The quiet battle to save multilingualism in Europe

By Marco Tamburelli. It is now well known that growing up with two or more languages brings a wealth of cognitive advantages. Multilingualism is not only a laudable achievement in a tolerant society, it is also of great social benefit to individuals. It has been repeatedly demonstrated that bilinguals are better at focusing their attention, they are less easily distracted, they have increased mental flexibility, and show slower rates of mental decline in old age.
It is therefore surprising to see that some European governments and their mainstream media – for example in France and Italy – are hostile to the idea of encouraging multilingualism, and sometimes even to the idea that Europeans should be allowed to be publicly bilingual. More...