Languages a Very Short Introduction

The languages of the world can be seen and heard in cities and towns, forests and isolated settlements, as well as on the internet and in international organizations like the UN or the EU. How did the world acquire so many languages? Why can't we all speak one language, like English or Esperanto? And what makes a person bilingual? Multilingualism, language diversity in society, is a perfect expression of human plurality. About 6,500-7,000 languages are spoken, written, and signed throughout the linguistic landscape of the world by people who communicate in more than one language (at work, or in the family or community).

Sociolinguistics deals with the social life of language, language in its sociocultural context. It is a branch of linguistics that looks less at the shape or sound of words–morphology or phonology–and more at how our words and sentences are influenced by the society around us–for instance, how the accent or the dialect we use has been shaped by where we come from or which social class we belong to.