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Multilingualism within communities 
Further information: List of multilingual countries and regions
A multilingual sign at the Hong Kong-Macau Ferry Pier in the Macau SAR, China. At the top are Portugueseand Chinese, which are the official languages of the region, while at the bottom are Japanese and English, which are common languages used bytourists (English is also one of Hong Kong's two official languages).
Multilingual sign at Vancouver International Airport, international arrivals area. Text in English, French, and Chinese is a permanent feature of this sign, while the right panel of the sign is a video screen that rotates through additional languages.
Multilingual sign at an exit of SM Mall of Asia in Pasay City, Philippines. Three or four languages are shown:Japanese/Mandarin Chinese("deguchi" or "chūkǒu", respectively),English ("exit") and Korean ("chulgu"). While Filipinos themselves areanglophone, such signs cater to thegrowing number of Koreans and otherforeigners in the country.
Widespread multilingualism is one form of language contact. Multilingualism was more common in the past than is usually supposed[weasel words]: 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 good today in places of high linguistic diversity such as Sub-Saharan Africa and India. Linguist Ekkehard Wolff estimates that 50% of the population of Africa is multilingual.
In multilingual societies, not all speakers need to be multilingual. Some states can have multilingual policies and recognise several official languages, such as Canada (English and French). In some states, particular languages may be associated with particular regions in the state (e.g., Canada) or with particular ethnicities (e.g., Malaysia and Singapore). When all speakers are multilingual, linguists classify the community according to the functional distribution of the languages involved:
- diglossia: if there is a structural functional distribution of the languages involved, the society is termed 'diglossic'. Typical diglossic areas are those areas in Europe where a regional language is used in informal, usually oral, contexts, while the state language is used in more formal situations. Frisia(with Frisian and German or Dutch) and Lusatia (with Sorbian and German) are well-known examples. Some writers limit diglossia to situations where the languages are closely related, and could be considered dialects of each other. This can also be observed in Scotland where, in formal situations,English is used. However, in informal situations in many areas, Scots is the preferred language of choice. A similar phenomenon is also observed in Arabic-speaking regions. The effects of diglossia could be seen if you look at the difference between Written Arabic (Modern Standard Arabic) and Colloquial Arabic. However, as time goes, the Arabic language somewhere between the two have been created which we would like to call Middle Arabic or Common Arabic. Because of this diversification of the language, the concept of spectroglossia has been suggested.
- ambilingualism: a region is called ambilingual if this functional distribution is not observed. In a typical ambilingual area it is nearly impossible to predict which language will be used in a given setting. True ambilingualism is rare. Ambilingual tendencies can be found in small states with multiple heritages like Luxembourg, which has a combined Franco-Germanic heritage, orMalaysia and Singapore, which fuses the cultures of Malays, China, andIndia. Ambilingualism also can manifest in specific regions of larger states that have both a clearly dominant state language (be it de jure or de facto) and a protected minority language that is limited in terms of distribution of speakers within the country. This tendency is especially pronounced when, even though the local language is widely spoken, there is a reasonable assumption that all citizens speak the predominant state tongue (e.g., English in Quebec vs. Canada; Spanish in Catalonia vs. Spain). This phenomenon can also occur in border regions with many cross-border contacts.
- bipart-lingualism: if more than one language can be heard in a small area, but the large majority of speakers are monolinguals, who have little contact with speakers from neighbouring ethnic groups, an area is called 'bipart-lingual'. An example of this is the Balkans.
N.B. the terms given above all refer to situations describing only two languages. In cases of an unspecified number of languages, the terms polyglossia,omnilingualism, and multipart-lingualism are more appropriate.
