As Glyn Williams has mentioned in his talk at the final EUNoM Conference, “One of the problems of discussing multilingualism is that the majority of those who discuss it inevitably see it as an advantage, as a benefit”. The present paper considers pros and cons of multilingual education in countries where national languages are under threat.
Belarus is a good example because this is an officially bilingual post-soviet country situated at the crossroads of Europe and also homeland to three languages in danger: Yiddish, Polesian and the language of the titular ethnic group - Belarusian, which is at the same time an official language of the country (according to the national survey conveyed in 2009, 21.8% of population use Belarusian language at home.)