Official Languages As Regional Languages
An official language of a country may also be spoken as a regional language in a region of a neighbouring country. For example:
- Afrikaans, an official language of South Africa, is a regional language of Namibia.
- Cantonese, one of the official languages in Hong Kong and Macau (both special administrative regions of the People's Republic of China), is used as a regional language of the province of Guangdong, People's Republic of China.
- Catalan, the official language of Andorra, is a regional language in Spain (Catalonia, Balearic Islands and Valencian Community), France (Pyrénées Orientales) and Italy (Alghero).
- German, an official language of Austria, Belgium, Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Switzerland, is a regional language in Italy (South Tyrol), Poland (Silesia), France (Alsace and Lorraine) and Denmark.
- Hungarian, a Uralic language and official in Hungary, is a regional language of Romania whose official language, Romanian is a Romance language.
- Irish, the first official language of Ireland, is a regional language in the UK (Northern Ireland).
- Korean, the official language of Korea, is a regional language in People's Republic of China (Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture).
- Russian, the official language of the Russian Federation and Belarus, is a regional language of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and other entities.
- Turkish, the official language of Turkey and Cyprus, is a regional language of Kosovo.
Read more about this topic: Regional Language
Famous quotes containing the words official and/or languages:
“I thought it altogether proper that I should take a brief furlough from official duties at Washington to mingle with you here to-day as a comrade, because every President of the United States must realize that the strength of the Government, its defence in war, the army that is to muster under its banner when our Nation is assailed, is to be found here in the masses of our people.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)
“The less sophisticated of my forbears avoided foreigners at all costs, for the very good reason that, in their circles, speaking in tongues was commonly a prelude to snake handling. The more tolerant among us regarded foreign languages as a kind of speech impediment that could be overcome by willpower.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)