0_Wizard
I find it cool that more people in the world are multilingual than monolingual.
It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population.
chosen_Multilingualism_0
Multilingualism
chosen_topic_0_Multilingualism
Monolingualism
Monoglottism (Greek μόνοσ "monos", "alone, solitary", + γλώττα "glotta", "tongue, language") or, more commonly, monolingualism or unilingualism, is the condition of being able to speak only a single language, as opposed to multilingualism. In a different context, "unilingualism" may refer to a language policy which enforces an official or national language over others. Being monolingual or unilingual is also said of a text, dictionary, or conversation written or conducted in only one language, and of an entity in which a single language is either used or officially recognized (in particular when being compared with bilingual or multilingual entities or in the presence of individuals speaking different languages).
Neuroscience of multilingualism
Various aspects of multilingualism have been studied in the field of neurology. These include the representation of different language systems in the brain, the effects of multilingualism on the brain's structural plasticity, aphasia in multilingual individuals, and bimodal bilinguals (people who can speak one sign language and one oral language). Neurological studies of multilingualism are carried out with functional neuroimaging, electrophysiology, and through observation of people who have suffered brain damage. The brain contains areas that are specialized to deal with language, located in the perisylvian cortex of the left hemisphere.
Multilingualism
Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a community of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all Europeans claim to speak at least one language other than their mother tongue. Multilingualism is becoming a social phenomenon governed by the needs of globalization and cultural openness. Owing to the ease of access to information facilitated by the Internet, individuals' exposure to multiple languages is becoming increasingly frequent, thereby promoting a need to acquire additional languages.
Francization of Brussels
The Francization (or Francisation) of Brussels (, ) refers to the transformation of Brussels, Belgium, from a majority Dutch-speaking city to one that is bilingual or even multilingual, with French as both the majority language and lingua franca. Initially, the dominant aspect of this transition was the shift from Dutch to French among local Flemings in Brussels. This shift occurred over one or more generations, mirroring the advance of French elsewhere as a prestige language; subsequently, the dominance of French in Brussels has been further consolidated through internal migration of Francophone Walloons into the national capital, as well as by the immigration of non-Belgians, who either already spoke French or adopted it on arrival.
Cognitive advantages of bilingualism
A bilingual person can traditionally be defined as an individual who uses (understands and produces) two (or more) languages on a regular basis. A bilingual person's initial exposure to both languages may have started in early childhood, e.g. before age 3, but exposure may also begin later in life. While some people assume that bilinguals must be equally proficient in their languages, perfectly equal proficiency is rarely attested, and proficiency typically varies by domain. For example, a bilingual person may have greater proficiency for work-related terms in one language, and family-related terms in another language.
Intercultural bilingual education
Intercultural Bilingual Education "(Educación bilingüe intercultural)" is a language-planning model employed throughout Latin America in public education, and it arose as a political movement asserting space for indigenous languages and culture in the education system. IBE is designed to address the educational needs of indigenous communities, and consists of various bilingual curriculum designs. Since the late 20th century, IBE has become an important, more or less successful instrument of governmental language planning in several Latin American countries. These include bilingual education in Mayan languages in Guatemala, and , and Mayan in Mexico.
Simultaneous bilingualism
Simultaneous bilingualism is a form of bilingualism that takes place when a child becomes bilingual by learning two languages from birth. According to Annick De Houwer, in an article in "The Handbook of Child Language", simultaneous bilingualism takes place in "children who are regularly addressed in two spoken languages from before the age of two and who continue to be regularly addressed in those languages up until the final stages" of language development. Both languages are acquired as first languages. This is in contrast to sequential bilingualism, in which the second language is learned not as a native language but a foreign language.
1_Apprentice
I certainly wish I was able to speak more than one language.  What is the most popular language in the world, currently?
0_Wizard
I dont know about the entire world, but in the United States the most widely learned second language is Spanish.
Firstly, the languages being learned differ; in the United States, Spanish is the most popular language to be learned, whereas the most popular languages to be learned in Australia are Italian and Mandarin Chinese.
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Language education by region
partner_2_Language_education_by_region
English language
English is a West Germanic language that was first spoken in early medieval England and is now the third most widespread native language in the world, after Standard Chinese and Spanish, as well as the most widely spoken Germanic language. What is arguably the most striking characteristic of present-day English is that it is spoken by many more non-native speakers than native speakers, which is called "lingua franca" uses. This use of English as a Lingua Franca, which is a coincidental and unintentional result of English-speaking colonial spread, sets English apart from any other Western European language.
Second-language acquisition
Second-language acquisition (SLA), second-language learning, or L2 (language 2) acquisition, is the process by which people learn a second language. Second-language acquisition is also the scientific discipline devoted to studying that process. The field of second-language acquisition is a subdiscipline of applied linguistics, but also receives research attention from a variety of other disciplines, such as psychology and education. A central theme in SLA research is that of "interlanguage", the idea that the language that learners use is not simply the result of differences between the languages that they already know and the language that they are learning, but that it is a complete language system in its own right, with its own systematic rules.
American Sign Language
American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States and most of Anglophone Canada. Besides North America, dialects of ASL and ASL-based creoles are used in many countries around the world, including much of West Africa and parts of Southeast Asia. ASL is also widely learned as a second language, serving as a lingua franca. ASL is most closely related to French Sign Language (LSF). It has been proposed that ASL is a creole language of LSF, although ASL shows features atypical of creole languages, such as agglutinative morphology.
Multilingualism
Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a community of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all Europeans claim to speak at least one language other than their mother tongue. Multilingualism is becoming a social phenomenon governed by the needs of globalization and cultural openness. Owing to the ease of access to information facilitated by the Internet, individuals' exposure to multiple languages is becoming increasingly frequent, thereby promoting a need to acquire additional languages.
Foreign language
A foreign language is a language originally from another country. It is also a language not spoken in the native country of the person referred to, i.e., an English speaker living in Spain can say that Spanish is a foreign language to him or her. These two characterisations do not exhaust the possible definitions, however, and the label is occasionally applied in ways that are variously misleading or factually inaccurate. Some children learn more than one language from birth or from a very young age: they are bilingual or multilingual. These children can be said to have two, three or more mother tongues: neither language is foreign to that child, even if one language is a foreign language for the vast majority of people in the child's birth country.
Bilingual education
Bilingual education involves teaching academic content in two languages, in a native and secondary language with varying amounts of each language used in accordance with the program model. The following are several different types of bilingual education program models:  Dual Immersion classrooms encourage students but with the permission it may be enthusiastic &' native language development, making an important contribution to heritage language maintenance and allows language minority students to remain in classrooms with their native English-speaking peers, resulting in linguistic and sociocultural advantages (Christian, 1996b).
Spanish language
The Spanish language (; ), also called the Castilian language (, ), is a West Romance language that originated in the Castile region of Spain and today has hundreds of millions of native speakers around the world. It is usually considered the world's second-most spoken native language, after Mandarin Chinese. Spanish is a part of the Ibero-Romance group of languages, which evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in Iberia after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. The oldest Latin texts with traces of Spanish come from mid-northern Iberia in the 9th century, and the first systematic written use of the language happened in Toledo, then capital of the Kingdom of Castile, in the 13th century.
1_Apprentice
Do you happen to know how many Americans can speak spanish as well as English?
0_Wizard
Well about 45 million people in the US speak Spanish, and about half of those say they speak English well, so around 20 million.
About half of all American Spanish speakers also assessed themselves as speaking English "very well" in the 2000 U.S. Census.
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Spanish language in the United States
partner_1_Spanish_language_in_the_United_States
Languages of the United States
Many languages are used, or historically have been used, in the United States. Over 500 languages are spoken by the U.S. population. The most commonly used language is English (specifically, American English), which is the de facto national language of the United States. Since the 1965 Immigration Act, Spanish is the second most common language in the country. The state government of Louisiana offers services and documents in French, as does New Mexico in Spanish. There are many languages indigenous to North America or to U.S. states or holdings in the Pacific region. Hawaiian, although having few native speakers, is an official language along with English of the state of Hawaii.
Hispanic and Latino Americans
Hispanic Americans and Latino Americans (; ) are people in the United States who are descendants of countries of Latin America and Spain. It is the largest population of Latino Americans and Hispanics outside of Latin America. More generally, it includes all persons in the United States who self-identify as Hispanic or Latino, whether of full or partial ancestry. For the 2010 United States Census, people counted as "Hispanic" or "Latino" were those who identified as one of the specific Hispanic or Latino categories listed on the census questionnaire ("Mexican," "Puerto Rican," or "Cuban") as well as those who indicated that they were "other Spanish, Hispanic, or Latino."
UEFA Financial Fair Play Regulations
The UEFA Financial Fair Play Regulations (FFP) were established to prevent professional football clubs spending more than they earn in the pursuit of success and in doing so getting into financial problems which might threaten their long-term survival. They were agreed to in principle in September 2009 by the Financial Control Panel of football’s governing body in Europe (Union of European Football Associations – UEFA). The regulations provide for sanctions to be taken against clubs who exceed spending, over several seasons, within a set budgetary framework. Implementation of the regulations took place at the outset of the 2011–12 football season.
History of France
The first written records for the history of France appear in the Iron Age. What is now France made up the bulk of the region known to the Romans as Gaul. Roman writers noted the presence of three main ethno-linguistic groups in the area: the Gauls, the Aquitani, and the Belgae. The Gauls, the largest and best attested group, were Celtic people speaking what is known as the Gaulish language. Over the course of the 1st millennium BC the Greeks, Romans and Carthaginians established colonies on the Mediterranean coast and the offshore islands. The Roman Republic annexed southern Gaul as the province of Gallia Narbonensis in the late 2nd century BC, and Roman forces under Julius Caesar conquered the rest of Gaul in the Gallic Wars of 58–51 BC.
Spanish language in the United States
Spanish is the second most spoken language in the United States of America. Forty-five million Hispanophones speak Spanish as their first, second or heritage language, and there are six million Spanish language students in the United States. This makes the United States the third-largest Hispanophone country in the world after Mexico and Colombia, and before Spain. Spanish has both the largest number of native language Romance speakers and native Indo-European language speakers in the world. About half of all American Spanish speakers also assessed themselves as speaking English "very well" in the 2000 U.S. Census.
Hispanophone
Hispanophone and Hispanosphere are terms used to refer to Spanish-language speakers and the Spanish-speaking world, respectively. The terms derive from the Latin political name of the Iberian Peninsula, Hispania. In addition to the general definition of Hispanophone, some groups in the Hispanic world make a distinction between Castilian-speaking and Spanish-speaking, with the former term denoting the speakers of the Spanish language—also known as Castilian—and the latter the speakers of the Spanish or Hispanic languages (i.e. the languages of Spain or the languages of the Hispanic nations). The present map has colored the Hispanosphere, composed of the currently Hispanophone (Spanish-speaking) geographic areas.
Spanish language
The Spanish language (; ), also called the Castilian language (, ), is a West Romance language that originated in the Castile region of Spain and today has hundreds of millions of native speakers around the world. It is usually considered the world's second-most spoken native language, after Mandarin Chinese. Spanish is a part of the Ibero-Romance group of languages, which evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in Iberia after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. The oldest Latin texts with traces of Spanish come from mid-northern Iberia in the 9th century, and the first systematic written use of the language happened in Toledo, then capital of the Kingdom of Castile, in the 13th century.
1_Apprentice
I guess I should start studying!
0_Wizard
Haha true. Also interesting is that around 6 million people in the US are active students of Spanish
Forty-five million Hispanophones speak Spanish as their first, second or heritage language, and there are six million Spanish language students in the United States.
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Spanish language in the United States
self_4_Spanish_language_in_the_United_States
Haha (entertainer)
Ha Dong-hoon (; born on August 20, 1979), better known by his stage name Haha (), is a South Korean singer, variety show host and member of Skull & Haha. He is best known for being in the sitcom, "Nonstop" and for co-hosting two popular variety programs, MBC's "Infinite Challenge" and SBS's "Running Man". He has also hosted his own show, titled "Ya Man TV" on Mnet in 2015. Haha was born on August 20, 1979 in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, West Germany and moved to Seoul, South Korea when he was an infant. His parents are both Korean, with his mother holding a doctorate in psychology, and he has an older sister, Ha Juri () who is a pianist, also with a doctorate.
Facebook
Facebook is an American online social media and social networking service company based in Menlo Park, California. The Facebook website was launched on February 4, 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg, along with fellow Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. The founders had initially limited the website's membership to Harvard students; however, later they expanded it to higher education institutions in the Boston area, the Ivy League schools, and Stanford University. Facebook gradually added support for students at various other universities, and eventually to high school students as well.
France
France (), officially the French Republic (, ), is a country whose territory consists of metropolitan France in western Europe, as well as several overseas regions and territories. The metropolitan area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean. The overseas territories include French Guiana in South America and several islands in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. The country's 18 integral regions (five of which are situated overseas) span a combined area of which, as of October 2017, has a population of 67.15 million people.
List of major power outages
This is a list of notable wide-scale power outages. To be included, the power outage must conform to "all" of the following criteria: In other words:  On the evening of November 9, the Northeast blackout of 1965 affected portions of seven northeastern states in the United States and the province of Ontario in Canada. On August 5, a 50-mile stretch of Florida's gold coast was hit with a general power failure after an explosion at the Cutler Ridge facility. The outage affected more than 2 million people, and created a vast traffic jam. Miami and Ft. Lauderdale downtown areas were offline for almost two hours, with other areas dark for much longer periods.
Demographics of France
The demography of France is monitored by the Institut national d'études démographiques (INED) and the Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques (INSEE). As of 1 October 2017, 67.15 million people lived in the French Republic (67,158,000), including all the five overseas departments (2,141,000), but excluding the overseas collectivities and territories (604,000). 65,017,000 of these lived in Metropolitan France, the part of France located in Europe. In March 2017 the population of France officially reached the 67 million mark. The 66 million mark was reached in the beginning of 2014.
Food security
Food security is a condition related to the supply of food, and individuals' access to it. There is evidence of granaries being in use over 10,000 years ago, with central authorities in civilizations including ancient China and ancient Egypt being known to release food from storage in times of famine. At the 1974 World Food Conference the term "food security" was defined with an emphasis on supply. Food security, they said, is the "availability at all times of adequate world food supplies of basic foodstuffs to sustain a steady expansion of food consumption and to offset fluctuations in production and prices".
Blockade of Germany (1939–1945)
The Blockade of Germany (1939–1945), also known as the Economic War, was carried out during World War II by the United Kingdom and France in order to restrict the supplies of minerals, metals, food and textiles needed by Nazi Germany - and later Fascist Italy - in order to sustain their war efforts. The economic war consisted mainly of a naval blockade which formed part of the wider Battle of the Atlantic, and included the preclusive buying of war materials from neutral countries to prevent their sale to the enemy. There were four distinct phases of the blockade. The first period was from the beginning of European hostilities in September 1939 to the end of the "Phoney War," during which the Allies and Axis Powers both intercepted neutral merchant ships to seize deliveries en route to the enemy.