A minority language is a language spoken by a minority of the population of a territory. Such people are termed linguistic minorities or language minorities. With a total number of 193 sovereign states recognized internationally (as of 2008) and an estimated number of roughly 5,000 to 7,000 languages spoken worldwide, it follows that the vast majority of languages are minority languages in every country in which they are spoken. Some minority languages are simultaneously also official languages, including the Irish language (Gaelic) in the Republic of Ireland. Likewise, some national languages are often considered minority languages, insofar as they are the national language of a stateless nation.
Read more about Minority Language: Politics, Lacking Recognition in Some Countries, Nowhere Recognized Minority Languages, Languages Having No Majority Worldwide, Lawsuits
Famous quotes containing the words minority and/or language:
“What characterizes a member of a minority group is that he is forced to see himself as both exceptional and insignificant, marvelous and awful, good and evil.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“Surrealism is not a school of poetry but a movement of liberation.... A way of rediscovering the language of innocence, a renewal of the primordial pact, poetry is the basic text, the foundation of the human order. Surrealism is revolutionary because it is a return to the beginning of all beginnings.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)