Acknowledgments
This book would not have been conceived without the constant support of the growing community of international language experts who now have a mission to engage the public with the latest research on bilingualism and language learning and promote bilingualism with any language.
Promoting bilingualism means supporting learning any language at any age: We hope that this book can contribute to reinforcing this view. From a linguistic and cognitive perspective there is no difference between more prestigious and less prestigious languages, and recent research supports the idea that every combination of languages can have positive effects on both the brain and the behavior of bilingual speakers.
We would also like to thank the many organizations, schools, stakeholders, families, and individuals who constantly support a global bilingual community in addressing the challenges that minority or minoritized languages must face to survive in today’s society. Each bilingual speaker can contribute to the transmission of cultural values from one generation to the next. We hope this book will not only inspire more scientific research, necessary to expand our knowledge of bilingualism, but also support and encourage public engagement activities by language experts: This is what the Bilingualism Matters centre does at an international level.
The authors would like to thank Mirko Grimaldi who originally proposed the Italian book series “Il cervello linguistico” and made it possible for us to write the Italian version of this book.
