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SECTION A: INTRODUCTION TO MULTILINGUALISM
Multilingualism is not a recent phenomenon. Multilingual scholars from different parts of Europe were responsible for the translation of Arabic and Greek texts into Latin and the transmission of learning in the Middle Ages. Multilingualism was also present in the first written examples of the Spanish and Basque languages, the Glosas Emilianenses. These were notes in Spanish and Basque written in a Latin book at the end of the 11th century. At the societal level, a well-known example is multilingualism in England after the Norman Conquest in 1066. English was the language of the majority of the population, but Norman French was the language of the ruling class, and Latin was the language of record keeping and the Church. An older example of multilingualism is Sumerian-Akkadian in Southern Mesopotamia during the third millennium bce.
Nowadays, multilingualism is a very common phenomenon all over the world. This is to be expected, considering that there are almost 7,000 languages in the world and about 200 independent countries (Lewis, 2009). It is not only that there are more languages than countries but also that the number of speakers of the different languages is unevenly distributed, meaning that speakers of smaller languages need to speak other languages in their daily life. Multilinguals can be speakers of a minority indigenous language (e.g., Navajo in the United States, Maori in New Zealand, or Welsh in the United Kingdom) who need to learn the dominant state language. In other cases, multilinguals are immigrants who speak their first language(s) as well as the language(s) of their host countries. In some cases, languages are learned as they spread internationally, and it is considered that they open doors for better economic and social opportunities. This is currently the case with English, which is the most widespread language and is very common as a school subject and as a language of instruction in schools and universities all over the world (see, e.g., Kirkpatrick & Sussex, 2012).
Several factors have contributed to the current visibility of multilingualism. Among them, globalization, transnational mobility of the population, and the spread of new technologies are highly influential in different political, social, and educational contexts. Aronin and Singleton (2008)...