Multilingual countries
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Multilingual countries are countries which have plural number of official languages. The most common reasons for this are;
- A country is comprised of one or more historic "nations" of people
- Recognition of cultural heritage
- Mass immigration
- Political reasons
In addition, many countries have "de facto" common languages not recognised by the state.
[edit] Examples
- Belgium (French, Dutch, German)
- Canada (English, French)
- Finland (Finnish, Swedish)
- India (Hindi, Bengali, English, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Assamese, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi, Kashmiri, Sanskrit, Sindhi)
- New Zealand (English, Māori, Sign language)
- Switzerland (German, French, Italian, and Romansh)