MULTILINGUALISM AN OVERVIEW

MULTILINGUALISM AN OVERVIEW

Language differences are at the root of identity for many peoples. Language is concomitant with tribe or ethnicity in many parts of the world and in some countries is a major factor defining minorities (e.g., Berbers in Algeria, Slovenes in Austria).

 In the United States it is language that unifies the fastest growing minority group—Latinos—who come from many different countries and cultures.

Despite the importance of language as a source of identity as well as a stimulus for discord, language differences do no usually stand out as a major concern for diversity management in corporations.

This memo explores the history of language and, the relationship between cultures and language and analyzes the implications of this information for management.

Definition of the Concept of Multilingualism

Linguistic diversity - multilingualism - is,  found in most present-day nations.

A multilingual person is defined as one” able to speak more than two languages with approximately equal facility”.  It is the  same phenomenon as the” linguistic behavior of the members of a speech community which alternately uses two, three or more languages depending on the situation and function”.

How Does Multilingualism Develop?

There are four different kinds of historical patterns that can lead to societal multilingualism. These patterns are migration, imperialism, federation and border area Multilingualism.

In this context, the pattern of imperialism.  The subtypes of imperialism are colonization, annexation, and economic imperialism.

Typical of imperialist processes is that relatively few people from the controlling nationality take up residence in the new area. Former British, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch colonies in Africa, Asia and South America can serve as examples.

Although relatively few people come to live in the subjugated territories, the language becomes very important in the territory.  Spolsky, too, remarks that the larger the scale of Colonization from the homeland is, the more secure place the conquerors’ language will be in the new land, although even a small ruling group may be able to maintain their language, provided they have contact with the homeland. Often in this case, the conquered people will be forced to learn the language of the conquerors .In annexation and colonization, the imperialist language is likely to be used in government and education; in economic imperialism, the imperialist language is necessary for international commerce and finance: a foreign language will become widely used because of the economic advantage associated with it.

The Indian Case

There are over 900 million people and more than one thousand languages in India; the area is thus one of the most diverse linguistic and cultural areas in the world. Thus, it comes as no surprise that there are many problems in classifying and labeling languages in India.

One reason is that languages tend to fade into other ones, so that it is difficult to say which different languages are, or which are just dialects of one language

In 1971, it was estimated that the rate of bilingualism in India was 13%. 99% of English speakers are second-language speakers, whereas in many other languages there are no non-native speakers at all (although there are large numbers of native speakers. Spolsky describes the situation on the Indian subcontinent as one highlighting the”multitude of Problems facing a political unit that contains a great number of languages”. He further points out that it comes as no surprise that India has some difficulty in setting up a language policy: the constitution, for example, avoids choosing a single official language.

There is no accurate survey of the number of speakers of English in India. In examples of pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar of Indian English. Later, we would like to examine the possibilities of non-native Englishes for international 1999 the population of India has reached a billion. It is said that in the subcontinent the middle class people, particularly in the urban areas, are said to have a sufficient command of English.

It is estimated that 10-20 percent of the population in India is

classified into the middle class. Therefore it is possible to estimate that there are 100-200 million fluent speakers of English in India. Including the number of imperfect speakers of English who can manage to communicate through English, the total number of the speakers of English may reach 300-400 million. Moreover, if we add the number of speakers of English in the subcontinent, the total number of speakers of English must be more than that by far. It really is a figure that cannot be ignored.