With millions of people, London truly is a beacon for multicultural capital of Europe if not the world. With over 300 languages and dozens of different cultures intermingling every-day, it makes perfect sense why so many massive multinational corporations have headquarters in London.

Within the 32 boroughs that make up Greater London, the proud capital of United Kingdom, there are over 300 different languages spoken daily. This makes London a truly cosmopolitan city, probably more so than New York. New York too has diverse demographics of languages spoken but considering the presence of United Nations there, perhaps it makes more sense. But London being so close to mainland Europe, has almost become a destination of choice for bilingual professionals.

The business world recognises this and has reacted adequately. A good example of this would be the fact that Air-France consolidated all of the European call centres and moved them to Wembley in North London hence creating over 200 jobs. There are plenty of other similar examples and London now hosts more multilingual contact centres than anywhere else in the world and across the board, in many industry sectors the need for bilingual professionals has seen a steady growth. Probably New York is the only city that comes close to London in terms of Internationalism.

Prof. John Wells of UCL says besides the obvious business sense this helps to eliminate the narrow-mindedness of British people in learning languages. He also adds that while this makes the population more diverse it also encourages learning new languages hence a skill, when you are living amidst it. According to the report published by University of London's School of Oriental and African studies, dated 1993 there are 275 languages regularly spoken in London. However a later study conducted by The Times the number went by 25 to a sum of 300. This, although do not mean increasing diversity but perhaps a better monitoring system.

The linguistic diversity of London is also matched by the variety of its demographic makeup. A research conducted by the London Research Centre (LRC) shows that there are 33 communities in London all with over 10000 people and a further 12 with over 5000. There is also a very strong Irish community in London with over 200000 where as the community from Mauritius has around 14000 members.

There are around 3000 to 6000 languages and dialects being spoken worldwide at the moment. The debate for what is a language and what should be called a dialect is an ongoing and can be of political nature. It is often said that a language is a dialect that has an army.

Besides the academic debate, the demand for bilingual professionals are growing evermore. Our world and specially the business world is getting smaller and better connected everyday and this creates a need of people who can effectively communicate in more than one language. In a city like London the demand is even higher and being the multilingual melting pot as it is, there has never been a better opportunity to use your Bilingual skills to progress in job.