What is Multilingualism

India is a pluralistic nation, in terms of ethnicity, culture, language and religion. Co-existence of many languages, races, cultures, and religions has been the essence of Indian heritage. Multilingualism in India is not a recent phenomenon but it is attested throughout the Indian history. Indian multilingualism dates back historically to ancient times when ethnic groups and races came in contact with one another through migration from one region to another. Indian literary history shows that people used to switch between languages spoken by the ordinary people and of high literature. For eg: we had scholars who wrote both in Tamil and Sanskrit. India continues to manifest multilingualism in varied walks of life.

The term ‘multilingualism’ means, the ability of an individual speaker or a community of speakers to use multiple languages. Multilingualism basically arises due to the need. To communicate across speech communities. Multilingualism is a necessity across the world due to globalization and wider cultural communication.

Multilingualism can be categorized into different types. Based on the degree or level of competence in the languages, multilingualism can be classified into two. If a person has native like command in all the languages he knows, then it is known as ambilingualism. And if a person has equal degree of competence in the languages he uses, is known as Equilingualism.

Multilingualism can also be classified based on the manner of acquisition of the languages. When a child acquires more than one language naturally at home, it is termed as natural bilingualism. When a person learns other languages in an artificial or classroom setting, it is known as artificial multilingualism. Sometimes multilingualism can exist at the level of the individual or the society. The ability of an individual to have competence in two or more languages is known as Individual multilingualism. The linguistic diversity present in a society is known as Societal Multilingualism.

Based on the opportunities for interaction among speech communities in a society, multilingualism can be classified into two. Speakers who live in their own geographic spaces and are often monolingual are grouped under horizontal multilingualism. In vertical multilingualism people of different ethnicity are in direct contact with others because they share the same territory and participate jointly in all socio-economic activities.