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List of official languages

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Official languages of sovereign countries

Contents

Afrikaans:

  • South Africa (with English, Ndebele, Northern Sotho, Sotho, Swazi, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa, Zulu)

Albanian:

Arabic:

Armenian:

Assamese:

  • India (with English, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi, Kashmiri, Sindhi, Sanskrit)

Aymara:

  • Bolivia (with Spanish and Quechua)
  • Peru (with Spanish and Quechua)

Azeri:

Bahasa Indonesia:

Belarusian:

Bengali:

  • Bangladesh
  • India (with English, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Assamese, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi, Kashmiri, Sanskrit, Sindhi)

Bislama:

Bosnian:

Bulgarian:

Catalan:

Chinese:

Croatian

Czech:

Danish

Dari:

Dhivehi:

Dutch:

Dzongkha:

English:

Estonian:

Fijian

Filipino:

Finnish:

French:

Frisian:

Georgian:

German:

Greek:

Guaraní

Gujarati:

Haitian Creole:

Hebrew:

Hindi

  • India (with English and 14 other languages)
  • Fiji (with English and Bau Fijian; known constitutionally as Hindustani as an umbrella term to cover Urdu, as well as Hindi.)

Hiri Motu:

Hungarian:

Irish Gaelic is the national and first official language of:

Italian:

Japanese:

Kannada:

  • India (with English, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Malayalam, Oriya, Punjabi, Assamese, Kashmiri, Sindhi, Sanskrit)

Kashmiri:

  • India (with English, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi, Assamese, Sindhi, Sanskrit)

Kazakh:

Khmer:

Korean:

Kurdish:

Kyrgyz:

Lao:

Latvian:

Lithuanian:

Macedonian:

Malay:

  • Malaysia (also known as Bahasa Melayu, with English, Tamil and Chinese)
  • Brunei
  • Singapore (with English, Tamil and Chinese)

Malayalam:

  • India (with English, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi, Assamese, Kashmiri, Sindhi, Sanskrit)

Māori:

  • New Zealand (English is official by custom but not by law)

Marathi:

  • India (with English, Bengali, Telugu, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi, Assamese, Kashmiri, Sindhi, Sanskrit)

Moldovan (asserted by nationalists to be distinct from Romanian; most linguists remain skeptical):

Mongolian

Ndebele:

  • South Africa (with Afrikaans, English, Northern Sotho, Sotho, Swazi, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa, Zulu)

Nepali:

Northern Sotho:

  • South Africa (with Afrikaans, English, Ndebele, Sotho, Swazi, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa, Zulu)

Norwegian:

  • Norway (two official written forms - Bokmål and Nynorsk)

Oriya:

  • India (with English, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Punjabi, Assamese, Kashmiri, Sindhi, Sanskrit)

Pashtu:

Persian:

Polish:

Portuguese:

Punjabi:

  • India (with English, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Oriya, Assamese, Kashmiri, Sindhi, Sanskrit)

Quechua

  • Bolivia (with Spanish and Aymara)
  • Peru (with Spanish and Aymara)

Romanian:

Rhaeto-Romansh:

Russian:

Sanskrit:

  • India (with English, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi, Assamese, Kashmiri, Sindhi)

Serbian:

Sindhi:

  • India (with English, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi, Assamese, Kashmiri, Sanskrit)

Sinhala:

  • Sri Lanka (with Tamil, and with English as a link language)

Slovak

Slovene:

Somali:

Sotho:

  • South Africa (with Afrikaans, English, Ndebele, Northern Sotho, Swazi, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa, Zulu)

Spanish:

Swahili:

Swazi:

  • Swaziland (with English)
  • South Africa (with Afrikaans, English, Ndebele, Northern Sotho, Sotho, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa, Zulu)

Swedish:

Tajik:

Tamil:

  • Malaysia (with English, Malay and Chinese)
  • Singapore (with Malay, English and Chinese)
  • India (with English, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Urdu, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi, Assamese, Kashmiri, Sindhi, Sanskrit)
  • Sri Lanka (with Sinhala, and with English as a link language)

Telugu:

  • India (with English, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi, Assamese, Kashmiri, Sindhi, Sanskrit)

Tetum:

Thai:

Tok Pisin:

Tsonga:

  • South Africa (with Afrikaans, English, Ndebele, Northern Sotho, Sotho, Swazi, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa, Zulu)

Tswana:

  • South Africa (with Afrikaans, English, Ndebele, Northern Sotho, Sotho, Swazi, Tsonga, Venda, Xhosa, Zulu)

Turkish:

Turkmen:

Ukrainian:

Urdu:

  • India (with Hindi, English, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi, Assamese, Kashmiri, Sindhi, Sanskrit)
  • Pakistan

Uzbek:

Venda:

  • South Africa (with Afrikaans, English, Ndebele, Northern Sotho, Sotho, Swazi, Tsonga, Tswana, Xhosa, Zulu)

Vietnamese:

Xhosa:

  • South Africa (with Afrikaans, English, Ndebele, Northern Sotho, Sotho, Swazi, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Zulu)

Zulu:

  • South Africa (with Afrikaans, English, Ndebele, Northern Sotho, Sotho, Swazi, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa)

Official languages at the level of state or provincial unit only

Aranese see Occitan

Basque:

Cantonese:

Catalan:

Chipewyan:

Cree:

Dogrib:

English:

Galician:

NOTE: Whether Galician is in fact a language, or a dialect of Portuguese, is a matter of debate among linguists.

Gwich'in:

Hawaiian:

  • Hawai'i (co-official with English in the state of Hawai'i)

Inuktitut:

Inuvialuktun:

  • Nunavut (with English, French, and Inuktitut)
  • Northwest Territories (included in Inuktitut; with Chipewyan, Cree, Dogrib, English, French, Gwich'in, and Slavey)

Occitan (Aranese):

Rusyn:

  • Vojvodina (with Croatian, Serbian, Romanian, Hungarian, Slovak)

Sami:

  • Finland (in four municipalities)
  • Norway (in six municipalities)
  • Sweden (in four municipalities and surrounding municipalities)

Slavey:

Spanish:

Tahitian:

Tibetan:

  • Tibet (with Chinese (Mandarin))
  • Aba (with Chinese (Mandarin))
  • Garzê (with Chinese (Mandarin))
  • Diqing (with Chinese (Mandarin))
  • Wenshan (with Chinese (Mandarin))
  • Gannan (with Chinese (Mandarin))
  • Haibai (with Chinese (Mandarin))
  • Hainan (with Chinese (Mandarin))
  • Huangnan (with Chinese (Mandarin))
  • Golog (with Chinese (Mandarin))
  • Gyêgu (with Chinese (Mandarin))
  • Haixi (with Mongolian and Chinese (Mandarin))
  • Muli (with Chinese (Mandarin))
  • Tianzhu (with Chinese (Mandarin))

Uyghur:

Yiddish:

Zhuang:

A map of official languages: (note: source is CIA World Factbook. Countries that include several official languages only use one, often to avoid adding languages to the chart unnecessarily, preventing confusion. In showing de facto as well as de jure official languages, the map employs a looser definition of "official language" than that used in this article.) Official Languages Maps

See also