Bilingualism

Bilingualism refers to the ability to speak two languages as mother tongues. According to the Center for Applied Lingusitics, available data indicate that there are "many more bilingual or multilingual individuals in the world than there are monolingual."

Likewise, while the world's major languages, including Arabic, Bengali, English, French, Hindi, Malay, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish "serve as important link languages, these are very often spoken as second, third, fourth, or later-acquired languages."