Official language
[9] Aramaic script was widely employed from Egypt in the southwest to Bactria and Sogdiana in the northeast.
Examples are Hindi and Urdu, Malay and Indonesian, Serbian and Croatian, Persian and Tajik.
Taiwan, Canada, the Philippines, Belgium, Switzerland, and the European Union are examples of official multilingualism.
[18] Following Chapter 1, Article 16 of the Constitution of Afghanistan, the Afghan government gives equal status to Pashto and Dari as official languages.
[26] Following the Constitution Act, 1982 the (federal) Government of Canada gives equal status to English and French as official languages.
The variety of Chinese is not stipulated; however, Cantonese, being the language most commonly used by the majority of Hongkongers, forms the de facto standard.
In addition, the Government of India has awarded the distinction of classical language to Tamil, Sanskrit, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam and Odia.
On 19 July 2018, the Knesset passed a basic law under the title Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People, which defines Hebrew as "the State's language" and Arabic as a language with "a special status in the State" (article 4).
[34] Before the enactment of the aforementioned basic law, the status of official language in Israel was determined by the 82nd paragraph of the "Palestine Order in Council" issued on 14 August 1922, for the British Mandate of Palestine, as amended in 1939:[35] This law, like most other laws of the British Mandate, was adopted in the State of Israel, subject to certain amendments published by the provisional legislative branch on 19 May 1948.
For instance, at least 5% of the broadcasting time of privately owned TV channels must be translated into Russian (a similar privilege is granted to Arabic), warnings must be translated to several languages, and signs are mostly trilingual (Hebrew, Arabic and English), and the government supports Yiddish and Ladino culture (alongside Hebrew culture and Arabic culture).
[37] Latvia also provides national minority education programmes in Russian, Polish, Hebrew, Ukrainian, Estonian, Lithuanian, and Belarusian.
[38] In 2012 there was a constitutional referendum on elevating Russian as a co-official language, but the proposal was rejected by nearly three-quarters of the voters.
Low Saxon and Limburgish, languages acknowledged by the European Charter, are spoken in specific regions of the Netherlands.
[41][42] In 2018, New Zealand First MP Clayton Mitchell introduced a bill to parliament to statutorily recognise English as an official language.
[46] The official language of Nigeria is English, which was chosen to facilitate the cultural and linguistic unity of the country.
One type of federal subject in Russia, republics, are allowed to adopt additional official languages alongside Russian in their constitutions.
Due to limited funding, however, the government rarely produces documents in most languages.
[51] In Wales, the Welsh language, spoken by approximately 20% of the population, has de jure official status, alongside English.
[55] Public debate in the last few decades has focused on whether Spanish should be recognized by the government, or whether all business should be done in English.
[15] California allows people to take their driving test in the following 32 languages: Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Chinese, Croatian, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hmong, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Laotian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Samoan, Spanish, Tagalog/Filipino, Thai, Tongan, Turkish, and Vietnamese.
[56] New York state provides voter-registration forms in the following five languages: Bengali, Chinese, English, Korean and Spanish.
The same languages are also on ballot papers in certain parts of the state (namely, New York City).
[57] Opponents of an official language policy in the United States argue that it would hamper "the government's ability to reach out, communicate, and warn people in the event of a natural or man-made disaster such as a hurricane, pandemic, or...another terrorist attack".
[15][58] Sometimes an official language definition can be motivated more by national identity than by linguistic concerns.
Bosnia and Herzegovina defined three official languages: Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian.
From the linguistic point of view, the different names refer to national varieties of the same language, which is known under the appellation of Serbo-Croatian.
