I was born into the common myth that there are two groups of countries in the world: monolingual and bi/multilingual. This changed after my family moved to Dar es Salaam, in the Tanganyika Territory, then a Crown Colony. English was the language of the elite, of any race, Swahili was spoken by anyone who needed to get things done, and Hindi was spoken by the East African Indians, who dominated the business class.
I sometimes hear at work people claiming that countries in the west are monolingual and the third world is riddled with languages and dialects making them multilingual. This POV is, I believe, based on the traditional proposition of “a race = a culture = a language”. But those claims do not hold up under scrutiny. Take England for example – from whence came our mother tongue. A community in which both Cockney and Standard English are understood can hardly be labeled a monolingual (or homogeneous) society. I cannot resist referring here to the good Prof. Henry Higgins’ “
Why Can’t the English Teach Their Children How To Speak”.
Multilingualism is not only true through space, but also across time. Following the successful Norman invasion of England, French became the “prestige” language. Thus the very words that we use today – in English - to describe what we eat, are shot through with French! The Anglo-Saxon farmer might bring a “cou”, a “pigge”, and a “sheep” to market, but by the time the meat was presented to his French speaking Norman lord, it had become beef, pork, and mutton. In Medieval England, apart from the regional dialects, Latin, French and English were spoken by various groups.
My experience has been that multilingualism is and always has be the norm in the world, and monolingualism the exception.