New copy of earliest poem in English, written 1,3k years ago, discovered in Rome

well, if the Normans had simply spoken Norse as one would expect Norsemen to do...

I recently tried some light research (ok, i ddg'ed) recently on this topic as it wasn't that long between the Viking invasions and settling down in claimed territory, "how continuing-to-be-Norse were the Normans?" I was looking at a similar idea to another comment/statement here from a Scandinavian, "would the Normans have maintained enough knowledge of Norse language to have seen connections to Anglo Saxon/Olde Ænglish? (ok, i just wanted to use a ligature)

I didn't find it easy to to find specifics in great detail, but interestingly in William the Conquerer's family tree, his great^n-grandparents and their cohort were frequently marrying French noble women for local connections and prestige, but also having children with their "soulmate" Norsewoman side piece, made more convenient because the Norse marriage practice was more akin to "common law marriage" anyway.

I'm not reading or judging anything into this (what noble of any culture wouldn't pursue extramarital relations, hell the peasants do it too) except from variety of partners they were clearly maintaining connections to their heritage at least as Italian- or Irish-Americans frequently do in the current day.

Indeed, and then there’s the fact that a single codex may contain multiple works, often unrelated (at least to modern eyes—copying of manuscripts was the old school way of adding a book to one’s library, so an abbot in one monastery, learning that another monastery had works X, Y and Z might request they be copied or send a monk to copy them and even though X was a work of theology, Y a poem by Virgil and Z an account of the best way to raise green beans in poor soil, they’d end up together, possibly not even starting a new page when one work ends and the next begins.

And of course, title pages are a later invention so the only way to know what’s in a manuscript is to actually read it.

That is a more reasonable position than trying to imagine or push a single language. And yes, acknowledging it’s not everywhere necessarily, it does seem like multilingualism is fairly automatic out of necessity in much of the world. As an American, I’m sad that the US scores so poorly on multilingualism. I’m very impressed when I travel how many people speak multiple languages. There are so many places where even entry level jobs require 2 or 3 languages.

There's tons, if you look up "[language] graded reader" or "[language] nature method."

Familia Romana by Hans Orberg is a great one for Latin. I frequently see people call it the gold standard for this kind of book, but they're all Latin enthusiasts, so they're not exactly unbiased.

Yeah, I know people's intuitions are also different there, as almost everyone I've met from Europe speaks 2-4 languages fluently and doesn't consider this exceptional. That makes multilingualism feel very attainable, because it's socially normal. From the U.S. point of view this is amazing, because it's taken for granted there, where it might be a celebrated achievement here.

What I know less about is how much time or effort that multilingualism took, whether peer pressure forced some reluctant kids to stick with languages they were otherwise less interested in, and whether there are any hidden costs.

An example could be replacement of some native vocabulary by English vocabulary (which is happening in many languages). This is a benefit for many people who work internationally, but it probably harms intergenerational understanding on some topics. For example, a Brazilian friend of mine gave a computing history lecture where he noted that Brazilians briefly used Portuguese vocabulary for computer engineering in the 1970s before it was supplanted by English loanwords. That change might mean that older speakers would understand younger speakers less well on some technical topics, or that younger speakers would have a harder time reading older technical documentation. From the point of view of monolingual Portuguese speakers, the internationalization of that vocabulary might not seem like a pure advantage.

I also know that some majority language speakers in Finland (who probably expect to speak English with non-Finnish speakers) greatly resent having to spend a lot of time studying Swedish, the "other national language", if they don't anticipate using it in their day-to-day lives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandatory_Swedish

In that case, it feels to some of them like the government is requiring them to be multilingual in a specific way that isn't their own preference or that doesn't align with their existing sense of ethnolinguistic identity. It doesn't seem like it's doing any kind of long-term harm, but I guess having any mandatory school subject that you don't enjoy can be pretty unpleasant, and maybe give you a more negative experience of formal education in general.

Some of the Swedish minority there doesn't prefer a future in which Finnish speakers only speak English to them (a phenomenon that already exists and that I think is growing over time). Even though it's officially legally protected, the practical status of their local minority language is being eroded by international culture.

I also have a native Finnish-speaking friend who enjoyed learning Swedish as a foreign language as a child, and ended up moving to Sweden and becoming a university lecturer (who usually teaches in Swedish). Foreign language learning can always be a benefit to anyone of any background.

To again brainstorm trade-offs, it's possible that that outcome is a bit disagreeable to her family back in Finland (who might have preferred her to stay closer to where she grew up, which might have been more likely if she had been more monolingual).