National language

In many African countries, some or all indigenous African languages are officially used, promoted, or expressly allowed to be promoted (usually taught in schools and written in important publications) as semi-official languages whether by long-term legislation or short-term, case-by-case executive (government) measures.

To be official, spoken and written languages may enjoy government or federalised use, major tax-funded promotion or at least full tolerance as to their teaching and employers' recognition in public education, standing on equal footing with the official language(s).

English and French are official in Canada's three territories; two legislate a variety of Indigenous languages in addition.

also have a further seven more (totalling eleven official languages): Cree, Dënesųłiné, Gwich’in, Inuvialuktun, North and South Slavey and Tłı̨chǫ.

Dialects used for this purpose in different eras included those of Xi'an, Luoyang, Nanjing, Beijing, and other historical capital cities.

Ultimately, the Beijing dialect was chosen as the national language and it continued to be referred to as 國語 in Chinese in the Republic of China.

Since then, the Beijing dialect has become the main standard for pronunciation, due to its prestigious status during the preceding Qing dynasty.

Still, elements from other dialects do exist in the standard language, which is now defined as reflecting the pronunciation of Beijing, the grammatical patterns of Mandarin dialects spoken in the northern parts of China, and the vocabulary of modern vernacular Chinese literature.

Amharic, Oromo, Tigrinya, Somali, and Afar are the official working languages of Ethiopia.

The Constitution of Finland guarantees the right to use Finnish and Swedish in courts and other state institutions.

[15][16] Despite the large difference in the numbers of users, Swedish is not officially classified as a minority language but equal to Finnish.

Mukhopadhaya and Justice A.S. Dave recently while rejecting a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) by one Suresh Kachhadia.

[22] The Union Government uses Hindi and English as official languages, such as for parliamentary proceedings and texts of federal laws.

[24] They may adopt one or more of the 22 languages listed in the Indian constitution's eighth schedule—Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Marathi, Meitei, Nepali, Odia, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.

Indonesia has more than 700 living languages, making it the second most linguistically diverse country after Papua New Guinea.

have any explicit legal status on the national level, but the 2010 constitution enjoins the state to "promote and protect the diversity of language of the people of Kenya.

[35] Some of the languages include: Nepal Bhasa, Tamang, Sherpa, Rai, Magar, Gurung, Maithili, Awadhi, English, Limbu, Bhojpuri, etc.

[37] The National Language Authority is an organization established to make arrangements to promote Urdu since 1979.

In September 2012, La Union became the first province in Philippine history to pass an ordinance proclaiming a local language.

This move aims to protect and revitalize the use of Ilocano in various government and civil affairs within the province.

This is due the recognition of ethnic Malays (approximately 14% of the population) as the indigenous peoples of Singapore.

Traditionally, the lingua franca among the different ethnic groups in Singapore was Bazaar Malay, a Malay-based creole.

[citation needed] South Africa has 11 official languages, namely Afrikaans, English, isiNdebele, Sepedi, Sesotho, siSwati, Setswana, Xitsonga, Thsivenda, isiXhosa and isiZulu.

[47] This includes Formosan languages, Hakka, Mandarin, Taiwanese Hokkien and Matsu dialect.

After their defeat in the Chinese Civil War in 1949, the Kuomintang regime of the Republic of China retreated to the island of Taiwan, where they introduced Standard Chinese and English language, which were spoken by few of the island population at the time, to be the "national language".

Britain also has several Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories which are to some extent self-governing, but are not recognized as independent states.

In Northern Ireland, both the Irish language and the Ulster Scots dialects are recognized by the Good Friday Agreement as "part of the cultural wealth of the island of Ireland" and are promoted by the Foras na Gaeilge (Irish Institute) and Tha Boord o Ulstèr-Scotch (the Ulster-Scots Agency) respectively.

The Welsh language has official status within Wales, and as of the 2011 census, is spoken by 562,000 people, or 19% of the population.

[53] The Welsh Language Board (Bwrdd yr Iaith Gymraeg) is legally tasked with ensuring that, "in the conduct of public business and the administration of justice, the English and Welsh languages should be treated on a basis of equality".

However a few words of Manx Gaelic (the historical national language) are sometimes encountered in government institutions, largely for symbolic and ceremonial purposes, and it is the main medium of instruction in one primary school.