Multilingualism is the use of two or more languages, either by an individual speaker or by a community of speakers. In this dynamic world, it is said that multilingual speakers outweigh monolingual speakers in the world's population. There is fast-growing importance in today’s globalized world to learn more than one language. It opens up a world of job opportunities and helps in building our career. Knowing another language helps in knowing its culture and people which establishes deep connections and cross-cultural friendships. There can be disadvantages too but it’s better to be positive always.
A multilinguist person can relate to the similarities between cultures of different nationalities and not only culture but the languages themselves have many similarities and connections with each other. Globalization has also lead to an increase in multilinguists because it seems to play an important role in economic, social, and cultural aspects. As globalization has reached its peak so as the need for multilingual people.
A multilinguist can make a big difference in society. He can encourage people and create awareness to learn different languages, which will help them in finding good employment opportunities in this highly competitive world. It improves the thinking capacity and creativity of a person's mind. Society will be able to learn and adapt to different cultures and traditions all over the world. People can easily interact and learn about different people living around the globe. Language obviously shapes the way we think.
The collection, dissemination, and analysis of news and information by the general public, especially by means of the Internet is known as citizen journalism. Technology, such as social networking and media sharing websites, in addition to the increasing prevalence of cellular telephones, have made citizen journalism more accessible to people worldwide. But how is citizen journalism related to multilinguists? The most important part of a message is the language that is used in it. Language is the key aspect of every message we write. If we don’t use an apt language then the message can be conveyed wrongly. Here comes the role of a bilingual or multilingual person. A multilingual person can easily showcase news or message through his/her language skills because he knows the exact words and content to use according to the people. While learning a language the person not only learns how to speak it but also learns the culture, sub-culture, and people of that particular reign. So he/she knows how to tackle his audience. In citizen journalism, one should not write the message instantly, but should always think about its audience and how connected or emotional they are and then write using the right language. A multilingual person knows more than one language so he can make more people aware of a topic using his language skills.
Writer Ritika Kush is a Spanish Language and Translation Intern at Modlingua, India's No1. certified translation and Language service providers based in New Delhi
Video Links on Citizen Journalism http://www.modlingua.com/videos.html
