Official language

Not to be confused with national language.

An official language is a language having certain rights to be used in defined situations. These rights can be created in written form or by historic usage.[1][2]

178 countries recognize an official language, 101 of them recognizing more than one. The government of Italy made Italian official only in 1999,[3] and some nations (such as the United States, Mexico, and Australia) have never declared de jure official languages at the national level.[4] Other nations have declared non-indigenous official languages.

Many of the world's constitutions mention one or more official or national languages.[5][6] Some countries use the official language designation to empower indigenous groups by giving them access to the government in their native languages. In countries that do not formally designate an official language, a de facto national language usually evolves. English is the most common official or co-official language, with recognized status in 51 countries. Arabic, French, and Spanish are official or co-official languages in several countries.

An official language that is also an indigenous language is called endoglossic, one that is not indigenous is exoglossic.[7] An instance is Nigeria which has three endoglossic official languages. By this, the country aims to protect the indigenous languages although at the same time recognising the English language as its lingua franca. In spatial terms, indigenous (endoglossic) languages are mostly employed in the function of official languages in Eurasia, while mainly non-indigenous (exoglossic) imperial (European) languages fulfill this function in most of the "Rest of the World" (that is, in parts of Africa, the Americas, Australia and Oceania). Lesotho, Madagascar, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Greenland, New Zealand, Samoa and Paraguay are among the exceptions to this tendency.[8]

  1. ^ "Official Language", Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language, Ed. Tom McArthur, Oxford University Press, 1998.
  2. ^ Pueblo v. Tribunal Superior, 92 D.P.R. 596 (1965). Translation taken from the English text, 92 P.R.R. 580 (1965), p. 588-589. See also LOPEZ-BARALT NEGRON, "Pueblo v. Tribunal Superior: Español: Idioma del proceso judicial", 36 Revista Juridica de la Universidad de Puerto Rico. 396 (1967), and VIENTOS-GASTON, "Informe del Procurador General sobre el idioma", 36 Rev. Col. Ab. (P.R.) 843 (1975).
  3. ^ "Legge 15 Dicembre 1999, n. 482 "Norme in materia di tutela delle minoranze linguistiche storiche" pubblicata nella Gazzetta Ufficiale n. 297 del 20 dicembre 1999". Italian Parliament. Archived from the original on 12 May 2015. Retrieved 2 December 2014.
  4. ^ "FYI: English isn't the official language of the United States". 20 May 2018.
  5. ^ "Read about "Official or national languages" on Constitute". Retrieved 2016-03-28.
  6. ^ "L'aménagement linguistique dans le monde: page d'accueil". www.axl.cefan.ulaval.ca. Retrieved 2016-03-28.
  7. ^ endoglossic and exoglossic on OxfordDictionaries.com.
  8. ^ Tomasz Kamusella. 2020. Global Language Politics: Eurasia versus the Rest (pp. 118–151). Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics. Vol 14, No 2.