Africa's linguistic diversity goes largely unnoticed in research on multilingualism

Language is a uniquely human skill. That’s why studying how people learn and use language is crucial to understanding what it means to be human. Given that most people in the world – an estimated 60% – are multilingual, meaning that they know and use more than one language, a researcher who aims to understand language must also grasp how individuals acquire and use multiple languages.

The ubiquity of multilingualism also has practical consequences. For example, in the early schooling years, children learn more effectively when they are taught in their mother tongue rather than a second or third language. Research also shows that people make different decisions depending on whether they are thinking in their first or second language.

The problem is that much of the published research about multilingualism is not conducted in the world’s most multilingual societies. For example, the African continent is home to some of the most multilingual countries in the world. Cameroon has a population of around 27 million people; over 250 different languages are spoken as first languages, often alongside English and French or both.

Studies of African multilingual contexts are almost non-existent in high-impact scientific journals, however. This matters because it is research published in these journals that receives the most attention globally and is therefore most likely to shape people’s understanding of multilingualism.

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