Talk:Multilingualism/Archive 1

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Archive 1

Article Division: Bilingualism as New Page

I plan to focus specifically on bilingualism and take information spread throughout this article that relates and re-organize the information. I hope to cover, in detail, several aspects of speaking two languages. Specifically, I would like to address the influence on academic performance, cultural implications, and cognitive benefits (fighting off dementia/Alzheimer's Disease, etc.). Katelyn Warburton (talk) 15:46, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

assistance request

I don't know how to do the reference properly. Could someone find the link below and move it to the references properly. Thank you. http://www.encyclo.co.uk/define/sesquilingual —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.50.129.90 (talk) 03:03, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Compound and Coordinate Bilingual definitions

The definitions compound and coordinate appear mixed up. Understanding the idiosyncrasies of connotation is an advanced skill, while the beginning student is limited to what their dictionary maps the word to. Therefore the beginning student is treating a word in each language as the same concept until they learn the subtleties. This is complete opposite of what the article suggests.

template added--90.179.235.249 (talk) 20:23, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

I also consider mastering different intonations in different languages an advanced skill, rather than a collateral of poor learning. As a trilingual speaker, I know the importance of the intonations, and that different language families require different "music" of the language to sound rigth. Not even speaking of the pronunciation (also mentioned in the article as a feature of a lower-degree speaker). Try talking e.g. German with English accent. To children (not adults!). And see how much they understand. From my experience - some won't even recognise the language as their mother tongue. So mastering this level of details shows an advanced speaker - probably one who can use both (or more :-) languages to the same extend. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mnikit (talk • contribs) 07:26, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

In response to above comments: This isn't a matter of how proficient the individual is, but rather a matter of how they organize the linguistic information in their mind. In compound multilingualism the speaker stores the lexicons for their languages together, and they have easy access to information across languages. However in coordinate multilingualism the lexical information for each language is relatively separate and independent. The author for this section does include two paragraphs regarding the recent uncertainty on the issue within the linguistics community. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fwnikkei10 (talk • contribs) 06:14, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Requested move

Introductory description has "multilingualism" bolded instead of "multilingual", which is nonexistent. Also, a noun may be more appropriate as an article title than a qualitative adjective.

Support per request. --70.25.168.90 09:43, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
Support use nouns. --Tysto 23:18, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Result

Moved. WhiteNight ^{T | @ | C} 03:22, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Africa

Would ambilingualism be more common in certain parts of Africa, or is that just a prejudice, and code-switching would actually prevail? 惑乱分からん 14:39, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Dreadful article!

This is a bloody dreadful article, covering too much and still not being very intelligible. We should always attempt to write articles in such a way that they can be understood by people who do not have degrees in the subject. Anyone landing here because he or she searched for "bilingual", meaning someone who is totally fluent in two languages (there are extremely few who master three or more languages equally well, although there are many who can communicate well in 8-10 languages), find themselves drowning in terms like "Multilingualism at the societal level" (what's wrong with the established adjective "social", suddenly?), and lists of areas in the world where more than one language is spoken. Written by predominantly English speakers with none or limited knowledge of other languages, the article seems to equate bilingualism with the ability to make yourself understood (however limited) by someone speaking another language.

I therefore suggest letting bilingualism (i.e. the ability to speak at at least two languages at native level) once again become an article in its own right instead of a redirect, covering this specific theme and referring readers to this broader article, for more in-depth linguistic speak. Thomas Blomberg 02:23, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

For now, I'll stay out of the discussion of whether bilingualism should be its own article. I agree that there is a tendency for these articles to focus on situations in which English is one of the languages involved and to use too much technical jargon.

With that said, clumsy as the use of "societal" may be, it isn't the same thing as "social." The latter generally means simply "involving interactions among persons," which the former usually describes "that which pertains to a society as a whole." One way to improve the sentence (which seems to have been removed in the intervening months) might be something like this:

Multilingualism within a society ...

or this:

Multilingualism across a society ...

There are other possibilities, of course, but I think I've made my point. This is an issue that comes up often when one reads critical theory, which is some of the most semantically impenetrable stuff around. For a project such as Wikipedia, it's important that we look for ways to break these ideas down into their component parts whenever possible, and when a word is unquestionably a distinct concept, try to explain that concept in the simplest terms justifiable. Lawikitejana 00:16, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

list of countries and other stuff

That list of countries/regions where several languages are spoken was getting a bit mess looking, I though. I grouped the places by geographical area, with the exception of a few certain territories. The division is just a rough draft. It needs work. Also, several countries have too much info, the list became out of shape. Perhaps this list should be spinned off to a separate page. Hmmm...

OK, I made that list on a separate page. I just cut and pasted it. Please help with it.DDD DDD 12:47, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Someone above complained that the article was heavy with technical terms. That seems fair. Also, the article seems to be saying that bilinguals are on a continuum from only 1 language known to completely/perfectly having two (or more languages). That seems appropriate to me.

On second thought, maybe there should be fewer technical terms.DDD DDD 12:47, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Promoting bilingualwiki.com

I've just deleted the sentence

Since the year 2000, even parents who speak a foreign language are raising their children from birth to speak that language, such that their children are bilingual from birth and have greater facility learning other languages in the future. Reasons to have done so: 1. It's somehow contradictory with the sentence placed immediatly before it: It is possible, although rare, for children to have and maintain more than one first language.

2. It doesn't seem very logical that the year 2000 means something like an edge, and that before that date children almost always weren't multilingual, while being now. To state something like that, it should at least cite a source. And I think that even then, it could still be objectable.

3. It seems that it was added to promote the website bilingualwiki.com because it links to the article on that site (which is, btw, proposed to be deleted for being only promo for the site). No one would link to such a content-less article without clear intentions to promote the site. --Pfc432 05:19, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Spanish and Portuguese Speakers as Receptive Bilinguals

In the section on receptive bilingualism, it seems to limit the concept to those who are living in a multilingual environment, such as Spanish-speaking immigrants in Japan, where the local language (in this case, Japanese) is prized over a heritage language (Spanish). This seems to dishonestly limit the concept if receptive biliguals must merely be able to understand but not be able to produce the language. Speakers of Spanish, while not being able to write or speak Portuguese without instruction, are able to understand it. This is also true among speakers of some Scandivian langauages. Does this count as receptive bilingualism? I am not sure, and the article is not clear. --chemica 04:43, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Correction please?

This sentance doesn't make any sense to me:

"Being a bilingual does not necessarily mean that you can speak e.g English and American."

Can the person who wrote it (or someone who understands what they were trying to say) correct it, please?

This means that being bilingual could mean that e.g. you speak French and German or Serbian and Romanian, not necessarily German and English, French and English or Serbian and English, etc....

So what ?--136.8.150.6 (talk) 17:24, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

lists and the article

I am not convinced that a list of countries, regions, cities, towns, villages, hamlets, neighbourhoods, streets, ... belongs in this article. When we start listing places, the list soon becomes too unwieldy. We inhabit a big world, with many different regions. To fairly list all multilingual regions in this article would result in an article that is simply to long. I had previously removed the cities listed and suggested they belong on the list of multi-lingual regions that the multilingualism article links to. I still believe they should go there. Also, the article remains incomplete on so many levels. I think we should be attempting to edit the language in the article and agree on the language in the article before we begin the list of lists of multilingual regions. That being said, I took the time several months ago to write a complete list of multilingual countries (according to each countries wiki page) on the French wiki... DDD DDD 03:07, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

More than ever, I am convinced that this list of cities does not belong in this article, it is simply becoming too long and people are adding anything they want. Scanning it, I saw that Quebec City was listed. Unbelievable. I lived in Quebec City for 4 years in the mid-90s. It was in know way ever a multilingual (French-English) city and I find it insulting that someone added it to the list. Take a look at Census Canada data. The government agency counts 810 speakers of English and French in Quebec City. See [[1]] DDD DDD 14:02, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

I finally moved that list of cities to the List of multilingual countries and regions as was (with a bit of an edit of that intro paragraph). Here's the paragraph again before I edited: "In many cities around the globe, two or more languages are spoken at a high frequency by the huge majority of the population, creating truly multi-lingual cultures. While there are many cities, such as New York City, where dozens of languages can be heard, there are only a few were the wide spread number of multi-lingual speakers makes multi-lingualism a part of everyday life. The following list is just a small example:"

First sentence, I object to the language 'many cities', 'huge majority', 'truly multi...' If we are going to indicate that there are many cities, and start listing them, we could end up with a list of a thousand cities. Huge majorities? In all the cities on that list, do huge majorities speak several languages? Hmm... That 'truly'-word seems not very neutral - as opposed to 'truly-monolingual'? Or? Does anyone agree with me on that?

Second sentence, the paragraph continues "while there are many cities such as NYC'. Well, no. I doubt that. In the English-speaking world, there is London, NYC and Toronto where are plethora of languages can be heard everday as you walk down the street. From other cultures, you could probably add Paris, Moscow maybe, and ??? That's not being cultural-centric or anything on my part, but that's based on the English, French and Russian empires for the case of London, Paris and Moscow. And then modern emigration patterns for the two cities in the Americas (Yes, I know I am over-simplifying causes and results of emigration/immigration). So that's a list of maybe five cities or slightly more, which does not add to 'many cities'. Then the sentence continues 'there are only a few... where multilingualism [is] a part of everyday life'. And then the list includes 26 cities as of August 28th. That is not a few. Sorry. And why make the contradictory sentence that there are many like NYC but few not multilingual, when, as the list shows, it seems to be the opposite.

The article on multilingualism makes the point that mulitlingual socities may be those where they are officially multilingual but with many monolingual speakers or the opposite, a monolingual society with multilingual speakers. Then, this mini cities article tries to argue for something 'truly' multilingual. It seems contradictory to me and not staying neutral. Both types of multilingualism (officially mulitlingual or monolingual) are valid.

India is a multilingual country wih a plethora of languages spoken. The List of multilingual countries and regions, Indian languages, and List of national languages of India already discuss India's multilingualism. Does this list of cities need to include six Indian cities (Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Mangalore, Mumbai and Trivandrum)?

The same goes for Canada (Montreal and Ottawa) and Switzerland (Biel, Fribourg and Zurich) - two other countries known for their multilingualism.

The List of multilingual countries and regions also indicates that Miami government recognizes English, French Creole and Spanish. This list of cities wants to argue, these 'languages are spoken at a high frequency by the huge majority of the population'. Is this true? Do a huge majority of people in Miami speak these 3 languages? And do we need to repeat Miami again?

I still have my doubts that this list of cities is necessary at all. But if it is to be maintained, it should be on the List of multilingual regions... And some standards need to be applied. As of today, I see very little standards on that list. If we are going to create a list of multilingual cities, let's creat one that is good and not too long and unwieldy.

And what kind of standards to we need to apply? Where do we base our information on? The wiki pages for those cities? Or something else?DDD DDD 02:45, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. The list is a hodge-podge. Criteria must be set out at the beginning of the article for what Multi-lingual cities are defined as in this list, and the criteria should be strict enough to mean something, and of course, the list should reflect these criteria. Malnova 02:58, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

English, English, English and English

Is the purpose of this article to pretend that English is spoken everywhere? What justifies including English as a community language in Bruxelles, Zürich or Tel Aviv?

Another reason I prefer leaving out the languages spoken in that never ending list of cities...and simply sticking with the official list of multilingual regions.DDD DDD 03:39, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

It probably has to do with the international community in those cities, because they are important international political or financial capitals. Bruselles, for example is the center of EU activity, and English is an important language in the EU. I'm not so sure about Zurich or Tel Aviv, but from what I've heard of the later, English abounds there because of its many tourists.—Preceding unsigned comment added by [[User:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]] ([[User talk:{{{1}}}|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/{{{1}}}|contribs]])

English is indeed very common in Brussels. --Gronky (talk) 10:43, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Cognitive advantlingualism

Under "Cognitive Proficiency," there is a section that suggests Cognitive Advantlingualism be merged with this article. However, Wikipedia does not have a page called Cognitive Advantlingualism (nor does a search for it turn up any results). I suggest deleting said suggestion.

I think they meant the page on Cognitive Advantages to Bilingualism. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fwnikkei10 (talk • contribs) 06:25, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Definition section

From the "Definition of multilingualism" section:

As a result, since most speakers do not achieve the maximal ideal, language learners may come to be seen as deficient and by extension, language teaching may come to be seen as a failure.

I have trouble following this line of logic. Is maximal fluency the only acceptable goal in language teaching? --Kjoonlee 13:12, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

I think in the context of the whole paragraph, it is clearly stated that maximal fluency is NOT the only acceptable goal.

However, problems may arise with these definitions as they do not answer the question regarding how much knowledge of a language is required to be classified as bilingual. As a result, since most speakers do not achieve the maximal ideal, language learners may come to be seen as deficient and by extension, language teaching may come to be seen as a failure. One does not expect children to "speak chemistry" like Nobel prize winners or to have become a professional athlete by the time they have left school, yet anything less than fluency in a second language by graduating school children is somehow inadequate.DDD DDD 13:35, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

1.1 Definition of multilingualism

Who is "Cook"? Is this "Vivian Cook" from the external links section? Is this person a studied linguist, a diner cook who's nickname is cook? "Since 1992, Cook has argued that most multilingual speakers are somewhere between these minimal and maximal definitions. Cook calls these people multi-competent." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.41.210.236 (talk) 21:01, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Redirect from Linguistic diversity

I noticed "linguistic diversity" redirects here, but this does not seem to make much sense - even a redirect to linguistic typology would seem more natural, but I think an article of its own is needed on this topic. So I'd suggest replacing the redirect with a stub for further expansion.--AAikio 09:43, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Trash can picture

The trash can picture shows an example of multilingualism for the sake of multilingualism without real utility. The Vietnamese sign is incorrect, since it uses the wrong tone mark. The sign uses the grave accent when an acute accent is required, rendering the word unpronounceable in Vietnamese. DHN 01:01, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Merging Polyglot into this article

It was proposed in August 2007 that Polyglot (person) be merged into Multilingualism#Multilingualism within an individual. Please discuss, decide and resolve this issue.--Laughitup2 (talk) 16:59, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Merge. The Polyglot (person) article was created as a futile attempt to list "polyglots" without defining what a polyglot was and without setting up any criteria for the language skills needed in order to master a language. It initially contained a long list of unreferenced dubious claims. After removing all the unreferenced claims, there are now only three "polyglots" left, all with some references, but none with reliable references. Polyglot (person) was nominated for deletion by me in April 2006, but it survived. A merger is a good alternative to deletion. Mlewan (talk) 20:14, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

There was apparently not opposition, so I went ahead and performed a partial merge. The text needs to be cleaned up much more, so feel free to take out the broom sticks. Mlewan (talk) 10:54, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

there are now only three "polyglots" left, all with some references, but none with reliable references -- Uku Masing had the source from the foreign ministry of Estonia. How much more official and reliable, can a thing be? :-)

But then again, that's probably why he is the only visible claim left on this page. Oh and concerning This means that it is very difficult to judge the actual achievement of claims like for Uku Masing an Estonian linguist, who was claimed to be fluent in approximately 65 languages. Masing did work professionally on very language-related subjects for all his life, so at least in his case the fluency is very well documented. But yes, most of the available data - the "reliable sources" - are in estonian language, thus not easily accessibly for 99% of the readers and editors of this article.

To give you just one random example, then - http://209.85.135.104/search?q=cache:-jq4vNG7_-sJ:tjaani.eelk.ee/doc/masing_leksikon.rtf+%22Uku+Masing%22+keeled&hl=et&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=ee

It's one of the long list of articles which are more specific about what languages he knew. (The list is roughly this - all the indo-european languages of Europe (except South Slavic ones), all notable semitic languages, Sumerian, japanese, persian, tibetan, sanskrit, various uralic languages (especially samoyedic and finnic ones) and then he also knew several polynesian languages and some mayan ones.)

Anyway, point being - of course it's hard to judge fluency-claims with absolute certainty, however!, relative certainty can be reached. Merely the fact that one can translate from a language and that those translations are considered good by other specialists should act as a sort of "proof" for fluency-claims. Thus I think that possible listings of "highest claims" should not be brushed aside totally (as they appear to be right now). Just the reliability and how-well-they-are-documented should be studied very carefully and any additions without any good sources should be deleted immediately. Ones with sources should be studied before dismissed. But still, lists of all sorts of things is one of the virtues (rather than vices) of wikipedia. At least for me. :) Androg (talk) 19:16, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Hyperpolyglot

What happened to that article? Did somebody "merge" it with this one? There's not a single appearance of the word "hyperpolyglot" here, a pity. --Taraborn (talk) 22:05, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Ah, someone asked the same thing I wanted to ask... 3 years ago. Sweet. :( --jae (talk) 16:04, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Prestigious?

This article often speaks of prestigious language. What is meant by this? --Abdull (talk) 10:43, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I cannot see that the article talks about "prestigious language" but "language that is considered prestigious". There is a big difference. Wealth and prestige often go hand in hand in human society. In a village where there is a wealthy Komi family and a lot of poor Russians, it is possible that some people will consider Komi "prestigious". In the next village, there may be a wealthy Russian family and a lot of poor Komi, and Russian may be considered prestigious. None of the languages is more prestigious than the other, but there may be people who consider one or the other more prestigious. Mlewan (talk) 19:52, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Comparing multilingual speakers

I'm disappointed by the Comparing multilingual speakers section. I'm not enough of an expert on this to be able to improve it (I only have enough skill to delete it :), but it doesn't fit my experience. I dream, think, and talk in my sleep in languages I've learned as an adult, so I will need a bit more proof if I'm to believe I must be doing these things through the intermediary of my first language. --Gronky (talk) 10:47, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

What is an appropriate way to incorporate multilingualism within computing within the summary? needs edits! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gingermarmalade723 (talk • contribs) 19:39, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

List of "polyglots"

I do not want to get into any edit war about the list of polyglots, but I would strongly advice other editors to remove any trace of it, as any such list is unreliable and useless. In, for example, the article about Georg Sauerwein there is no trace of any sources. Ziad Fazah is basically a circus artist with as much credibility as Uri Geller. The only source in the article about Robert Stiller is an expired link to a note from a parliamentary election campaign (!) 2005. And so on. There are not and cannot be any reliable sources for the "number" of languages of any "polyglot".

The section that used to be called "Counting languages" (not perfect header) and now is called "Polyglots" (ghastly header, considering the content), explains why this kind of list is ridiculous. If someone wants to have it, put it at some blog somewhere. Mlewan (talk) 17:13, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

The recently added "polyglot", Emil Krebs, mastered only seven languages according to himself, and there is no reliable and verifiable source that confirms that he even did that. (See the talk page of his article.) I now give this page up, because of the number of unverifiable unsourced claims that keep getting added. If anyone for some reason want my input on anything, please put a comment on my talk page. Thanks. Mlewan (talk) 15:54, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree this list is highly dubious. Many of the references are to unreliable sources, and the problem is compounded by the mysterious fact that there is no mention of many of the subjects' alleged Herculean language abilities in their respective articles. It needs to be severely pruned, particularly in cases where fluency in large numbers of languages is claimed without credible reference. Exploding Boy (talk) 02:11, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

I'll be bold and remove the list! :) Lova Falk talk 17:01, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Thank you! Akerbeltz (talk) 17:27, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

That was a very interesting section. We definitely should list, group, or at least categorize people somehow related to polyglottery just as we do with people from other fields. The number of languages these people speak is not that important and mostly inaccurate anyway, but the fact that they should be listed and recognized, is. That list doesn't have to be comparative; just a listing of polyglots (10+ languages) would be enough. Otherwise polyglottery feels ignored and there is no page nor section grouping such people together. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Iketsi (talk • contribs) 14:25, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Multilingualism within communities

IThe example with Argentina is inaccurate. There is only one widely spoken language, Spanish. Italian is an important part of the Argentine identity, and most Argentines are familiar with some Italian terms, but the language is very rarely spoken in the media, in schools, or in public. I would say that most Argentines cannot speak Italian at all. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.37.221.92 (talk) 21:54, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia - Wiktionary

I propose we change the article on Wikipedia to a redirect to the definition on Wiktionary. What do you guys think? Veraladeramanera (talk) 18:29, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Reference?

Accuracy of the first reference seems to be non-existant! "Multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population". Looking at the 1st footnote (A Global Perspective on Bilingualism and Bilingual Education (1999), G. Richard Tucker, Carnegie Mellon University) (Ten years old - irrelevant reference? inaccurate? expired?) in the article reads... "However, despite these conservative government policies, available data indicate (sp?) that there are many more bilingual or multilingual individuals in the world than there are monolingual." What 'available data' indicate(s) this fact? The (decade old) reference source itself is not properly referenced. The 'available data' is not referred to. This line ("Multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population") of the article should at least be in dispute. The line that 'multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers' should at least be directly referenced to the available data itself, not to a decade old university article which does not specify the source (and size) of the available data, the way the data was gathered or how universally accurate the data is. I have deleted the line pending justification for the inclusion of the line in the main article, pending a proper reference to what is currently a claim, not a fact. 08:41, 2 July 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.239.5.127 (talk) 08:39, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree with this. I will remove the reference. DerPaul (talk) 06:19, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Data is a plural noun. The singular is datum. Hence "the data are", "the data indicate". This is standard British and academic usage. 213.106.114.219 (talk) 18:42, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Adam

[under Polyglots] "Adam - knew every language of his time". Who is Adam? Is this the Adam of Genesis? If so, how many languages did he supposedly know? 91.104.182.71 (talk) 00:06, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

US not requiring foreign language

My school and every school I ever heard of in the US required that one take foreign language classes, and almost all college degrees require credits in foreign languages. The sentence may mean that it is not a law on the federal level, but the sentence is still misleading since the reason for that is that the US is more or less a federation that wouldn't legislate education in that way. I'm pretty sure most states have their own laws concerning foreign language study, at least the ones I've been to (even if it doesn't work).

Chris 12/25/09 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.104.15.61 (talk) 03:55, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

I was just about to post something similar myself. It is referenced with a book, so I can't easily check the source, but it is true that almost every (I would be surprised to learn not all) public high school requires at least one year of foreign language. Here is the California department of education's requirements for high school, listing foreign language. Is there any reason not to remove that claim? Howan (talk) 05:42, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Country Level Descriptions

What's the point of that section? There is virtually no nation-state apart from a few island nations such as Iceland which isn't bi- or multilingual. Akerbeltz (talk) 20:48, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

One point may be that people belonging to the majority not necessarily understand that multilingualism is quite normal. The section may also be relevant for studying how multilingualism is handled in different countries. --LPfi (talk) 11:02, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Fair point but then I would suggest a paragraph explaining that multilingualism is the norm in most countries anc cite perhaps one prime example from each continent (e.g. India, South Africa, Bolivia, Canada, Switzerland). Don't you think that would make more sense? Akerbeltz (talk) 11:26, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Writing synchronized linguistic versions to promote writing quality and interculturalism

I would like to document here (in a sub-article) a proposal (toward authors in International Publications) for writing synchronized texts to promote the richness of individual cultures while sharing and communicating efficiently in English. For an author, the writing process is often much more precise and creative in his/her mother language. The translation process is often the opportunity for deep assesment of terminology (in the source language and in English) and text/ideas flow. Promoting "synchronized writing" could be a way to reinforce the presence of diverse languages on the web (and other publication media), a way to foster maximal productivity of author, a way to establish bridges between all cultures and English, the "pivot" language. For instance, in medicine, most publications in all countries are now in English only. "Synchronized writing" would allow better writing quality, better terminology equivalences, better translations, better English publications. With electronic media, the space needed for keeping both linguistic versions side by side is not a problem anymore. An example: [MasterMySubject.org[2]] How this could be presented here in an accepted way? User:Christophe Dupriez —Preceding undated comment added 10:29, 22 August 2010 (UTC).

I think this could involve a lot of WP:original research, which is not allowed here, and is difficult to present in an encyclopedic form. On the other hand the subject is highly relevant for the authors of at least the other Wikipedias.

Wikibooks could be the right place for this effort. Links from some talk or meta pages on Wikipedia and a notice on the Village Pump would probably be appropriate. I do not know the best way to reach editors on the other Wikipedias, on Commons and on the other sister projects.

--LPfi (talk) 15:25, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your suggestions. Nice to follow directions when they come from the land of Paasilinna! --Christophe Dupriez (talk) 15:14, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Multilingual is Different than Multilingualism

Multilingual describes a person who has more than one culture in them (like me). So I don't understand why there isn't an article for that. Multilingualism is an idea-- I am not saying that it's a bad idea, but it's not the same as being Multilingual. So my point is, the term "Multilingual" should not redirect here-- it should go to it's own article. 98.245.148.9 (talk) 02:55, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Ditto for "bilingual". It describes a kind of person, or an ability, not an idea. So it also should not redirect here, but to it's own article. 98.245.148.9 (talk) 03:11, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree with in that the way we use the words multilingual and multilingualism in English is different in that they have different grammatical functions. However, I think the general concept underlying the two words is the same. For example, Mirriam-Webster's online dictionary lists the two words in the same dictionary entry. Wikipedia, on the other hand, is not a dictionary, so there is no need to have separate entries for each word. I'm not saying you're wrong, however. If you can find some reliable sources that say there is a difference in concept between multilingual and multilingualism, then there should certainly be separate articles for the two terms, or at least more clarification in the present article. Feel free to post the details of any such sources here, and I'll have a go at writing a new article if the information warrants it. Or you could start one yourself by going to WP:AFC.

I think you may be right about the need for a separate article on Bilingualism, however. It seems that there are two senses of that word being used. One is the sense used in the current article, i.e. someone who can speak two languages. The other sense is of someone who can speak two or more languages to near-native competency, which almost exclusively means people who learned both (or all) their languages from early childhood. I intend to write an article on this when I have finished with the current pages I'm working on, but you are welcome to start one in the meantime. All the best. — GypsyJiver (drop me a line) 08:12, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

There is a page Polyglot (person), which seems to correspond to 98.245.148.9's conception of multilingual (person), but see Akerbeltz's distinction between polyglot and multilingual, below. Both of these usages are idiosyncratic, in the sense that 98.245.148.9 (and no doubt many other people) uses "multilingual" in one sense while Akerbeltz (and no doubt many other people) uses it in a slightly different sense. Neither is wrong, but neither is the whole story. Cnilep (talk) 01:59, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, but you are completely wrong. :) "Multilingual" is an adjective that describes someone who speaks multiple languages: multi= multiple, and lingual=languages (from the latin for "tongue". You say that you bilingual describes having "more than one culture in them (like me)" - I'm not sure what you are trying to say here, but do you mean someone whose family is from more than one country? Or do you mean someone, eg. someone who migrated from one country to another at a relatively young age, and therefore identifies with both the culture of the country of origin, as well as the country of residence/new citizenship? If so, then the word would be multicultural, not multilingual... If you meant something else, then I'm curious to know. :) Take care. ★★Violet Fae (talk)★★ 07:34, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Dubious

The lead section states, "The generic term for a multilingual person is polyglot," and cites as a source a dictionary definition of polyglot. Yet the simple fact that polyglot means a multilingual person does not imply that this is "the generic". Polyglot, multilingual, bilingual, and linguist are all used to refer to an individual who speaks multiple languages. To call one of these "generic" seems to suggest some sense of primacy that the current source simply does not warrant. Cnilep (talk) 13:29, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm answering this on the go... if I remember rightly, technically a polyglot is someone who has acquired more than one language but without specifying whether this is native multilingualism or languages learned as an adult. To be bi-tri-multilingual in the linguistic sense (though often used messily) you need to acquire these natively as a child. So if you take French and German at uni as a native English speaker, you become a polyglot. Notwithstanding, colloquially people will call that being multilingual. Messy. Akerbeltz (talk) 14:00, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

No doubt there are some sources that assert such a technical distinction, but in ordinary language there is no clear difference between the terms. It is, as you say, messy. Cnilep (talk) 02:02, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps we should rephrase that to "Colloquially, people who speak more than one language are also called polyglots" and sidestep the definition? Akerbeltz (talk) 10:00, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

I don't think you even need the qualifier "colloquially", and as I hint above there should probably be some cross reference with Polyglot (person). Ergo something like, "People who speak more than one language are also called polyglots." Cnilep (talk) 12:45, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Sounds good to me, go for it. Akerbeltz (talk) 15:41, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

In Cebu

I don't know which model they fall. Cebuanos knows to speak at least three languages. Their native-tongue Cebuano. They are taught Filipino, which is the Philippines' national language, in school. The medium of instruction in school is English. Others speak four or more. Take for example a Chinese Filipino born and raised in Cebu or a Cebuano with Spanish roots. The Chinese Filipino could converse in Mandarin, Cebuano, English and Filipino. Plus, these people are the upper class and most of them attend international school.112.202.85.152 (talk) 16:18, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Merge proposal

I think second language should be merged into multilingualism and second-language acquisition. At the moment the second language article is basically duplicating the latter two topics, and I think it would be best to just have two good articles on the subject rather than keep the somewhat half-hearted mix that second language is now. I can't think of any topics that we should be covering in the second language article that we couldn't cover in the other two, but please let me know if I have missed something obvious. — Mr. Stradivarius ^♫ 15:19, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

While we are discussing this, I think we should also consider the foreign language article, which is in a similar position to second language. I have also added language education as a merge target, as there are some parts of the foreign language article that definitely belong there, and not in multilingualism or second-language acquisition. Please let me know what you think. — Mr. Stradivarius ^♫ 15:30, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

The problem with merging is that even though there are several aspects that overlap, SLA and FLA are not the same thing. Teaching strategies and approaches vary because the actual acquisitional process of the two is different. See [[3]] User talk:Bachelorj20 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.179.213.171 (talk) 17:30, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
The idea would be to explain the difference between second languages and foreign languages at some place in the target articles, not to get rid of the distinction altogether. I think an explanation like this would be necessary both in language education and second-language acquisition - and that would be true regardless of whether the second language or foreign language articles existed or not. Best — Mr. Stradivarius ^♫ 15:41, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
The difference in terms still comes down for the most part to teaching methodologies usually with there not really being much difference these days in the treatment of how to teach in one or the other situation. In the most true sense, a 'foreign language' would be any second language that falls beyond the general cultural scope of the learner's native environment / is a second language that is not spoken in the learner's home 'linguistic realm'. Both are second languages but whether one is a foreign language is dependent on perspective and can change. There is also a more limited meaning that is mostly limited to North American K-12 and university language education in which different pedagogies are employed with the goal of second language learning being competency/acquisition whereas the goal of foreign language learning is more to learn about the language and in line with that attain only a limited level of competency.Drew.ward (talk) 17:24, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
Yes, I know what the difference between the two terms is... the question is, should we merge the articles or not? I think that the level of duplication is high enough that we should merge them. We could even make the merge target a section of the relevant article - e.g. Language education#Foreign languages and second languages (we would create the section at the time of merging). — Mr. Stradivarius ^♫ 02:22, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
Certainly, I think that sounds like a very solid approach. But I think that multilingualism is probably not the best place for it because the term is just too broad and has too many uses and genres it applies to. Language education however, seems an ideal home for this as both foreign language and second language (especially when they are conflated) are restricted to this field.Drew.ward (talk) 16:15, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
I would be leery to support too general of a merger and have some of the reservations touched on above. I am the head of an international nonprofit that focusses on bridging research linguistics with applied linguistics, speech pathology, and language education and thus spend a lot of time dealing with topics such as this. I see the biggest problem with a merger being that multilingualism is a separate concept from second language. Multilingualism could be said to obviously carry with it some sense of the other topic but the two are not necessarily intertwined enough to totally merge (it could be argued however as I think you have mentioned that some discussion of SL could be included in the more general multilingualism article).

As Bachelor has pointed out, the biggest issue is probably that SLA and FLA (first language and second language acquisition) are two very different things. They are in fact nearly polar opposite processes when it comes to how the brain functions, how each process is approached from a pedagogical standpoint, and which things work and don't work for each. FLA is a naturally occurring process by which people acquire competency in not only language in general but in the particular languages in which they are exposed. For all but a few rare lucky people, FLA is only active up to about age 7 (with most people's FLA 'computer' turning off much earlier by 4 or 5). SLA on the other hand is an active learning process in which a person has to teach himself a language. It's most akin to the processes involved with learning to play tennis or play the saxophone. You no longer have the blank canvas effect in your mind to simply figure everything out, and at the same time, there's more to these competencies than just obtaining information so there's also very little 'teaching' (as in someone else doing something that causes the learner to acquire the skill). Instead, you're left with a 90% learner-centric process that is unique to each individual and relies on a combination of an environment conducive to learning being provided, the raw materials being actively learned, and then those bits that cannot be intuitively figured out actually being explained to the learner. What it all boils down to is that in FLA, the learner is given a pile of building blocks and then watches others build things with them and from that, naturally figures out all the ins and outs of everything and does so with amazing accuracy. With SLA though, that ability to figure things out regarding those same blocks is greatly diminished so the learner is given the pile of blocks, told what they are and how they work, shown others using them, and then has to be actively taught the same ins and outs of use that they could figure out naturally before. It's that difference in mortars between the blocks that separates the two processes.

One of the biggest issues currently affecting the language education and language-related publishing and media industries is a lack of awareness of how truly different these processes are (or in fact that there are two different processes at all). This is one of the main reasons why virtually every popular language learning method, book, software programme, etc fails miserably at achieving the desired results they either are designed for or promise the learner; most of them simply attempt to emulate FLA in adult contexts and this simply cannot work and doesn't. Any merger of topics herein that could further this confusion would be of detriment not only to the encyclopedic quality of WP but to anyone who may be setting out to learn, teach, or work in a language other than their own or even research the field of language acquisition in general.

I will say that in one way I certainly understand the desire to realign these topics and that is based strongly on some flaws with the terminology. First language and second language fail ton account for a myriad of situations. First, many people are multilingual native speakers (meaning the first languages they learn are 2,3, or in some cultures up to 12 at a time yet the FLA process is at work for all of them). Obviously these are not all a single first language. Likewise, the additional language someone learns later on may not be their 'second' language but may in fact be their 3rd or 4th or 27th, but the process at work there is SLA. We have had working group meetings on this topic in CALLE in which such proposals as keeping FLA and SLA but renaming them 'First languages acquisition' and 'Secondary language acquisition'. Other proposals have included Primary Language Acquisition or Initial Language Acquisition or simply Native Language Acquisition and then Additional Language Acquisition or even Adult Language Acquisition. Long story short, the popular terminology does not effectively convey what it's all about, but coming up with exact terminology is both difficult and would require some way of getting people to accept it universally and since we have no governing bodied in linguistics, that's not likely to happen in the near future.Drew.ward (talk) 21:55, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply, Drew. I think that you're confusing something important here though - I'm not proposing to merge anything to do with first-language acquisition. The "FLA" that 207.179.213.171/Bachelorj20 was talking about in his post above was "foreign language acquisition", hence the reason he linked to Second language#Foreign language. Our first-language acquisition article is located at language acquisition at the moment, and it is not a part of this proposal. — Mr. Stradivarius ^♫ 03:28, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

There hasn't been as much discussion about the merger as I would ideally like, but it looks like Drew wouldn't mind too much if the content about the second language/foreign language distinction was moved to language education. I shall go ahead and merge both the source articles with all three of the target articles, and I shall try and do it in the way that makes the most sense. If anyone disagrees with any of the merge actions, feel free to revert me. — Mr. Stradivarius ^♫ 17:55, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Roosevelt University PSYC 336 Project

Refrence list

Eviatar, Z (2004). "Morphological and orthographic effects on hemispheric processing of nonwords: A cross-linguist". Reading and Writing. 17: 691–705. doi:10.1007/s11145-004-2659-8. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
Dehaene, S. (1999). "Fitting two languages into one brain". A Journal Of Neurology. doi:10.1093/brain/122.12.2207.
Cervenka, M.C (2011). "Language Mapping in multilingual patiernts: Electrocorticography and cortical stimulation during naming". Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2011.00013. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)
Bialystok, E. (2011). "Reshaping the Mind: The benefits of Bilingualism". Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology. 4. 60: 229–235.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
Videstot, G. (2010). "Speaking in multiple languages: Neural correlates of language proficiency in multilingual word production". Brain And Language. doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2010.006. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
Magnezi, David A. "Brain and Language". Retrieved May 2012. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
Talukder, Gargi. "How the Brain Learns a Second Language". January 2001. Posit Science. Retrieved 3 October 2012.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by MariusCuciulan (talk • contribs) 18:47, 2 October 2012‎ (UTC)

Hello MariusCuciulan! Thanks for posting all your sources here before you start work on the article. I see that some of the sources are primary sources and some of them are secondary sources. Actually, on Wikipedia articles should generally be based on secondary sources, to avoid the possibility of including original research. I highly recommend that you read the policy on primary and secondary sources and the guidelines on sourcing for medical articles. I've given you my analysis of the sources below - feel free to ask me any questions about why I sorted things the way I did.

Primary sources: Cervenka et al. 2011; Eviatar & Ibrahim 2004; Magnezi et al. 2012; Videstot et al. 2010
Secondary sources: Bialystok 2011; Dehaene 1999; Talukder 2001

Best regards — Mr. Stradivarius ^{(have a chat)} 06:57, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Mr. Stradivarius, Thank you for your input. We are working on finding more secondary sources pertaining to our project. Best regards, MariusCuciulan MariusCuciulan (talk) 19:46, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Outline

I. Language acquisition and organizational effects in multilingual population

     1.	The age effect on organization
             a.early in life multilingual organizational effects (same regions in Broca's area are activated)
             b.later in life multilingual organizational effects (different regions in  Broca's area are activated)
     2.	The proficiency effect on organization
             a.Less fluent organizational effect ( different regions in  Broca's area are activated)
             b.Very fluent organizational effect  ( same regions in Broca's area are activated)

II. Language control in multilingual population

     1.	Language overlapping 
             a.Cross talk prevention mechanisms ( the co-existence of multiple languages in one brain implies a sophisticated mechanism to prevent cross-talk)
             b.Executive control task ( not only the classical known language areas in the brain are involved, but a multitude of areas within the brain are implicated in multilingual language control) 
     2.	Translations and language switching
             a.Cortical activations during translation ( the translation problem is addressed not necessarily as a language issue but is undertaken as many other non-automatized tasks are dealt with)
             b.Orthography and phonology

III. Aphasia in the multilingual population

     1.Language 1 aphasia
     2.Language 2 aphasia
     3.Curiosities/ case studies in multilingual aphasia

IV. Benefits of multilingualism

     1.Multilingual and monolingual in general executive control tasks
     2.The effects on Alzheimer onset
     3.Brain plasticity and implications

V. Ongoing research

MariusCuciulan (talk) 19:45, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Per the conversation below, is it possible for your group to focus specifically on multilingualism and refer to the Bilingualism (neurology) page whenever appropriate? For example, for section I (Language acquisition and organizational...), are there research on multilingualism as opposed to bilingualism? What you're proposing in section II doesn't seem to be covered in the Bilingualism (neurology) page, so there's no overlap. There is some overlap with your section III and the Bilingualism (neurology) page. Also, be critical in reading these sources (i.e., case studies) and write about either what is well accepted by the scientific community or make clear what are conjectures. For your section IV, there doesn't seem to be much overlap with Bilingualism (neurology). Good job so far. Keep up the good work! Neuropsychprof (talk) 14:47, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Hi group, per Mr. Stradivarius' summary of the Neurology of multilingualism article (previously Bilingualism (neurology); see conversation in the Bilingualism (neurology) section below), we have to think about how to adjust your edits accordingly. You can add to the new "Neurology" section on this page, and clean up the "Neurology" section by inserting citation at appropriate sources, or you can edit the Neurology of multilingualism page directly. I kind of prefer the former option, but want to get this group's input. If you follow the first option, I'm looking for you to add approximately 2 paragraphs to the "Neurology" section that addresses topic II & IV of the outline above. I'm also expecting you to edit citations that are secondary sources throughout the "Neurology" section. This latter job will make up for the paragraphs that you will not write. Let me know your group's decision. Neuropsychprof (talk) 20:40, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Bilingualism (neurology)

I just remembered that we have an article titled Bilingualism (neurology), which is the same subject that MariusCuclian and Aalwaraqi are researching to add to this article. Perhaps we could consider a merge of the two, in addition to MariusCuclian's and Aalwaraqi's improvements? Or maybe we could make the section in this article a summary of the information in that article, if there's not enough space to have everything in one article? However we decide to do things, both articles need a lot of work... — Mr. Stradivarius ^{(have a chat)} 21:41, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Mr. Stradivarius, for bringing Bilingualism (neurology) to our attention. I agree that there is some overlap between the bilingualism page and what this group is proposing to add to the multilingualism page. As other editors have indicated above, there is sufficient difference between multilingualism and bilingualism to warrant two separate articles. However, I also agree with you that we don't want too much overlap between the two. Perhaps this group can make links to the Bilingualism (neurology) page whenever appropriate, and focus on neuropsychology of multilingualism and areas that are not covered well in bilingualism? I don't know if there's enough out there on multilingualism (vs. bilingualism), but am looking forward to what this group comes up with. Neuropsychprof (talk) 14:47, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Hi Neuropsychprof, and thanks for the post! I think the basic problem is that no-one has yet tried to figure out what the overarching structure between the different articles in this subject area should be. We have Multilingualism, Language acquisition, Second-language acquisition, Second language, Foreign language, and Bilingualism (neurology), and they don't really relate to each other in any coherent way. The title "Bilingualism (neurology)" is good evidence of this, because actually we should only clarify titles with brackets when two completely different subjects share the same name - for instance, Joker (playing card) and Joker (comics). Bilingualism (neurology) might be better titled as "Bilingualism in neuropsychology" or "Neuropsychological perspectives on bilingualism", etc.

On reflection, I think the best way of doing things would be to rename Bilingualism (neurology), change its scope to include multilingualism, and make the section in the Multilingualism article a summary of it. We could have a similar summary section in Second-language acquisition, and shorter mentions in the other articles. If we have too much information to go in the renamed Bilingualism (neurology) article, we can split the content out to a new sub-article, maybe something like Multilingualism in neuropsychology, and then have that article summarized in Bilingualism (neurology). This is the standard way of dealing with this sort of situation on Wikipedia - check out the guidance at Wikipedia:Summary style for the general picture. I wouldn't let all this talk of structure put you off writing too much though - if you write the content then the WikiGnomes will probably do the structuring and sorting for you. :) I realise that this whole structure thing might be a pain from the perspective of grading students' work, but please let me know if you think it would be a good idea. Best — Mr. Stradivarius ^{(have a chat)} 16:06, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Hi Mr. Stradivarius, one concern I have is that it's very hard to find the Bilingualism (neurology) page. For example, if I type in "bilingualism" in Wikipedia's search box, I'm automatically directed to this page on multilingualism. Because I want Wiki editors to see the students' edits and comment on them, I prefer that students continue to edit the Multilingualism page. Also, because we're newbies and structuring multiple articles are beyond our abilities, I prefer your recommendation to have students add to this page, then to have the WikiGnomes do the sorting and structuring afterwards. Is this acceptable?Neuropsychprof (talk) 19:26, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Sorry to get back to so late, and sorry if my latest edit to the article has thrown a spanner in the works! As you may have noticed, I summarised the Bilingualism (neurology) article (now renamed to Neurology of multilingualism) and added it as a new section here. This is the "summary style" that I was talking about in my earlier post. This way the article is improved, and it will be easier for people to find the Neurology of multilingualism article (and no-one had to do any new research). I realise that this might make your original plan unfeasible, but there are plenty of options still to choose from. You could add a new section to Neurology of multilingualism, or you could re-write some of the remaining material in the Multilingualism article. Probably the work that most needs doing is the sourcing of the Multilingualism article - at the moment reliable sources in that article are few and far between. Let me know what your thoughts are, and if you want any more advice about what to work on. Best — Mr. Stradivarius on tour ^{(have a chat)} 01:26, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Comments from Smallman12q

I looked at Multilingualism#Neurology. You should also be aware that there is an article at Neurology of multilingualism.

There are a few grammatical issues such as: "For bilinguals having constantly keep within "...
Add wikilinks.
Be concise. Some of the sentences could be combined.
Expand on the topic. Does multilingualism change a child's brain the same way it would an adult's brain?

Smallman12q (talk) 23:25, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Comments from Hpilla15

The first two paragraphs-- the intro paragraph and the section on the brain areas involved is clear, detailed and easy to follow
The third section, on structural plasticity is a bit short, however, and perhaps could have some more detail.
The explanation on the dynamic view was a little unclear for me in comparison to the localizationalist view so perhaps some additional clarification or rephrasing
The last section on "cross talk" has a lot of information but very interesting!

Hpilla15 (talk) 04:39, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

===Comments from Bpetersenroosevelt===

I would recommend creating some smaller sub-headings in your section
Your organization of information didn't seem to have a very clear pattern to it
Bilinguals were constantly referenced, you might want to consider creating a section of your contribution for that particular subject
As Hpilla noted, your section on cross-talk was quite interesting but was very dense. Also, there was a lack of links to other wikipedia articles which would help this section significantly

Bpetersenroosevelt (talk) 05:54, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Comments from dizeob3

The information for this article is abundant. Wikipedia is typically seen as a quick, easy source to go to. The ongoing information shows that you are interested in your topic. It would be best to arrange your sections with sub-headings. Because there is a lot of information, organization is key. Be sure to add more links to other websites that can help the reader follow along. There are certain topics that not everybody will understand. It will be best to use examples for clarification. Overall, very well written just a couple of necessary changes. I look forward to reading this article throughout the rest of the semester. Best of luck! Dizeob3 (talk) 14:01, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

comments from psychmjr12

The article had some great and really interesting information. I learned a lot about multilingualism and multilingual individuals that I never would have thought about. I think the organization threw me off a little bit though. I think that because there are so many headings and so much information even just in the sections that you created, that breaking down each section would help readers a lot. I think the article used great information and was very knowledgeable. Psychmjr12 (talk) 17:57, 30 October 2012 (UTC)psychmjr12

Comments from rorystewart

This is a good start, but I would work on the structure as well as content. The information you have presented is slim, I would reccomed putting subheadings in and expanding on some of your ideas such as placticity of the brain and research to start.
I suggest removing the red links becuase those links do not exsist and are distracting tothe reader.
Was every peice of lesser known information cited? I would review this to be sure you do not get in trouble when graded. It is always good to be on the safe side.
I enjoy the links that are available to learn more information about things that may not be common terms for outside readers. This is a plus with your article.

--Rorystewart (talk) 18:23, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Comments from aalwaraqi

Thanks for the feedback everyone, it is much appreciated and will be tackled as soon as possible.

Aalwaraqi (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 18:40, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Instructor feedback on content & organization

Group, you have great feedback from peers. Please implement their recommendations regarding organization and use of subheadings. I will focus on content below:

2nd paragraph of Neurology section: The first mention of age in this paragraph refers to age of acquisition, I believe. Please clarify. Otherwise, readers will likely think you're refering to the age of the individual.
3rd paragraph of Neurology section: This paragraph did a good job of communicating what is not well proven yet (e.g., "there is some debate over whether this is due to genetic predisposition..."). Many other paragraphs presented research findings and implied that they are well documented "truths" when in fact there is a lack of secondary source on these topics. You need to tone them down, point out what is hypothesized, and what still needs replication and validation.
4th paragraph of Neurology: Need to reference the sentence where localizationist view and dynamic views are introduced. The dynamic view needs clarification. This section may not have been written by this group. See if you can get a hold of the book referenced and clarify this section.
5th paragraph of Neurology: Content in this paragraph are all from empirical studies, not secondary sources. In these circumstances, your writing needs to communicate that these are uncertain interpretations.
6th paragraph of Neurology: While fascinating, this paragraph details too much of specific studies and they need to be edited out. Abstract out the core knowledge and summarize them. Make clear that these are interpretations from a limited number of studies. One clue that the info in this paragraph is biased by a small number of studies is "the general executive control system is known to be involved in conflict resolution tasks that are mostly nonverbal." Executive control systems are both verbal and nonverbal. Look more carefully in your references to learn where this bias comes from.
7th paragraph of Neurology: The language in this paragraph needs to be edited to a neutral point of view. There is a judgment and bias that multilingualism "helps in the development of cognitive reserve" and is "healthier". The former is a hypothesis without solid empirical support yet (if you can find solid empirical support, please reference it); the latter is a judgmental opinion that has no place in an encyclopedia.

This group has done a nice job handling changes to your section. There is more to do. Keep up your good work! Neuropsychprof (talk) 02:38, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

We appreciate very much the feedback you all left on the article. We re-wrote the entire section, we added more sources, and we addressed all the feedback to the best of our abilities. Feedback is never enough so feel free to let us know if there are any areas that still need attention. MariusCuciulan (talk) 19:58, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Multilingualism and Personality

QUESTION: How does multilingualism affect personality?

May lead to personality disorders: continuous traumatic stress disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, excessive anxiety, panic disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder

Some studies have reported that when compared with non-migrant children, migrant children suffer from lower self-esteem with higher depression and anxiety

Language—personality

Different personality when in different settings (multiple personality disorder)
Linguistic relativity
Languages and cultural influence
‘‘I feel as if half of myself is missing’’

Independent variables

Environment factors
Ethic origin
Social background
Psychological profile

Different reactions to social hierarchy

(ex: Italian- respond to elders/ people of authority differently than Americans)

Openness, strength, and personality

Relation between number of languages mastered and multicultural personality dimensions confirmed: multilinguals scored significantly higher on the dimensions of cultural empathy and open-mindedness

Cognitive advantages

TCK= third culture kids
Positive= a global perspective, being socially adaptable, intellectually flexible, able to think outside the box and reconcile different points of view
Negative= somewhat “rootless and aloof”
Example: President Obama
Cognitive advantages of bilinguals compared to monolinguals→ non-verbal control tasks
The bilinguals’ superior performance has been linked to extensive practice with two active languages which constantly require the activation of one language and the inhibition of the other language, and the switching between the languages (Bialystok et al., 2005).
Postive= Bilingualism has also been linked to an advantage in divergent thinking (Khar- khurin, 2008).

Social advantages and disadvantages

Most participants perceived their marginality to be constructive.
Most multilinguals scored significantly lower on the dimension of emotional stability compared to classroom learners of a second language.

Multilingualism in Europe

But there is no predominant language in Europe (Countries with English as an official language: United Kingdom, Ireland, Malta, second comes French with France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and then German with Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Belgium).

1. German is one of the three official languages of Luxembourg (see Loi du 24 février 1984 sur l'usage des langues au Luxembourg). It is also the sole official language of Liechtenstein, which should be included since the title reads "Multilingualism in Europe", not only the European Union.

2. The use of the words "second comes French" and "and then German" implies that English is spoken as a native tongue and/or an official language in more European countries than is French, which would in turn be spoken by more people and/or in more countries than is German. However, German is an official language in 6, French in 4, and English in 3 European countries. With respect to native speakers, the order would be: German (16% of EU citizens), English (13%), French (12%) (see http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_386_en.pdf) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.181.3.23 (talk) 23:13, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

What is an appropriate way to incorporate multilingualism within computing within the summary? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gingermarmalade723 (talk • contribs) 19:30, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Redundant? People who know more than one language have been reported to be more adept at language learning compared to monolinguals.[

By definition, isn't this true? 2602:304:B26B:1C30:99CF:5158:C938:2035 (talk) 02:08, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

This is an archive of past discussions about Multilingualism. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Psychology of Language and Multilingualism

More should be noted here about the psychology/neuroscience section of this article. It brings up some important points, but should go slightly more in depth about how multi-linguists develop conceptual representations in both languages. They also should discuss how different conceptual representations can be in each language, and whether someone who is a multi-linguist can run into difficulties when "thinking" in another language. An emphasis on how thought relates to language would also be great to add to this section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mzk5557 (talk • contribs) 05:37, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

That sounds like a good idea, Megan - could you start a list of relevant sources on your group sandbox? yEvb0 (talk) 15:01, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

Frisian languages

The article is Frisian languages, which is plural. Furthermore, the articles on the Frisian languages all end on language. Hence the article should not talk about Frisian.Sarcelles (talk) 18:06, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

Notability of Multilingual App Toolkit

The section on computing includes a paragraph on Microsoft's MAT software. As interesting as that software is, it does not appear to me to be exceptionally noteworthy to dedicate a paragraph (with a tone on the edge of WP:PROMOTION) to compared to other i18n development aids. Mshenrick (talk) 17:58, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

Merge polyglotism

I'm proposing merging Polyglotism here. Note: We could merge the other direction, though, in common usage, multilingualism is both more common and is sometimes used to refer to contexts where polyglotism is not.

To summarize my thinking:

Though one can argue that these terms are sometimes used slightly differently, there is really not a consistent distinction between these in common usage. Considering WP:NAD we should not have two different articles purely because there are two words.
If one wants to argue that there are distinct concepts that merit two articles then these two distinct concepts must be elucidated and the articles should stick to those distinct concepts. As they stand now, the articles are discussing the same exact thing.
Even if you wanted to argue that there are different concepts to be discussed, is there enough content for each to merit two articles or is it better to just discuss those different but related things in one article? I would say one article could cover it.

-- MC 141.131.2.3 (talk) 17:23, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Merge Articles with better-known synonyms that comprise a substantially similar article with basically the same material should be merged, and this is no exception... Veryproicelandic (talk) 21:05, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
Support: These are almost exactly the same concept. Wikipedia:merging#Overlap applies. Glades12 (talk) 12:00, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Split into Social multilingualism / Personal multilingualism

I think that this page should be split into 2:

Social multilingualism
Personal or individual multilingualism

I know some experts have said that mixing up both concepts is misleading and dangerous. One example: I've often heard that multilingualism is good. Of course most people think that personal multilingualism is good, however I doubt that anybody thinks that social multilingualism is good: it's mostly a problem, or at least a potential source of problems, with which we must learn to live, as with viruses, earthquakes or hurricanes.

The best way to prove this is that both questions are studied by different, not particularly related disciplines:

social multilingualism is connected to sociolinguistics, anthropology, politics.
personal multilingualism is connected to psycholinguistics, psychology, pedagogy, neuroscience.

If you still don't believe that the split is necessary, I challenge you to find one statement in this page as it stands now that can be assigned to either of the split pages.

What do you think about it? --Jotamar (talk) 21:31, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

It's very disappointing not getting even the most casual comment. I don't know whether opening a RfC is worth it or not. --Jotamar (talk) 22:47, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Myths?

The myths part seems weak without more references. The last claim means that logically a tertiary language can be acquired with no time commitment. I think they're trying to use "simultaneous bilinguals are not demonstrably retarded in language use" to suggest that adding languages for non-bilinguals won't retard language ability nor rate of acquisition. This appears to be untrue in the general case. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.111.56.69 (talk) 11:58, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

The myths section also suggests that the idea that "children would be confused with having the ability to speak two languages and experience "tip-of-the-tongue" moments, in which one knows the meaning and the specific details of a word, but cannot retrieve it" is a myth. However the Wikipedia page on lethologica clearly states that such occurrences are more common among bilingual individuals. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.176.183.71 (talk) 00:40, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Myths

The Myths section states that "These are all harmful convictions that have long been debunked,", yet dosen't state how they have been debunked (which I think should be included), it also isn't written in a way that is NPOV and appears to be quite biased. Omniscientmoose42 (talk) 00:36, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Do you think the section should be temporarily removed until someone has time to revise it? Nonoesimposible (talk) 04:28, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

A hatnote should be enough. --Jotamar (talk) 20:48, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Dead Links

The first and third references are to pdfs that don't pull anything. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mister Persona (talk • contribs) 14:51, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Y.ferrer16, Mjk193, Mzk5557. Peer reviewers: Y.ferrer16, Ram5156psuedu.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 04:36, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Useful?

Could be redundant but also seems to have good info. https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/interactive/2022/multilingual-hyperpolyglot-brain-languages/ (derived story: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/steve-hartman-vaughn-smith-carpet-cleaner-languages/ ) Mapsax (talk) 00:16, 22 April 2022 (UTC)