Intercultural communication is becoming quite common nowadays. International businesses, international poilitical organizations, international non-governmental organizations, travelling all over the world, studying abroad… The world keeps getting smaller and smaller, so people have to communicate with each other in many languages — at work, on vacation, and while learning. This essay will discuss the main reasons why more and more people are becoming multilingual: they need it to be able to act both globally and locally, and they also want it.
Today, considerable number of people need to speak at least two languages. The most common combination is English at work and a mothertongue everywhere else, but there are many other combinations, too. Let’s take, for example, a Ukrainian engineer who lives in Russia, works at a German company, and is getting a distance education for MBA degree. He speaks Ukrainian to his parents, German at work, English at study, and Russian everywhere else. Another example would be a US businessperson who has dealings with Mexican companies; here’s a pair English/Spanish. Yet another illustration is that Muslims from over the world are encouraged to study Arabic. And all these motives are getting stronger: number of international branches is increasing, volume of distance/abroad education is growing, migration figures (including, unfortunately, refugees) are rising. The combination “a native language, a state language, a language for business” is becoming more and more common. (The latter two are not necessarily the same even in Russia; for example, Russian domestic market of Islamic goods is predominantly Tatar-speaking.)
People also want to speak more languages. To be able to travel, for instance. For most countries English will do it, but, say, in Latin America, Spanish would be much more useful. There is also a trend to watch motion pictures in the original.
Thus, in many circumstances, people need to speak many languages. In other circumstances, they want it. There is every reason to believe that the number of such situations will be only growing, so multilingualism will be becoming more and more common.
