While reading an editorial on the proposed bill to make English the US’ official language, it occured to me to wonder if other countries have an official national language. Do they?
Canada has two official languages.
Spain has four: Spanish in all the country, plus Basque, Catalan and Galego in specific areas.
Andorra has two, both in all the country: Catalan and French.
The EU specifically considers as official “all languages that are official in the totality of any of its member countries”. With Spain as a member, Spanish is official but the other three official languages of Spain are not. If Andorra ever became a member, Catalan would become an official language of the EU.
Most countries that I know of have an official language. In Canada, English and French are official languages. This means that all federal services must be offered in French and English. Employees of that provide federal services must speak both French and English.
Strangely, only two provinces are officially bilingual, Ontario and New Brunswick. These provinces must provide services in both French and English. Other provinces provide services in English or French (Quebec).
I’m surprised that the US had not declared English as its official language long ago. Does anyone know why it took so long?
Neither the UK nor Australia has an official language, and both are very similar to the US in their linguistic situation. (I.e., English is the predominant language, though there are plenty of minority languages, both immigrant and indigenous)
I think New Brunswick is the only officially bilingual province. I don’t remember Ontario having declared both languages as official.
It still hasn’t happened yet.
The wording in the recent Senate bill would declare English the “national” language, with much less effect than an “official” language would have. This provision is also part of the much larger immigration bill that both chambers are still negotiating. Whether the provision stays in the final bill, and whether that bill gets passed by both chambers, and whether the president signs that bill, all remains to be seen.
What exactly “'official language” means varies a lot between countries. And note that “'official language” is not at all synonymous with “national language,” as has already been noted.
From the link:
In many cases, official languages have been declared for the purpose of protecting minority languages, rather than to protect the status of the majority language.
Ontario requires that government services be availible in French in certain areas, but is not officially bilingual. The territories have several First Nations language co-official with English and French.
New Zealand has three official languages; English, Maori, and New Zealand Sign Language.
Most developing countries have an official language or two. This is often a legacy of colonialism, when the government was run using the colonist’s language. These languages continue to be used in government, but are rarely anyone’s first language.
There are both practical and political reasons for continuing to maintain them as the official languages. First, in countries where there is no single dominant language (such as Gabon), they serve as a lingua franca by which all the various ethnic groups can communicate. Second, minority groups may actually prefer to use a European language rather than that of a majority group in the same country in order to avoid cultural dominance by that group. When I was traveling in India, I was told by some non-Hindi speakers people in the south that they preferred using English to Hindi for political reasons.
China has even more language diversity than the USA, but their offical lanuage is Chinese. Putong Hua specificaly is the offical dialect, which is the Chinese spoken in Beijing.
Listen to Hu Jin Tao. He speaks the proper Chinese.
Correct, Ontario has no official language. However, services in either English or French must be made available in any community that has speakers of the respective language of at least 5% of the population. Also, all government publications must be in English and French, as well as the published proceedings of Queen’s Park (the provincial Parliament), and MPPs are permitted to address Parliament in either English or French (only). Most traffic signs posted by the province are in both English and French.
Of course, Ontario is a province, and thus not really relevant to the OP. As noted several times in this thread, Canada has two official languages, which makes them both acceptable in all provinces, Quebec’s attempts to the contrary notwithstanding.
Thanks for explaining why this continues.
It’s not uncommon for someone in a developing country to speak five or six languages- the language of their household, the language of the government, another large established language (English, usually), a religious language and a few local lanagauges used in travel and trade.
When I worked in Gabon, which has something like 48 languages among a population of only 1.5 million, my field assistants belonged to at least four different ethnic groups speaking four different languages. I’m sure there were even more groups represented among the project team. They all spoke French (the only official language) among themselves, only using native languages when speaking to a member of their own ethnic group.
I was surprised to find that my Spanish was actually more useful to me in Gabon than English, since there are some immigrants there from neighboring Equatorial Guinea, which was a Spanish colony and still uses Spanish (as well as French) as an official language.
I’m headed to Cameroon and it’s 235 languages in two weeks- should be quite a linguistic adventure.
What do you mean? French is the sole official language of Quebec, which I understand to mean that the provincial government is only obligated to offer services in French (although governmental publications and services are also usually available in English, it being a major non-official language in the province). (Of course, the fact that both languages are official in Canada might force the provinces to offer services in both of them, but I’ll wait for someone more fluent in constitutional law (say Northern Piper to confirm or infirm).
This said, really, what do you mean when you say that Quebec attempts to make some languages not acceptable (which is what I understand by your comments)?
Could you possibly construe Loi 101 in any other light? Such a discussion is clearly beyond the scope of GQ, but it’s disingenuous to suggest that the Quebec government had any other purpose than suppressing other languages in favour of French in enacting it.
And just because something is the “official language” it doesn’t necessarily mean much. You need some kind of legal definition of what the implications are. English is the official language of the state of California, but you’d never know it. I can’t think of anything significant that changed once that law was enacted. (I’m not making a value judgement, just stating a fact. It was a feel-good measure, AFAICT.) 
I have no idea how that winking smiley got there. I did not intend for it to be part of the post.