Paul Beaufait's List: Multi-lingualism

• Since 1980, the United States Census Bureau has asked: “Does this person speak a language other than English at home? What is this language? How well does this person speak English?” The bureau reports that as of 2009, about 20 percent of Americans speak a language other than English at home. This figure is often taken to indicate the number of bilingual speakers in the United States.
• Nonetheless, to better map American language abilities, the census should ask the same question that the European Commission asked in its survey in 2006: Can you have a conversation in a language besides your mother tongue?
• Until the census question is refined, claims about American monolingualism will almost certainly be overstated.

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• Recruitment experts said that companies are filtering out applicants with below-average English skills. This is especially true in the UAE, which is increasingly becoming one of the most popular destinations for multinational firms and business startups.

     

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• Colin Burcher, head of programmatic marketing, EMEA, at Google, said that one of the preferred requirements they look for when hiring employees is the ability to speak and write in English.

       

   

    “Being part of a global team, it is crucial that we share knowledge and collaborate across regions. It is therefore important that all team members are able to communicate in a single language,” Burcher said in an emailed statement to Gulf News.

• Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a comprehensive reference work cataloging all of the world’s known living languages

  • About the ..., ¶1

• Language descriptions in the Ethnologue

   
   
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    are organized by world area, UN region, and country

     
   
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    indicate region of use within countries

     
   
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    list alternate language and dialect names

     
   
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    specify the three-letter code from ISO 639-3

     
   
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    estimate speaker populations

     
   
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    give genetic classification of the language

     
   
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    describe language use and viability

     
   
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    identify writing scripts used

     
   
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    cite availability of literature and other products of language development

  • About the ..., ¶3