Community multilingualism
Multilingualism has existed since the childhood of the world. People were always members of certain communities and involved in all kinds of affairs including ethnic, family, political, business ones and so forth. So, they traveled from place to place trading learning all the languages they had to deal with.
Still, there are occasions when communities are almost multilingual. They can be classified into three groups under functional distribution of the languages:
- if there is a community in which one language is applied in informal contexts while another (state usually) in formal situations. This phenomenon is called diglossia. It is wide-spread in Europe.
- another type of multilingual community is called ambilingualism. This phenomenon is historical mostly because it develops through centuries. It is usually a situation in which there is a prevailing state language and a protected minority language. It takes place in Singapore, India and Canada. Speaking about Canada, it is the region of Quebec in which there are two official languages: French and English.
- the third group may be characterized as bipart-lingualism. It is the event of more than two languages being present within borders of one area but the overwhelming majority of speakers are monolinguals. This situation is observed in Balkans.
All the territories indicated in chapter are not exhaustive. There are many more regions throughout the world which enjoy multilingualism. These regions have military conflicts based on this phenomenon very often.
