This is a fascinating topic. The summary begins with this statement: It's very hard to believe that the majority of people in the world are bilingual, so I checked that statistic. It seems to be reiterated on Wikipedia's entry on multilingualism with a reference to a 1999 text here. I don't have time to do deeper research here, sorry, but I am wondering what they consider bi or multilingualism. I've studied French, Spanish, German, and Hebrew over the years, I can translate if necessary, but I'd hardly call my self bi- or multilingual. Are the majority of the people in the world multilingual?Big ideas about language often ignore, or abstract away from, the individual’s capacity to learn more than one language. In a world where the majority of human beings are bilingual, is this kind of idealization desirable? Is it useful, or necessary?