Multilingualism is the ability to speak many languages.

Multilingualism in the past and present

Multilingualism has been more common in the past than usually supposed; in early times, when most people were members of small language communities, it was necessary to know two or more languages for trade or any other dealings outside one's own town or village, and this holds true today in places of high linguistic diversity such as Sub-Saharan Africa and India. Widespread multilingualism is one form of language contact.

See also

• Plurilingualism
• Polyglot
• Bilingual