Definition of Official Language

A language is considered official in a nation when it is thus expressed in the text constitutional. In this sense, not all the languages ​​of a country are official and, on the other hand, not all countries have a language of an official nature. However, in practice all nations have one or more languages ​​that serve for the communication administrative, for the educational field and for the communication of its inhabitants.

In the world there are more than 7000 different languages, but only some of them have this status legal. There is no one rule general on the officiality of languages, as each nation has its own approach. Thus, in France there is an official language, but in its territory different languages ​​are spoken.

The same happens in countries like Nigeria, Argentina or Germany, where there is a common and official language and, at the same time, others that are spoken by minority groups of population (For example, in Argentina Guaraní, Aymara and other vernacular languages ​​are spoken and none of them are official).

The case of Spain and Mexico

According to Constitution Since 1978, Castilian or Spanish is the official language of the entire national territory. At the same time, the constitution itself indicates that there are other co-official languages, such as Catalan, Basque and Galician. Other languages ​​spoken in the Spanish territory do not have this recognition, as is the case with Aranese, Caló or Castúo.

Although Spanish is the majority language among Mexicans, there is no explicit legal recognition that affirms that it is the official language of the nation. Among the minority languages ​​we can highlight Chol, Chinantec, Huastec, Mayan and Nahuatl.

Official languages ​​at the UN and UNESCO

Six languages ​​are officially used at UN meetings: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish. UNESCO uses a total of nine languages, the previous six plus Bengali, Swahili and Portuguese.

Certain countries express more than one official language

In Paraguay there are two official languages, Spanish and Guaraní. Since 2015 in Puerto Rico, Spanish is the first official language and English is the second language of the country. In Switzerland, a country of 41,000 square km, there are four national languages ​​(German, French, Italian and Romansh) and the same is true in Singapore, where English, Malay, Mandarin and tamil. Three languages ​​are spoken in Belgium (Dutch in its Flemish variety, French and German) and all of them are official. In Madagascar there are two official languages, Malagasy and French.

Photos: Fotolia - Jessicahyde / Ivan Nikulin