What differs us from each other? Why is it that communities live in the same district yet speak different languages? Are margins there to symbolize barriers as a form of protection? Why is there higher quantity of multilingual people globally as oppose to unilingual people? These are questions that transude when we hear the term multilingual margins. In this blog reflection we will try to summarize our hypotheses as well as our future expectations, when it comes to multilingual margins in the city of Tilburg.  

   Tilburg is home to more than 200 thousand residents (United Nations). A hundred years ago one would think that 90% of these residents are from Tilburg.  However, when we look at present times we would predict that almost half of the residents are multinational and thus are multilingual. Due to the recent globalization phenomenon and due to technological advancements as well as the constant development and production of mini technological gadgets nowadays the way people move from one location to another is easier than 26 years ago. Two of four members in our group have experience based on living in different country than Netherlands – Singapore and Bulgaria. Chairene says that usually when families or individuals move abroad they move to areas where they feel comfortable; where they are with others who usually come from the same region as them. According to that in Tilburg we expect to find a places where a lot of communities interact or where even though they live in the same cities they are separated by different neighborhoods. Good example for that could be the chart post on the Tilburg university web site, where significant number of students from abroad can be detected. As a student who has lived in Tilburg for 5 months, one of group has noticed that most of the English speaking residents live in Talent Square, accommodation for students, more or less provided from the university. As a result of that, there are around three English speaking Cafes in that area. Probably because the manager of the Cafes try to accommodate to the comfortability of those English speaking residents. Based on this example we believe that the cafes in Tilburg are strategically placed/located based on residents that live in the area. Therefore perhaps we could find that the most intercontinental and African cafes will be in the north of Tilburg. In addition to that we believe that in the north of Tilburg the most African, Surinamese as well as Moroccans live. Therefore we expect people there to be speaking not a lot of Dutch yet more of their own languages. Furthermore, some differences in language use could be seen in international store, which differ from the big and well – known supermarkets as Albert Heijn. We are going to inspect small shops with international food as Turkish, Chinese, or other specific products, where people usually speak mainly language of the minority and a little Dutch.

    In addition we expect people from different districts in Tilburg to maybe speak Dutch differently some may speak Dutch with a different dialect. We also expect to find that different neighborhoods are better taken care off than other neighborhoods. This helps variate neighborhoods from each other and we expect that it will help to analyze what type of communities reside there.  In addition to that different areas probably also dress differently. Therefore, in the Tilburg Northern neighborhoods we expect to find more residents with head shawls. Perhaps some areas in Tilburg would be safer than others because of the residents there. In addition we think the way residents communicate with each other vary.  For example, neighborhoods where only Dutch people reside will look different from neighborhoods where lots of expats live. We also expect to find that the most multilinguals will live around the city center as that is where the most students live - as a result most of the residents there are multilingual. In addition to that we expect to find that students are more multi lingual because they study mainly in English and have access to learning new languages through all these new technologies and courses, provided from university. We expect technology to have great influence on the multilingual margins in Tilburg.

Four students from Tilburg University are going to do research about Multilingual Margins – Asya Krusteva, Chairene Chidozie, Coen van Ewijk and Max Van de Pol.