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Children of linguistically and culturally diverse families are therefore faced with a multitude of cultural values, beliefs, and social rules that influence their acquisition of language. We note for the purpose of this discussion that we take a broad view of bilingualism and multilingualism, considering anyone who uses two or more languages actively to be bilingual or multilingual. The form of language experience will differ across individuals and in different language and cultural contexts. Those distinctions, the trajectory of language learning, and the resulting proficiency in each language will be critically important factors, but our interpretation of the available research is that bilingualism and multilingualism are more similar than different. The critical distinction will be between individuals who are monolingual and individuals who speak two or more languages. Interestingly, the advantages that are conferred by bilingualism have been reported for bilingual children even in the earliest months of life.

Worthey awarded grant through new NEH-UK joint digital scholarship program

The DH Initiative takes a critical stance towards digital technology and focuses its work on equity, diversity, inclusion, and social justice. As the hub of that work, the DH Center supports anti-racist and anti-oppressive research, teaching, and learning that values the importance of the humanities, and the interactions of humans in real time and space, in the digital age. Digital Humanities (DH) is a broad-based research and teaching area that brings a range of disciplines together from Computer Science, Media Arts, Languages and Culture, History, Philosophy, and more. Rather, there is a set of commitments to understanding how digital tools might change traditional humanities research and to applying humanistic research methods to digital technologies and cultures. The history of Digital Humanities can be traced back to the 1940s and has gone through several significant stages of development. Understanding the timeline and historical milestones of this interdisciplinary field offers valuable insights into its evolution and how it has shaped contemporary research, teaching, and public engagement in the arts and humanities. In this article, you will explore the fascinating world of Digital Humanities and its impact on the study of English Literature.

An L1 might become an L2 or L3 at a later phase in a multilingual person’s life due to a change of linguistic needs. The use of a ‘primary/secondary’ language system in order to deal with djwrisley.com changes in language dominance in a bilingual system has also been suggested (Herdina and Jessner, 2002). The strong role that emotion can play in multilingualism might also lead to further complications in terms of individual classification (Pavlenko, 2005). L1 might also denote the language of the heart, e.g., the language somebody shares with her/his partner regardless of the level of proficiency in that language and/or the frequency of use. Not to mention the problematic defining dimensions of high degrees of proficiency, functionality, identification, and automaticity in the case of the native language(s), as pointed out by Skuttnab-Kangas (1984). In linguistics, first language acquisition is closely related to the concept of a “native speaker”. According to a view widely held by linguists, a native speaker of a given language has in some respects a level of skill that a second (or subsequent) language learner cannot easily accomplish.

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• Those distinctions, the trajectory of language learning, and the resulting proficiency in each language will be critically important factors, but our interpretation of the available research is that bilingualism and multilingualism are more similar than different.
• In this chapter, multilingualism is used as an umbrella term for both bilingualism and multilingualism.
• In this way multilingual speakers can have more resources at their disposal because they link their prior knowledge even in languages that are not in the curriculum to new languages and academic content.
• The assumption of English as the only language, or the majority language, in the United States has helped promote the belief that acquiring a second language as an adult is an impossible task that can be accomplished successfully only by the few who possess a special talent for language learning.

Furthermore, six-month-old babies growing up in a bilingual environment are better than monolingual babies at rapidly forming internal memory representations of novel visual stimuli (Singh et al., 2014). Throughout this chapter, research from different parts of the world is used to exemplify different aspects of multilingual speech and language acquisition. Therefore, it is important to remember that the wide range of terminology and the lack of specificity of meaning of terms makes comparative analyses difficult. For example, some research studies exclude data from people who have better language skills in one language than the other, so they may describe a partial view of multilingualism as defined in this chapter. The time individuals are exposed to each language and how often they use that language also are likely to affect the results of research. In addition, research data vary regarding languages explored, sample type, and methodologic approach, so it is not easy to compare findings. An appendix to this chapter is provided to demonstrate the diversity of studies of typical and atypical multilingual speech and language acquisition and to facilitate preliminary comparisons of key features.

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Outside the classroom, multilingual kids have a bigger linguistic toolbox for interacting with the world around them. Speaking more than one language opens doors to new friendships, new cultures, and new life opportunities that they might not otherwise get as a monolingual. If a child speaks a different language at school than at home, they’ll develop their own special connection to the family’s adopted home (though, it’s possible that siblings might prefer not to speak your native tongue). You’ll worry less knowing your child will probably adjust a lot easier than you will. Modern workplaces want more languages spoken in the office, and not just because it’s good for business. Even if you start learning a new language as an adult, multilingualism exercises your brain (it’s a muscle, remember?), improving your health and quality of life from the first years of school to retirement age.

After all, if a multi-language learner does not know the relevant word in the language in which they are speaking, the logical thing to do is to substitute the word in the other language to communicate the meaning she is intending to convey. Multilingualism in computing can be considered part of a continuum between internationalization and localization. Due to the status of English in computing, software development nearly always uses it (but not in the case of non-English-based programming languages). Some commercial software is initially available in an English version, and multilingual versions, if any, may be produced as alternative options based on the English original. The Financial Times article ‘The problem with English’ points out that ‘Foreign countries are opaque to mostly monolingual Britons and Americans. Foreigners know us much better than we know them’, and suggests that this language asymmetry likely hurts English speaking countries in many ways, such as communications, limited access to information in other languages, and even difficulty in fighting cybercrime and hacking. When we talk about proficiency, we are usually talking about a person’s ability to communicate in a language.