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Multilingualism is the use of more than one language either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all Europeans claim to speak at least one language other than their mother tongue;
It is common knowledge that the Philippines, being an archipelagic country, is one of the regions in the world with a high index of linguistic diversity. According to Eberhard et al. (2021), the Philippines is a home to 186 languages, wherein 184 are living and 2 are extinct. Of the living languages, 175 are indigenous and 9 are non-indigenous. Being steeped in rich history and culture, the Philippines, as detailed by Santiago, also shelters a large number of languages that are genetically non-Philippine such as Chavacano, a Spanish-based creole spoken in Zamboanga City and Cavite province; Lannang-Oe or the Philippine Hokkien spoken by the ethnic Chinese population in the Philippines; and English, the country’s official language used in commerce, law, and education. Furthermore, the Philippines has Filipino as the national language and Filipino Sign Language or FSL as the country’s official language of the Filipino deaf community. As one may note, the Philippine linguistic ecology is evidently rich and diverse. However, the existing linguistic theories, constructs, and ideologies, language documentation practices, and language policies, among others, potentially threaten the multilingual and highly diverse linguistic ecology in the Philippines.
Many countries have a language policy designed to favor or discourage the use of a particular language or set of languages. Although nations historically have used language policies most often to promote one official language at the expense of others, many countries now have policies designed to protect and promoteregional and ethnic languages whose viability is threatened. Language Policy is what a government does either officially through legislation, court decisions or policy to determine how languages are used, cultivate language skills needed to meet national priorities or to establish the rights of individuals or groups to use and maintain languages.
There exist many other benefits that come with learning and using more than one language. There are many studies and research that support the case that multilingual individuals have an edge throughout life. Multilingualism has been proven to help a child develop superior reading and writing skills, multilingual children have overall better analytical, social, and academic skills than their unilingual peers.
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