced by Afrikaans, a separate but partially mutually intelligible daughter language of Dutch. Afrikaans, depending on the definition used, may be considered a sister language, spoken, to some degree, by at least 16 million people, mainly in South Africa and Namibia, and evolving from Cape Dutch dialects.

In South America, Dutch is the native language of the majority of the population of Suriname, and spoken as a second or third language in the multilingual Caribbean island countries of Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten. All these countries have recognised Dutch as one of their official languages, and are involved in one way or another in the Dutch Language Union. The Dutch Caribbean municipalities (St. Eustatius, Saba and Bonaire) have Dutch as one of the official languages. In Asia, Dutch was used in the Dutch East Indies (now mostly Indonesia) by a limited educated elite of around 2% of the total population, including over 1 million indigenous Indonesians, until it was banned in 1957, but the ban was lifted afterwards. About a fifth of the Indonesian language can be traced to Dutch, including many loan words. Indonesia's Civil Code has not been officially translated, and the original Dutch language version dating from colonial times remains the authoritative version. Up to half a million native speakers reside in the United States, Canada and Australia combined, and historical linguistic minorities on the verge of extinction remain in parts of France and Germany.

A multinational state or a multinational union is a sovereign entity that comprises two or more nations or states. This contrasts with a nation state, where a single nation accounts for the bulk of the population. Depending on the definition of "nation" (which touches on ethnicity, language, and political identity), a multinational state is usually multicultural or multilingual, and is geographically composed of more than one country, such as the countries of the United Kingdom.

Historical multinational states that have since split into multiple states include the Ottoman Empire, British India, Qing Empire, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, the United Arab Republic and Austria-Hungary (a dual monarchy of two multinational states). Some analysts have described the European Union as a multinational state or a potential one.

Language production is the production of spoken or written language. In psycholinguistics, it describes all of the stages between having a concept to express and translating that concept into linguistic forms. These stages have been described in two types of processing models: the lexical access models and the serial models. Through these models, psycholinguists can look into how speeches are produced in different ways, such as when the speaker is bilingual. Psycholinguists learn more about these models and different kinds of speech by using language production research methods that include collecting speech errors and elicited production tasks.

Cultural mosaic (French: "la mosaïque culturelle") is a metaphor for a society composed of diverse ethnic, linguistic, and cultural groups that are encouraged to maintain their unique identities while coexisting. The idea of a cultural mosaic is intended to suggest a form of multiculturalism as seen in Canada, that differs from other systems such as the melting pot, which is often used to describe nations like the United States' assimilation.

Jeju Province (Jeju and Korean: 제주도; Hanja: 濟州道; RR: Jejudo), officially Jeju Special Self-Governing Province (Jeju: 제주특벨ᄌᆞ치도; Korean: 제주특별자치도; Hanja: 濟州特別自治道; RR: Jeju Teukbyeoljachi-do), is the southernmost province of South Korea, consisting of eight inhabited and 55 uninhabited islands, including Marado, Udo, the Chuja Archipelago, and the country's largest island, Jeju Island. The province is located in the Korea Strait, with the Korean Peninsula to the northwest, Japan to the east, and China to the west. The province has two cities: the capital Jeju City, on the northern half of the island, and Seogwipo, on the southern half of the island. The island is home to the shield volcano Hallasan, the highest point in South Korea. Jeju and Korean are the official languages of the province, and the vast majority of residents are bilingual.

Jeju Island was first settled by humans 8,000 to 10,000 years ago and the Tamna Kingdom is the earliest known civilization on the island. Beginning in the 5th century AD, the kingdom would become a tributary state of various Korean Kingdoms and briefly invaded by the Mongol Empire, before being annexed into the Goryeo in 1105 and later Joseon in 1392. Joseon ruled the island brutally and multiple uprisings occurred. Jeju Island, with the rest of mainland Korea, was annexed by the Empire of Japan in 1910. Following Japan's surrender in World War II in 1945, the islands became part of South Jeolla Province in the United States Army Military Government in Korea, before becoming a separate province on August 1, 1946. On July 1, 2006, the islands were designated a Special Self-Governing Province; it is now one of three special self-governing provinces, the others being Gangwon State and Jeonbuk State.

Within the linguistic study of endangered languages, sociolinguists distinguish between different speaker types based on the type of competence they have acquired of the endangered language. Often when a community is gradually shifting away from an endangered language to a majority language, not all speakers acquire full linguistic competence; instead, speakers have varying degrees and types of competence depending on their exposure to the minority language in their upbringing. The relevance of speaker types in cases of language shift was first noted by Nancy Dorian, who coined the term semi-speaker to refer to those speakers of Sutherland Gaelic who were predominantly English-speaking and whose Gaelic competence was limited and showed considerable influence from English. Later studies added additional speaker types such as rememberers (who remember some words and phrases but have little or no grammatical competence and do not actively speak the language), and passive speakers (who have nearly full comprehension competence but do not actively speak the language). In the context of language revitalization, new speakers who have learned the endangered language as a second language are sometimes distinguished.

In contexts of language acquisition and language teaching studies, there is sometimes a distinction between native speakers and second language speakers, depending on whether the language was learned as a language of primary socialisation or after having fully acquired a first language. In contexts of multilingualism a bilingual speaker may also be described as a heritage speaker (although a heritage language actually refers to a language whose speakers have moved from the original area where the language was spoken: e.g. Welsh is a heritage language in Patagonia, but not in Wales) if they have not been as fully exposed to one of their languages, leading to a diminished degree of confidence in themselves as speakers, and sometimes also limited competence in one of their languages.

The Welsh (Welsh: Cymry) are an ethnic group and nation native to Wales who share a common ancestry, history and culture. Wales is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. The majority of people living in Wales are British citizens.

In Wales, the Welsh language (Welsh: Cymraeg) is protected by law. Welsh remains the predominant language in many parts of Wales, particularly in North Wales and parts of West Wales, though English is the predominant language in South Wales. The Welsh language is also taught in schools in Wales; and, even in regions of Wales in which Welsh people predominantly speak English on a daily basis, the Welsh language is spoken at home among family or in informal settings, with Welsh speakers often engaging in code-switching and translanguaging. In the English-speaking areas of Wales, many Welsh people are bilingually fluent or semi-fluent in the Welsh language or, to varying degrees, capable of speaking or understanding the language at limited or conversational proficiency levels. The Welsh language is descended from Brythonic, spoken across Britain since before the Roman invasion.

A foreign language is a language that is not an official language of, nor typically spoken in, a specific country. Native speakers from that country usually need to acquire it through conscious learning, such as through language lessons at school, self-teaching, or attending language courses. A foreign language might be learned as a second language; however, there is a distinction between the two terms. A second language refers to a language that plays a significant role in the region where the speaker lives, whether for communication, education, business, or governance. Consequently, a second language is not necessarily a foreign language.

Children who learn more than one language from birth or at a very young age are considered bilingual or multilingual. These children can be said to have two, three, or more mother tongues, meaning these languages would not be considered foreign to them, even if one language is a foreign language for the majority of people in the child's birth country. For instance, a child learning English from their English parent and Irish at school in Ireland can speak both English and Irish, but neither is a foreign language for them. This situation is common in countries like India, South Africa, or Canada, which have multiple official languages.

Indonesian names and naming customs reflect the multicultural and multilingual nature of the over 17,000 islands in the Indonesian archipelago. The world's fourth most populous country, Indonesia is home to numerous ethnic groups, each with their own culture, custom, and language.

The naming customs by no means are consistent, and may differ by ethnic group. For example, most western Indonesians do not have surnames (exceptions: Bataks, Nias, Mentawai, Enggano, and some Dayaks), while eastern Indonesians generally do (exceptions: Balinese, West Nusa Tenggara people, and some ethnic groups in Sulawesi).

A bilingual sign (or, by extension, a multilingual sign) is the representation on a panel (sign, usually a traffic sign, a safety sign, an informational sign) of texts in more than one language. The use of bilingual signs is usually reserved for situations where there is legally administered bilingualism (in bilingual regions or at national borders) or where there is a relevant tourist or commercial interest (airports, train stations, ports, border checkpoints, tourist attractions, international itineraries, international institutions, etc.). However, more informal uses of bilingual signs are often found on businesses in areas where there is a high degree of bilingualism, such as tourist venues, ethnic enclaves and historic neighborhoods. In addition, some signs feature synchronic digraphia, the use of multiple writing systems for a single language.

Bilingual signs are widely used in regions whose native languages do not use the Latin alphabet (although some countries like Spain or Poland use multilingual signs); such signs generally include transliteration of toponyms and optional translation of complementary texts (often into English). Beyond bilingualism, there is a general tendency toward the substitution of internationally standardized symbols and pictograms for text.

Saint Joseph University of Beirut (Arabic: جامعة القديس يوسف في بيروت; French: Université Saint-Joseph de Beyrouth, commonly known as USJ) is a private Catholic research university in Beirut, Lebanon, founded in 1875 by French Jesuit missionaries and subsidized by the Government of France during the time when Lebanon was under Ottoman rule.

As the oldest French university in Lebanon, it promotes Lebanese culture and upholds a policy of equal admission opportunity without consideration of ethno-religious affiliations. It advocates trilingual education, offering instruction in Arabic, French, and English. It is known in Lebanon and the Middle East for its university hospital, the Hôtel-Dieu de France, and for its Faculty of Law, modern Lebanon's oldest law school and the first law school in Lebanon since the ancient Roman law school of Berytus.

The early life of Cleopatra VII covers the period from Cleopatra's birth in early 69 BC to her accession to the throne during or before March 51 BC. Cleopatra was born to the reigning pharaoh of Ptolemaic Egypt, Ptolemy XII Auletes; the identity of her mother is disputed and is presumed to have been Cleopatra V or Cleopatra VI, who may have been the same person. During her early childhood, Cleopatra was brought up in the palace of Alexandria in Egypt and received a primarily Hellenistic Greek education. By adulthood she was well-versed in many languages, including Egyptian, Ethiopian, Hebrew, Arabic, Median, Parthian, Latin, and her native Koine Greek.

Cleopatra's father was a client ruler of the Roman Republic. When the Romans annexed Cyprus and Ptolemy XII's brother Ptolemy of Cyprus chose to commit suicide rather than go into exile, Ptolemy XII became unpopular with the masses in Egypt for offering no public reaction to the events. He and a daughter, ostensibly Cleopatra and not Arsinoe IV, were exiled from Egypt during a revolt. This allowed Cleopatra's older sister Berenice IV to claim the throne in 58 BC, ruling jointly with Cleopatra VI. Ptolemy XII and Cleopatra traveled to Roman Italy, staying outside Rome at the villa of their Roman patron, Pompey the Great. After Ptolemy XII orchestrated the assassinations of Berenice IV's diplomats in Rome, seeking to gain Roman favor, he and Cleopatra left the city's hostile environment and settled at Ephesus in Anatolia.

The Achaemenid royal inscriptions are the surviving inscriptions in cuneiform script from the Achaemenid Empire, dating from the 6th to 4th century BCE (reigns of Cyrus II to Artaxerxes III). These inscriptions are primary sources for the history of the empire, along with archaeological evidence and the administrative archives of Persepolis. However, scholars are reliant on Greek sources (such as Herodotus) to reconstruct much of Achaemenid history.

The Achaemenid royal inscriptions differ from earlier Assyrian and Babylonian inscriptions in their multilingualism, rhetorical style and their structure. The inscriptions are mostly trilingual – in Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian, which use two separate scripts (Babylonian and Elamite use variants of the same cuneiform). When they appear together, the privileged position is usually occupied by the Old Persian inscription: at the top when arranged vertically, and in the middle when arranged horizontally.

The Unicode Consortium (legally Unicode, Inc.) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization incorporated and based in Mountain View, California, U.S. Its primary purpose is to maintain and publish the Unicode Standard which was developed with the intention of replacing existing character encoding schemes that are limited in size and scope, and are incompatible with multilingual environments.

Unicode's success at unifying character sets has led to its widespread adoption in the internationalization and localization of software. The standard has been implemented in many technologies, including XML, the Java programming language, Swift, and modern operating systems.