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Essay / Multilingualism Essay - 1042
Introduction: Multilingualism can be considered important to young South Africans for multiple reasons, including: cultural diversity and identity and prevention of globalization, to overcome the communication problems and language barriers, to improve cognitive abilities and to compensate for inadequacies in South Africa's systems of government. All these points will be discussed. Ensuring linguistic and cultural diversity Most of the world's languages have slowly disappeared over time and many languages are now also at risk of extinction (Lo Bianco, 2010). This may result from a particular language becoming less and less used over time until it no longer exists, essentially because it is not considered "prestigious" or useful in the society today. This can happen, for example, during the first language - which is rarely accepted by the wider community - would likely be one that the child struggles to maintain because it is not supported in schools. educational systems (Lo Bianco, 2010). This would ultimately result in the child abandoning the language altogether because it is not practiced. This cycle would repeat itself for many children speaking the same language, ultimately resulting in the complete extinction of the language, along with its cultural elements. This is a devastating phenomenon because it would mean that the world is becoming more and more culturally integrated, thus contributing to the acceleration of global interconnectivity, commonly referred to as globalization (Lo Bianco, 2010). The disappearance of a large part of the world's languages could therefore have a detrimental effect on cultural diversity (Lo Bianco, 2010). For these reasons, it is important to maintain multilingual...... middle of paper.. ....dramatically expand their postsecondary opportunities and options (Babson, 2014). The second reason is simply that if our young people are multilingual from the start, then hypothetically they would have the capacity to be educated in our monolingual education systems as they would be. able to understand the language in which they are learning because they are multilingual. Raising our young people multilingually is therefore a way to compensate for our inadequate education systems. Conclusion: The points discussed demonstrated why multilingualism among South African youth is imperative to creating an easy, diverse, communicative and highly intellectual society, enabling our youth to become multilingual. to achieve the capacity to change South Africa for the better. Multilingualism is therefore extremely important for these cultural, communicative, educational and intellectual reasons...