Acknowledgements
Although strictly speaking I only started writing this book in 2019, it had a much longer gestation period that can in fact be traced back to the initial stages in my career. My interest in linguistic diversity and language typology was aroused when I embarked on my PhD project and never ceased. Language contact and multilingualism were intensely researched in the Hamburg-based Collaborative Research Centre on Multilingualism (1999–2011). I profit from that experience even today. The social and educational perspectives of multilingualism were then strengthened during the Cluster of Excellence on Linguistic Diversity Management in Urban Areas (2009–2013) and the follow-up project on Multilingual Development: A Longitudinal Perspective (2014–2019). Several research projects on multilingualism in Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, funded by the German Research Foundation, added expertise from crucial international multilingual melting pots. All of these research strands are weaved together in this book, and I wish to extend my gratitude to everyone from whom I had the privilege to gain inspiration on my way.
My former doctoral student, Eliane Lorenz, deserves a very special word of gratitude for patiently reading and meticulously commenting on the text while I was writing it. I further wish to thank Aikaterina Koufopoulou, Lijun Li, Alexander Onysko, and Tugba Elif Toprak for reading and commenting on various draft versions of the manuscript. Ashleigh Brito substantially increased the stylistic level and the readability of the text. Sarah El Kafi carefully examined the references and the index. Hans-Olav Enger, Nicholas Evans, Robert Fuchs, and Jakob Leimgruber helped at various points with insightful discussions and other crucial inputs. Finally, I wish to express my sincere gratitude to Helen Barton and the three anonymous Cambridge University Press reviewers who placed my initial book proposal on the right track. They believed in me and I hope that the final work does not disappoint them.
The book is a homage to all the people in the world who are torn between the opportunities that English offers and their attachment to their often multiple native and local tongues. The demands imposed by our modern super-efficient, technology-based written cultures are extremely high and it is easy to conceive linguistic diversity as an obstacle to efficiency and progress. I wish to assure these very people that this conflict can be managed and even be considered an enrichment. The book describes the avenues along which this can be achieved as well as the various pitfalls that need to be circumnavigated. I believe that this endeavour needs guidance, as linguistic and cultural diversity can easily be sacrificed on the altar of lopsided ideologies that can produce severe problems in the long run.
