Multilingualism | EPFL Graph Search

Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?

Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of GraphSearch.

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; but many read and write in one language. Multilingualism is advantageous for people wanting to participate in trade, globalization and cultural openness. Owing to the ease of access to information facilitated by the Internet, individuals' exposure to multiple languages has become increasingly possible. People who speak several languages are also called polyglots. Multilingual speakers have acquired and maintained at least one language during childhood, the so-called first language (L1). The first language (sometimes also referred to as the mother tongue) is usually acquired without formal education, by mechanisms about which scholars disagree. Children acquiring two languages natively from these early years are called simultaneous bilinguals. It is common for young simultaneous bilinguals to be more proficient in one language than the other. People who speak more than one language have been reported to be better at language learning when compared to monolinguals. Multilingualism in computing can be considered part of a continuum between internationalization and localization. Due to the status of English in computing, software development nearly always uses it (but not in the case of non-English-based programming languages). Some commercial software is initially available in an English version, and multilingual versions, if any, may be produced as alternative options based on the English original. The first recorded use of the word multilingualism originated in the English language in the 1800s as a combination of multi (many) and lingual (pertaining to languages, with the word existing in the Middle Ages). The phenomenon however, is old as different languages themselves.

About this result

This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.

Related publications (3)

Related people (6)

Related units (1)

Related concepts (201)

Related courses (3)

Related lectures (4)

HUM-388: Personalized health: biomedical & social challenge

La médecine 4P (personnalisée, préventive, prédictive et participative) bouleverse les connaissances médicales établies, les configurations institutionnelles de la médecine et les expériences vécues d

EE-724: Human language technology: applications to information access

The Human Language Technology (HLT) course introduces methods and applications for language processing and generation, using statistical learning and neural networks.

AR-616: EDAR thesis writing workshop

The workshop will equip participants with practical skills necessary to make thesis writing smoother and better organized. Main issues covered are: getting started, structure and argumentation, time m

Multilingual and Unsupervised Subword Modeling for Zero-Resource Languages

Enno Hermann

Subword modeling for zero-resource languages aims to learn low-level representations of speech audio without using transcriptions or other resources from the target language (such as text corpora or p

2020

, ,

We propose an automated image selection system to assist photo editors in selecting suitable images for news articles. The system fuses multiple textual sources extracted from news articles and accept

ASSOC COMPUTING MACHINERY2020

Integrating Language Identification to improve Multilingual Speech Recognition

Holger Caesar

The process of determining the language of a speech utterance is called Language Identification (LID). This task can be very challenging as it has to take into account various language-specific aspect

Idiap2012

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The modern-day scientific study of linguistics takes all aspects of language into account — i.e., the cognitive, the social, the cultural, the psychological, the environmental, the biological, the literary, the grammatical, the paleographical, and the structural. Linguistics is based on a theoretical as well as descriptive study of language, and is also interlinked with the applied fields of language studies and language learning, which entails the study of specific languages.

Code-switching

In linguistics, code-switching or language alternation occurs when a speaker alternates between two or more languages, or language varieties, in the context of a single conversation or situation. Code-switching is different from plurilingualism in that plurilingualism refers to the ability of an individual to use multiple languages, while code-switching is the act of using multiple languages together. Multilinguals (speakers of more than one language) sometimes use elements of multiple languages when conversing with each other.

First language

A first language (L1), native language, native tongue, or mother tongue is the first language or dialect that a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. In some countries, the term native language or mother tongue refers to the language or dialect of one's ethnic group rather than the individual's actual first language. The first language of a child is part of that child's personal, social and cultural identity.

Text Encoding: Unicode and XML DH-405: Foundations of digital humanities

Explores text encoding evolution, Unicode, XML, OCR, HTR, and handling spelling variations in historical texts.

Thresholds and Weirs in Rivers CIVIL-312: Hydraulic structures and schemes

Explores the design and operation principles of thresholds and weirs in rivers, emphasizing their relevance and impact on river protection and management.

Vision-Language-Action Models: Training and Applications

Delves into training and applications of Vision-Language-Action models, emphasizing large language models' role in robotic control and the transfer of web knowledge. Results from experiments and future research directions are highlighted.