In his Language Wars (2011) Henry Hitchins lists eight nations which do not have an official primary language. This number has now reduced to five, with Ethiopia, Somalia and Pakistan all nominating official languages.
- UK see here
- USA though 20 states now have an official language — see here
- Australia 80 % speak English but not official
- Pakistan Urdu became the official language in 2015
- Ethiopia Amharic, though there are more Oromo speakers
- Somalia Somali and Arabic
- Eritrea
- Costa Rica
Why these countries? (5 minute read)
The English Language — Fun Facts & FAQ Teaching Pack — only £1.99
Ethiopia does have an official language: Amharic. They also guarantee first language education up to grade 6 for all minority languages. Post secondary education must be conducted in English.
ReplyDeleteThe U.K is not one country!
ReplyDeleteUK is considered to be a country consisted of few states/parts. It is a federation of those states. That means those states have some form of authonomy. In UK, England does NOT have authonomy, it is ruled directly by UK parliament, but for example Scotland and Northern Ireland DO have some kind of authonomy. The level of authonomy is vastly different, even in UK. Scotland has higher level of authonomy than N. Ireland does (not sure to what degree though). For easier explanation, compare UK to USA, it is the same principe. One country consists of more "independent" states. And other type to that would be confederation, where literal states form some union (in past it used to be Czechoslovakia or Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth). Other federations would be: USSR, Mexico, Austria-Hungary empire. If some names are incorect, it might be a bad translation from my language to English and I am sorry to confuse you that way
DeleteThank you for this interesting input, Tomas. England has an unusual position in the UK because it has a far greater population than the other nations. Until recently most English people saw English & British identity as effectively identical but this is changing as a result of devolution, Brexit etc. An 'English parliament' is still a long way off but more discussed than before. Btw - a revised version of this article (with video is available here:https://medium.com/english-language-faq/which-countries-do-not-have-an-official-language-1d2385633f8f. You may also be interested in this: https://www.englishlanguagefaqs.com/2016/08/why-is-english-not-official-language-of.html
DeleteThis is more complex than it appears. The UK is a union of nations but also functions as single country. For example, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland all participate in as individual nations in the World Cup. In the Olympics they merge in a single Great Britain team.
ReplyDeleteGood input
ReplyDelete