1. Bilingualism/multilingualism is a natural phenomenon worldwide.
1.1. Bilingualism as a Natural Global Phenomenon
1.1.1. Bilingualism or even multilingualism is not a rare or exceptional phenomenon in the modern world; it was and it is, in fact, more widespread and natural than monolingualism.
1.1.2. Estimates more than seven thousand languages (7,358) while the U.S. Department of States recognizes only 194 bilingual countries in the world. There are approximately 239 and 2,269 languages identified in Europe and Asia, respectively.
1.2. Describing Bilingualism
1.2.1. Bilingualism is a lifelong process involving a host of factors, different processes, and yielding differential end results in terms of differential stages of fossilization and learning curve.
1.3. Individual Bilingualism: A Profile
1.3.1. The author, as an immigrant child growing up in India, acquired two languages by birth: Saraiki and Lahanda, which is spoken both in India and Pakistan. Growing up in the Hindi-speaking area, he learned the third language Hindi-Urdu primarily in schools; and his fourth language, English, primarily after puberty during his higher education in India and the United States
1.4. Social Bilingualism
1.4.1. While social bilingualism embodies linguistic dimensions of individual bilingualism, a host of social, attitudinal, educational, and historical aspects of bilingualism primarily determine the nature of social bilingualism.
2. Monolingualism has been used as a standard to characterize and define bilingualism/multilingualism in linguistic research.
2.1. Political Bilingualism
2.1.1. Political bilingualism refers to the language policies of a country. Unlike individual bilingualism, categories such as monolingual, bilingual, and multilingual nations do not reflect the actual linguistic situation in a particular country
2.2. The Bilingual Mind
2.2.1. Since a monolingual’s choice is restricted to only one language, the decision to choose a language is relatively simple involving, at most, the choice of an informal style over a formal style or vice versa.
2.3. Bilingual Language Modes
2.3.1. Bilinguals are like a sliding switch who can move between one or more language states/modes as required for the production, comprehension, and processing of verbal messages in a most cost-effective and efficient way.
2.4. Bilingual Language Separation and Language Integration
2.4.1. Language mixing is a far more complex cognitive ability than language separation. Yet, it is also very natural to bilinguals. Therefore, it is not surprising to observe the emergence of mixed systems around the globe