Nowhere Recognized Minority Languages
The largest communities of speakers that of a language not recognized as a nation-wide official language anywhere:
- Punjabi language: 28 million speakers, regional status in Pakistan and India
- Javanese language: 80 million speakers, regional status in Suriname
- Marathi language: 60 million speakers, regional status in India
- Wu Chinese: 77 million speakers, no official status
- Cantonese: 70 million speakers, regional status in Hong Kong and Macau
- Chinese dialects other than Mandarin, Wu and Cantonese: Min (60 million), Gan (20-50 million), Hakka (34 million), Xiang (30-36 million); see identification of the varieties of Chinese
- Sindhi language: 60 million speakers, regional status in Pakistan and India
- Gujarati language: 40 million speakers, regional status in India
- Maithili language: 20 million speakers, regional status in India
- Pashto language: 45 million speakers, regional status in Afghanistan and Pakistan
- Kurdish language: 16-26 million speakers, regional status in Iraq
- Malayalam language: 52 million speakers, regional status in India
- Kannada language: 40 million speakers, regional status in India
- Telugu language: ≈90 million speakers, regional status in India
- Bhojpuri language: 35 million speakers, formerly considered a dialect of Hindi, in the process of being granted regional status on its own right in India
- Oriya language: 30 million speakers, regional status in India
- Sundanese language: 27 million speakers, regional status in West Java, Indonesia
- Oromo language: 25 million speakers, regional status in Ethiopia and Kenya
- Cebuano language: 20 million speakers, regional status in Central Visayas, Philippines
- Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo with close to 20 million speakers each are the major languages of Nigeria, all three with regional status, and none with majority status.
- Zhuang languages: 14 million speakers, regional status in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region
- Assamese language: 13 million speakers, regional status in India
- Madurese language: 13 million speakers, no official status
- Berber languages: 10 million speakers, no official status
- Lombard language: 9 million speakers, no official status, treated as an Italian dialect
- Uyghur language: 8-10 million speakers, regional status in Xinjiang
- Neapolitan language: 8 million speakers, no official status, treated as an Italian dialect
- Balochi language: 8 million speakers, regional status in Balochistan
- Ilokano language: 8 million speakers, regional status in Ilocos Region, Philippines
- Hiligaynon language: 7 million speakers, regional status in Western Visayas, Philippines
- Minangkabau language: 7 million speakers, no official status
- Krio: 6 millions speakers, de facto national language of Sierra Leone but without official status
- Bhili language: 6 million speakers, largest linguistic community of India without regional status
- Sicilian language: 5 million speakers, no official status
- Hmong language: 4 million speakers, no official status
- Yiddish language: 3 million speakers, no official status
- Silesian language: 2 million speakers, no official status
- Aramaic language: 2 million speakers, no official status
- Yi language: 2 million speakers, no official status
- American Sign Language: 500,000 to 2 million signers, many states recognize as a "foreign language" for educational purposes; some recognize as a language of instruction in schools.
Read more about this topic: Minority Language
Famous quotes containing the words recognized, minority and/or languages:
“There are no new truths, but only truths that have not been recognized by those who have perceived them without noticing. A truth is something that everybody can be shown to know and to have known, as people say, all along.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“If when a businessman speaks of minority employment, or air pollution, or poverty, he speaks in the language of a certified public accountant analyzing a corporate balance sheet, who is to know that he understands the human problems behind the statistical ones? If the businessman would stop talking like a computer printout or a page from the corporate annual report, other people would stop thinking he had a cash register for a heart. It is as simple as that—but that isn’t simple.”
—Louis B. Lundborg (1906–1981)
“No doubt, to a man of sense, travel offers advantages. As many languages as he has, as many friends, as many arts and trades, so many times is he a man. A foreign country is a point of comparison, wherefrom to judge his own.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)