By day, Brussels is more or less bilingual, hosting a third of a million Dutch- and French-speaking commuters from the prim suburbs, who fill the lion's share of well-paid graduate jobs.

ECONOMIST: The economic consequences of the rise of English

Today most young Indians speak only English or are bilingual in English and Afrikaans, though they may continue to chat at home in a kind of pidgin English larded with Indian and Zulu.

ECONOMIST: English is dangerously dominant

Some 20 schools around the country are experimenting in bilingual or immersion techniques.

BBC: Curb on schools' languages innovation

In 2002, a survey by the Pew Hispanic Centre and the Kaiser Family Foundation found that over 90% of second-generation Hispanics were either bilingual or mainly English-speaking, split equally between the two.

ECONOMIST: The Americano dream

It had emerged that some head teachers were bilingual, perhaps with French or German parents.

BBC: Early start for language lessons

Christine Russell of Boston University reviewed 300 studies and found that 78 percent of them concluded that bilingual education was no better or actually worse for English learners than doing nothing!

CNN: Competition, Not Standards

Many of California's Latino students, who make up by far the biggest share of children in bilingual classes, leave school unable to read or write English.

ECONOMIST: Ron Unz, swimming instructor

China's elite professionals are often bilingual because most of them went to university in America, Britain or Australia.

ECONOMIST: The craze for teaching Chinese may be a misguided fad

They studied bilingual programs in the Houston Independent School District and found that native-Spanish speakers were at or above grade level in English and Spanish in first grade through fifth grade.

NPR: Instruction Of Students Learning English Bleak