Bilingualism/Multilingualism in the Middle East and North Africa: A Focus on Cross‐National and Diglossic Bilingualism/Multilingualism

This chapter focuses on bilingualism and multilingualism in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), trying to present them separately, as they appear in the current research of this region. It briefly reviews the past and present background of this region and its languages, speakers' bilingualism/multilingualism, and four linguistic skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) and their roles. It then discusses bilingualism and multilingualism mainly in Arabic, MENA's most widely spoken language. This chapter also reviews studied aspects of bilingualism/multilingualism in the MENA, emphasizing the major topics of loanwords, diglossia, and code-switching (CS) in Arabic, while also briefly looking at the psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic bilingual/multilingual research on MENA languages.