The average English person in the average English town will grow up with
English as the language of their home and of their education. Only rarely
will he or she come into serious contact. with a foreign language. In other
words most English people spend their lives in a state of monolingualism.
However, such monolingualism is a minority phenomenon in terms of the
total world population; bi- or multilingualism is found in most countries in
the world. There are an estimated 394 languages in Nigeria (Hansford, 1976)
an~ 760 languages in Papua New Guinea (Wurm, 1979). This does not mean
that all speakers of these languages are multilingual, but it is probable that
such a concentrated variety of languages in a relatively small area will lead to
multilingualism, especially with increased mobility. Similarly, Fishman and
Hofmann (1966) estimate that in America in 1960 there were some 18 352 351
speakers of the 23 major non-English mother-tongue groups and Spolsky
(1972) considers there were a futher 40 or 50 smaller languages or language
groups. In England it is estimated that in 1978 in London alone there were
over 100 languages spoken by school-age children.