New research story: Berlin Lives by Patrick Stevenson

Berlin Lives: Multilingual Metropolis

DSC00043 Patrick Stevenson

We know a great deal about multilingualism – but not as much as we might think. It’s certainly true, for example, that great efforts have been devoted to identifying and counting the world’s languages: global language research organisations tell us that over 700 languages are spoken by indigenous peoples in Indonesia alone. And further research claims to reveal the number of speakers there appear to be for each language and its relative degree of ‘vitality’: how widely is it used in a given location and for what purposes, is its number of speakers growing or declining, is it used as a medium of instruction in schools?

But interesting though these research findings are, they leave many questions unanswered. Read more…

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