Countries With More Than One Official Language

languages every time we talk about a country three things come to mind at least for me where their country is located what their flag is and what language they speak there are a ton of other characteristics that define a country obviously but these three seem specifically important to identify it in its culture there are over 6 500 languages in the world most of them are connected to each other in some form we have those cool family tree type charts where we can see this and if you want i can make a full video about it but usually we associate a single language with each country in france they speak french in germany german in japan japanese in this really cool map from budget direct we can see the most spoken language in each country which is the language we usually associate with the majority of countries we have the interesting cases of countries sharing languages like portuguese which is spoken in portugal brazil angola among other places spanish in spain and almost all of central and southern america or english in the united kingdom australia the united states of america or canada but canada is a great example that we can pick up for the point of this video because besides english being the most spoken language there is another french canada has two official languages and it's not the only country in the world to be like this in fact a really big number of countries in the world have more than one official language from what i could find and please correct me in the comments if i'm mistaken because there were a lot of different sources with different numbers about this there are 57 sovereign countries in the world with more than one official language 41 have two languages 11 have three four have four one south africa has eleven and another bolivia has 36. india's case was the most difficult to find a concrete answer to most places say they only have two official languages hindi and english other state no official language and others say all 22 local languages are seen as recognized by the constitution if you're from india and know the answer to this please leave a comment telling me keep in mind i'm referring to official languages this differs from locally used and recognized languages for instance indonesia also has over 700 languages but only indonesian is official and papua new guinea has 851 indigenous languages the most in the world but only four are official in some cases and perhaps india is one of those a few of these languages are recognized like portugal with mirandis a local language that is sparsely spoken in a small area of northeastern portugal recognized as such but not being taken as official and used in state documents etc in this video we're going to focus on the official multilingual countries so why why do some countries have more than one official language in the case of most countries it's because either at their origin or at their current time they want it slash needed to include different and large groups that made up their territory's population these groups might only diverge in language but usually that language difference also represents a different culture and including their languages as part of the official list contributes to their integration into the country and the sense of belonging to that same nation essentially when there is a large minority that speaks another language and would be disenfranchised if that language were just ignored in other cases it could come from colonialism imperialism foreign occupation areas in which those countries now exist which were under the control and administration of foreign powers and so those powers languages stuck around even after local independence the usage of portuguese spanish english and french in south america and africa especially are examples of that and for either of those two reasons or perhaps others like economic interest some countries have more than one official language so in order to better understand why this happens how it works and what some consequences of it might be let's take a brief look at a few specific cases throughout the world where this happens canada like we saw has two official languages english spoken by 75 of the population and french spoken by 22 percent in these three maps we can see which territories speak more of the two with french being heavily concentrated in the area of quebec the reason why is colonization canada's two colonizing peoples are the french and the british initially the british controlled parts of what is now newfoundland while french colonize modern day nova scotia new brunswick prince edward island and quebec eventually through war the english acquired all of french canada and it became their colony alone before reaching independence however the change in rulers did not change the population that was already there since the french arrived and because of that the local usage of the language continued until today in such a big dimension population wise that it is seen as a second official language of the country with all state documents and communications being made into two in afghanistan pashto and dari are both official languages and the two most widely spoken 78 percent speaks the first and 50 percent the latter so necessarily many people speak both dari is the official name of the variety of persian language spoken in afghanistan officially recognized and promoted since 1964 by the afghan government dadi has been the preferred language of government for centuries despite the domination of politics by pashtuns for whom pashto is their native language and who seemed to be the dominant native group of the region throughout history pashto is categorized as an eastern iranian language and some say it is often neglected in the education system which would adversely impact the economic advancement of pashtuns as students because they wouldn't have the ability to fully comprehend what is being taught in another language within each of them especially pashto there are a number of local dialects that vary between them the turkish language is spoken by around four percent of the population and they are also a third official language but only locally where they have majority of speakers east timor speaks a lot of languages in this map we can see it clearly they speak five papuan languages and around 20 astronesian ones in addition to portuguese indonesian and english the papuan and astronesian ones have to do with the native people those are their languages and dialects portuguese is because the region was a portuguese colony indonesian because of the proximity to indonesia and economic ties also because of the previous occupation that they had in english just because of the international usage of it i guess timur's 2002 constitution states that portuguese and tetun are east timor's two official languages also defining english and indonesian as working languages within civil service side by side with official languages as long as deemed necessary datum is the most spoken out of all native languages accounting for between 36 to 42 of the population under portuguese rule all education was in portuguese although it coexisted with tatum and other languages portuguese particularly influenced the dialect of tetum spoken in the capital of dili which is now the version more widely used and taught in schools under indonesian occupation from 1976 to 99 istamor's official language was indonesian so that partly stuck around too a good example of why some countries have more than one official language in this case that of the natives and old colonial rulers kenya is also a good example of the language of the colonizer still being used along with that of the natives english and swahili although swahili is the main language and cameroon is an even bigger example with several recognized national languages but with the only two official ones being french and english a heritage of cameroon's colonial past as a colony of both france and the united kingdom 8 out of the 10 regions of cameroon are primarily francophone representing 83 percent of the country's population and two are anglophone representing 17 although the english-speaking population continues to become smaller year after year with french becoming the main language the nation strives towards bilingualism but in reality very few cameroonians are literate in both french and english and 28 are literate in neither speaking one of the native languages which range between 250 and 600 different dialects wrapping up the examples for officially bilingual countries morocco which speaks arabic and zamasit 91 speak moroccan arabic while 26 percent speak a dialect of the amazigh language french was spoken during colonial times and is still seen as a main language of the country despite not being officially recognized as such it retains a major place in morocco it's taught universally and serves as the country's primary language of commerce economics culture science and medicine also being widely used in education and government and morocco is a member of the francophone the association of countries with french as their lingua franca portuguese speaking countries have a similar organization the cplp which gathers countries with portuguese is their official language moving on to a few trilingual countries belgium is an example with three official languages dutch french and german dutch is mostly spoken in flanders french mostly spoken in velonia and german in these small provinces bordering germany even though the belgian constitution does not explicitly mention which languages have official status article 4 divides the country into linguistic areas which form the basis of the federal structure belgium has four linguistic areas the french speaking area the dutch speaking area the bilingual area of brussels capital and the german-speaking area bolivia is another example with three main languages aymara kechua and spanish aymara and kechua due to the native population and the fact these two are mostly among many other smaller dialects their native languages while spanish was the language of the colonizers an impact that lasted until today however despite these three being the main ones the bolivian constitution actually makes no difference between them and all the native ones which are 36. this technically makes the pluri national state of bolivia the country in the world with the most official languages but when i saw this i thought okay in practice they're not official as they're not all in official documents something that would be completely impractical however they offer a solution which proves me wrong in point 2 of article 5 of their constitution it states the pluri national government and the departmental government must use at least two official languages one of them must be spanish and the other shall be determined taking into account the use convenience circumstances necessities and preferences of the population as a whole or the territory in question so always spanish and at least one of the native languages bosnia defines bosnian croatian and serbian as their official languages bosnian is the language of the bosnian natives of course and the other two are used due to the fact that many people live there who are croatian or serbian given the proximity of these two countries and the fact that at many points in history they have been united under the same rulers and here we can see a negative consequence of this multilingual choice according to some the official recognition of the three distinct languages led to a costly triumvirate system of public administration public broadcasting and education everything has to be done into three languages and this makes everything more expensive i'm not sure if in practice this is the case if there are any people from bosnia watching please feel free to clarify this in the comments but for instance some mps apparently complain if they don't receive all documents written entirely in their own language according to local media reports bosnia has an additional issue of essentially being separated in two between bosnia eras govinda and the publica spriska both have the three languages as official but the first prioritizes bosnian while the other prioritizes serbian equatorial guinea is an odd example of making languages official apparently simply so they can join the international language communities they have spanish portuguese and french as the official ones but many say they only added portuguese to join the cplp and french to join francophonie and have the economic advantages of dealing more closely with those groups of countries with the two languages not actually being spoken throughout the country spanish however is the language of the colonizers and has been an official language since 1844 it's still the language of education administration 67 of the country speaks it especially those living in the capital luxembourg is similar to belgium but as french german and luxembourgish as its three official languages upon the founding of the country french enjoyed the greatest prestige and therefore gained preferential use as the official and administrative language german was used in the political field to comment on the laws in order to make them comprehensible to everyone at the primary school level teaching was limited to german while french was taught in secondary education a law of 1843 reinforced bilingualism by introducing the teaching of french in primary school luxembourgish is similar to dutch and german and was introduced in 1912 from my perhaps wrong understanding it's essentially german as a local dialect of luxembourg which uses for instance many loanwords from french in this case the multilingual choice stems from the historic location of the country between france and germany and counting with populations of both of these regions new zealand officially speaks english maori and new zealand's sign language english is due to colonialism and is the de facto main language of the country spoken by almost everyone the language of the indigenous maori people was made the first du jour official language in 1987. all state signs and documents apparently use both languages it can for example be used in legal settings such as in courts but proceedings are recorded in english unless requested new zealand sign language has been an official language since 2006 and regarding the use of sign languages on the list i used only new zealand and papua new guinea recounted as having their sign language being official but according to worldatlas.com 41 countries worldwide now recognize a type of sign language as being official an important additional reason to add another official language papua new guinea is the most linguistically diverse country in the world with over 839 live languages and they make sure to point out that these aren't just dialects or variants of bigger groups stating that they're literally individual languages but while these 839 are recognized only four have official status talk bizin english irimotu and papua new guinea sign language talkpizzin is an english-based creole it's the most widely spoken serving as the country's lingua franca it also derives some vocabulary from german as a result of previous german colonial occupation english is spoken due to colonialism and the international importance of the language while irimotu is one of the native languages as well spoken by around 4.7 percent of the population and papua new guinea sign language became the fourth officially recognized language in may of 2015. singapore has four official languages english chinese malay and tamil english is the de facto main language while malai is the de jour main language english became the lingua franca due to british rule of singapore the three others were chosen to correspond with the major ethnic groups present in singapore at the time mandarin had gained status since the introduction of chinese schools malai was deemed the most obvious choice for the malay community and tamil for the largest indian ethnic group in singapore in addition to being the language with the longest history of education in malaysia and singapore almost all singaporeans are bilingual since singapore's bilingual education policy promotes a dual language learning system a good consequence that can perhaps take place in countries that choose to have more than one official language perhaps offering an advantage to its people when compared to neighboring countries that only teach their own native language at school switzerland speaks four languages but really only three and mostly two german french italian and romance but german and french are the most spoken with only a small number speaking italian and almost none speaking romance german french and italian maintain equal status as official languages at the national level while romance is used in dealing with people that speak it the swiss came up with a good solution to avoid a problem we saw the bosnians have of having to translate everything into three latin is used on the coins of the swiss franc and swiss stamps writing the country name as alvetia the reason why these languages are spoken has to do with the official languages of the cantons that make up the swiss confederation each with more proximity to germany france or italy other than bolivia and perhaps india the country with the most official languages is south africa at least 35 languages indigenous to the region are spoken in the country 10 of which are official the 11th language is english which is the primary language used in parliamentary and state discourse the most common language spoken as a first language by south africans izulu followed by shosa and afrikaans english is the fourth most common language but is understood in most urban areas as the dominant one in government and the media the reasoning here seems simple the 35 languages are those of the people historically native to the region with the 10 most spoken being official while english was the language of the european colonizers sticking around due to the established government institutions so that's why some countries use more than one language which countries those are how some have two official languages others three others four and with a couple of them having even more not to mention the hundreds of other local languages language for ryan's or local dialects that are spoken and even sometimes recognized as indigenous or local languages even if they are not official and taking a look at a few key examples throughout the world that allow us to better understand why countries are sometimes bilingual multilingual and what that means and how it impacts the functioning of said nations thanks so much for watching this video let me know in the comments if you noticed any mistakes or if you have any additional information about this like other interesting cases of multilingual countries that i didn't mention subscribe if you want and i will see you next time for more general knowledge

Channel: General Knowledge

Views: 438,522

Keywords: generalknowledge, funwithflags, countriesthatdon'texist

Id: PyYZnHlensE

Length: 18min 24sec (1104 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 30 2021