#multilinguality

[jjbizconsult]

Bridging the Digital Divide: Why Multilingualism Matters in the Online World

The Most Spoken Languages in the World: Bridging the Digital Divide - Business Buzz

Explore the most spoken languages in the world. Discover the digital divide and how to bridge the gap for a more inclusive internet.

[aimeesuzara]

FilAmHistory Month Notes Day 3: to my son whose first tongue is our first colonizers' (excerpt)

Cuando tu dices “mama! mami!” it is with a Spanish accent

which, despite me blundering my tenses and frequently

consulting with Google Translate for vocabulary I do not know,

you have become your own speaker....

We had decided, even before you were born,

that you’d be bilingual, hopefully trilingual

as my parents would infuse you with Tagalog speech,

in a way that I could not.

Spanish is our shared colonizers’ tongue,

and for us, before English.

And so you link your Cuban father and I

in your preferencia por el Español.

You’ve got the forked tongue that Anzaldua

wrote about; the idioma mixto that is,

para ti, normal. Es tan común.

And because of you, I must advance,

fast enough to stay ahead of you.

You’ve already corrected me,

when I said bote instead of bota

(just the difference of one syllable!)

and one day, you’ll teach me

something new; no, you’ve already

taught me plenty.

You seem to beckon

ancestors around you

because your name

originates before any

of these conquistadores

ever forced on us theirs.

I imagine them sitting round you,

admiring your ability

to speak to each one of them,

with ease.

[the-h-artofnewtown-blog]

This is a picture of 2 signs outside a building in Newtown which both read "NO PARKING INFRONT OF THESE GATES" however the one sign is in English and the other sign is in Afrikaans. There is no predominant language here as both signs are equally placed on either side of the garage showing no dominance of one language over the other. Both of these signs are top-down signs as they are both manufactured by a printing company and are both formal, informational signs indicating a specific message to readers of the sign of what not to do. Both of these signs are in big bold black capital letters to put an emphasis on the message to show how serious it is that no person must park in front of these gates. 

[the-h-artofnewtown-blog]

This is a street wall mural HIV/AIDS campaign nestled at an intersection  in Newtown. We found that this mural is painted in four different languages including visuals, namely IsiZulu, English, SeSotho and Venda in that order. This is a reflection of the demographics of the area which is predominantly Black/African. 3 of of 4 languages are vernacular for most black people in South Africa and 1 is English out of the 3 that is widely spoken in South Africa. Assuming that these 4 languages are the 4 most predominantly spoken languages of the  linguistic community of Newtown but it can speculated that it is presented this way because it reflects the variety of languages used in this community and to appeal to a greater audience.

Newtown is also a tourist attraction destination and the use of different languages in this mural may be to cater to tourists and to those who do not speak either one of these languages.

All these four languages are four different narratives about people talking about their experiences with HIV/AIDS and the mural have the namess of the people who were telling these narratives along with their experiences about the virus .Translating the first IsiZulu narrative into English the person says that: I lost my brother because of HIV/AIDS. It hurts because there was no need for him to die. He did not have in enough knowledge. The SeSotho narrative says: December told the stars and the moon to bring light to those who have HIV/AIDS so that on other days they can find a cure. The Venda one briefly translate to: A person who is foolish is the one who does not know if the have the virus. The only way to find out is if they test for it, so a person could know. However we did not translate the one in English because it is understandable and assuming that most people can read and understand the English language.

[bobholman-blog-blog]

The solution to language loss? Multilinguality. There's no reason to lose your Mother Tongue as you organically learn the bully language that surrounds you. A study in Alsace, where Alsacian is forbidden because the official language, French, is by law the only language of education, showed that by junior high school bilingual students' IQ was 10 points higher than the monolingual students.