Talk:List of states with language politics

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Articles for deletion This article was nominated for deletion on 24/7/2006. The result of the discussion was no consensus.

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[edit] Early discussion

The problem with this article (and especially the "rankings") is that it takes a an extremely multidimensional issue and tries to analyze it along one dimension. The results are inevitably absurd. For example, I'm an Anglo Quebecer. In one sense of the word, the situation here is EXTREMELY serious, as it threatens to destroy what we know of as Canada. However, in a much more important dimension, the situation is a ridiculously minor one, as the Canadian/Québecois mentality and manner of dealing with the whole situation is, by world standards, so incredibly pacifist. The absolute worst it ever got was the 1970 October Crisis, where the FLQ, a radical separatist faction took two captives hostage, and (somewhat unintentionally) murdered one. I also believe that a postman was killed by a bomb that was placed in a mailbox. This episode was so shocking to even the "mainstream" separatist Parti Québécois that in the strongest of terms they immediately condemned the acts as barbaric, and took every measure to ostracize the FLQ and brand them as so absolutely "un-Québecois". Contrast this with the situation in Israel, which is considered serious. Well of course it's serious. The violence and bloodshed is constant. But can this possibly be described a "linguistic" problem? Language has absolutely nothing to do with the violence, if anything, it's the most minor of issues. In fact, with Jews coming in from every corner of the world, speaking so many dozens of different languages, language just isn't a contentious issue. It's taken as a given that there will always inevitably be linguistic differences among Isrealis, but they couldn't care less. In fact, along with Hebrew, Arabic is one of the two official languages. Why? Because it's situated in an Arabic speaking neighbourhood, and it just makes sense. Israeli Jews speak Hebrew and Arabs speak Arabic. Language is simply a non-issue there. So which situation has a more "serious" problem between different linguistic groups? Québec or Israel?

I actually think that the premise of this article is a very good one, and it has the potential to be very informative. Yet as it's written now, it's quite oversimplistic and quite poor, and worst of all, quite misleading. Loomis 23:30, 22 September 2006 (UTC)


This article is very POV - especially the minor/serious "rankings" bit.

It is trying hard to be NPOV. (a) There's nothing POV about noting that language is, or is not, a factor in a country's politics. Some bilingual countries get on quite happily (e.g. the Swedish speaking minority in Finland); others are constantly at each other's throats (e.g. Flemings and Walloons in Belgium). (b) The rankings are judgements, but I've tried to ground them in objective facts. There is a difference between the situation in Canada/Quebec, where language issues threaten the dissolution of the country, and the situation in France/Brittany, where a lot of people would like to see more Breton around, but no-one actually speaks it and Breton nationalists only get derisory votes in elections. We have to try to express those differences. seglea 06:08, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)

very well put. Xah P0lyglut 06:10, 2003 Dec 13 (UTC)

I added Norway to the list of countries. While there is little controversy about the spoken languages (Norwegian and Lappish) there are some controversy about the two Norwegian written languages, bokmål and nynorsk. The official terms (according to the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs) are "Dano-Norwegian" (bokmål) and "New-Norwegian" (nynorsk), but even using these terms on the english wikipedia entry on Norwegian Language led to discussions about POV (see discussion page). We are in fact having quite a heathed debate on the Norwegian wiki at the time being, about whether or not we should have seperate wikis, use both languages on the same wikipedia (again divided by those who want to write in both languages in the same article and those who thinks everybody should be able to change it back and forth) or just stick with the most used language, bokmål (used by 85% of the Norwegian population). Maybe I should have graded it "moderate" instead of "moderate-to-minor", but it's not something that everybody care to discuss (except that kids have to learn both languages at school). :) Mendalus 04:50, 21 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Is there any reason why Australia is on the list? Fardell (talk) 02:34, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

There is also the problem of small language groups that are rapidly disappearing. This shows up more as an academic issue because linguistics is rapdily losing its base of languages for comparison as a few major languages take over the world. Its not seen as a political issue only because the groups involved are small and politically powerless. For example, in Canada language issues focus on English/French, but a lot of First Nations languages have disappeared or are close to it. The difference is that the First Nations are scattered into many small diverse groups and have relatively little economic and political power. Edmilne 04:59, Dec 21, 2003 (UTC)

[edit] VfD

    • I think that's an abuse of the concept of NPOV. There are plenty of badly needed articles that are inevitably going to be writing about areas where there are strong differences of opinion; what we have to do is to record the existence and severity of those differences, without taking up a position on them. It would be NPOV if we asserted which language was the important one, or something like that. I put the article up because in editing pages about Belgium I found I needed somewhere to link to for linguistic disputes (existing references were to linguistics - jump there to see how ridiculous that is). The best thing of course would be if we had a set of articles like the very fair Spanish in the United States - my longterm hope is that this list would link to such articles, which would explain what the difficulty is in each case.
    • Keep. i think this article is useful. Situations like English/French in Quebec or Mandarin/Taiwanese in Taiwan is a gravity of war, not trivia. Xah P0lyglut 06:33, 2003 Dec 13 (UTC)
    • Keep. Article looks balanced and neutral to me, as well as useful. Spellbinder 06:44, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)
    • Keep, but consider eliminating the assessments of gravity, as that seems very subjective. -Anthropos 06:48, Dec 13, 2003 (UTC)
      • The level of gravity might be, but the level of conflict it engenders is relatively easy to judge.209.102.126.52 06:54, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)
    • Keep. Seems to be neutral article. The "gravity assessments" could be tricky but do add something to the article. I suspect language is political issue in every country where more than one language is spoken, ie almost every country in the world. Are there any completely monolingual countries? I cannot think of one off hand. ping 07:16, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)~
    • Delete. I can't think of a major country where language isn't a political issue. So this page will become a list of the world's countries, with an essentially arbitrary assessment of how contentious or political language issues are there. -- Finlay McWalter 13:18, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)
      • I'm afraid Finlay is probably correct. There may be a place for an article on contentious issues related to languages, but this is not it. Delete - Marshman 17:33, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)
      • Delete. Language is a political issue everywhere and I agree that it does seem like a rather arbitrary ranking. I'd rather see a page that actually listed some of the notable cases of language being a political issue, but without any ranking.
    • Keep. The gravity thing is too subjective, but the article as a whole is useful. moink 18:04, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)
      • Agreed. Keep, would lead off to a number of very interesting articles. I think the gravity assessments should be removed. I would argue that for any country mentioned in this article language disputes should by definition be a fairly serious matter and worthy of a proper article on the subject. I would remove France and the UK from that list. I suspect language issues are pretty much settled in New Zealand and Switzerland but I'm not sure. :ChrisG
    • Keep and add to Cleanup. The list itself has the fatal flaw of using a single word to describe each conflict. The political issue in Belgium is "serious"? Really? That imparts no information whatsoever. If nobody volunteers then VfD again in a few weeks. Tempshill 19:34, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)
      • The meaning of "serious" is explained on the page. It therefore only "imparts no information" if you've forgotten the definition by the time you read the list. Onebyone 20:01, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)
    • Language in New Zealand is not a huge issue but it is certainly not settled and there is always the potential that it could flare up. Apart from the obvious Maori/English issue which will always be with us there is the question of the changing demographics due to immigration. Auckland particularly has an increasing polyglot population; in the last three years it has become common to see advertisements etc wholly in Asiatic languages. There is also an increasing Somali population. Add this to the pre-existing populations of Tongan, Samoan and Cook Island Maori speeking people and it becomes clear that Auckland is a very complex linguistic mixture. Presumeably there are many other cities in the same situation.

Meanwhile I have been assured by experts that language is always a political issue. ping 07:27, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)

    • Is anyone going to disagree if I point out that English vs. Welsh is a controversial issue in Wales? Or that Japan has no controversy over language? That's not POV. Wiwaxia 23:29, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)
      • In Japan there is tension over the status of the Ryukyu dialects/languages and of the Ainu language. Ireneshusband 06:27, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
    • I won't disagree with you and I agree your statment is very neutral. I don't think neutrality is the real issue here despite some of the comments. The difficulty is in setting limits on the subject, e.g. where would Singapore fit on the list. With three seperate races, Malay, Chinese and Indian, they made English the official language so no one race has a linguistic advantage. In solving a political problem did they remove themselves from the list? ping 08:07, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)
      • There's seems no consensus to delete, so I've delisted this from VfD and put it on Cleanup. Angela. 10:17, Jan 7, 2004 (UTC)

I don't know the situation that well, but are we sure that the situation in Belgium warrants a serious categorisation? i.e. that the unity of the country is threatened or that terrorism or violence is involved? Belgium has been a stable country for several centuries now, and I don't see evidence of threatened separation. DJ Clayworth 18:34, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I don't see why the situation in France was ranked as serious, and I de-ranked it to minor. The little terrorism that exists in Corsica, for instance, as little grassroot support (as demonstrated by the defeat of the independantists in regional elections and the local referendum turning down proposals for more autonomy). David.Monniaux 16:13, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Changed again to fit definitions in the article. Clarified as being local issue only. -- Naive cynic 15:44, Oct 3, 2004 (UTC)
Hmmm. I don't know any single part of France where there is terrorism or strife caused by language issues. First, there is no terrorism in Brittany unless you count the ridiculous stunts of some Breton nationalist groups as terrorism. Second, the problems in Corsica are not so much a problem of language as complex problems of mafias, subsidies, local politics and Corsican cultures. Third, the problems in the Basque Country are rather on the Spanish side. David.Monniaux 11:01, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)


The article itself has potential, but I am shocked and offended by its phrasing. Problematic, serious, friction, gravity, threaten, contained, intensely seriously, etc. Might I remind that self-determination is something deemed legitimate by the UN and the international community? The desire for freedom can be something else than a product of friction, than a threat: it can, on the contrary, be a sign of newfound confidence and a quest for dignity. Why do we so seldomly speak in such cataclysmic terms about the violent conquests that lead to many of these nations being annexed by other nations, whether it be Scotland, or Quebec, or others?

Also, someone would have to explain to me how the devil the situation in Quebec is moderate, serious in past when the approval is now higher than in the past (i.e.: 50% in a poll from the end of June 2004) and that a referendum is planned by the independentists. Unless this is is just a list about terrorism and not independentist fervor.

So, we have to drastically and urgently change the terminology in this slanted article. --Liberlogos 14:28, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I am rather more positive than you about the article. Friction is really a matter of fact, whatever are the reasons behind it: quest of dignity, newfound confidence, or ethnically disguised economic conflicts. A "threat" to the unity of a country is a matter of fact as well. So, the topic can thus be objective (maybe not currently perfect as such) and can be very useful, notably to know where language is an issue and how the issue is dealt with. Some countries could improve the way they deal with the language issue by looking at how other countries deal with it. Dividing a country is an option, cultural and language tolerance is another. --Edcolins 21:30, Aug 7, 2004 (UTC)

How come there is not a single African country mentioned in this list? I hope I'll find the time to do some research, but there are at least 10 that definitely should be listed here, and probably many more. This must be a case of the systemic bias of Wikipedia. - Strangeloop (talk) 13:15, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Switzerland doesn't only have two languages! It has 4. German, French, Italian and Rumantch!

Well, if I recall, most countries in Africa (and South Asia for that matter) are extremely multilingual and multiethnic, and use one or a few linguæ francæ as a second language to intercommunicate, usually Arabic or a language native to Europe. (Though some local languages such as Amharic, Berber, Oromo, Swahili, Tigrinya, etc. are also used as regional linguæ francæ) So, it's almost never a case of just two or three languages to dispute over, but rather dozens or hundreds. However, I do recall that there seems to be some controversy in some Maghreb region countries about whether Berber should be recognized as a national language. Also, during the dictatorship period in Ethiopia, if I recall, Amharic was forced as the national language (can someone verify this)? But I think maybe a reason why African linguistic politics are so seldom discussed is because many people simply do not study them. That in itself could be a result of bias, but it means that an exclusion of mention comes from lack of study, and not deliberate exclusion. (So let's all study! ^_^) - Gilgamesh 00:01, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I removed Vietnamese from the list. I don't see how it can be viewed as a serious issue when Canada's is viewed as moderate. As far as I know, most people living in Vietnam speak Vietnamese as a first language (87%) and the rest speak Vietnamese as a second language. Nobody has raised the issue of language as a political issue.

I think the problem with this article is that it confuses language as being a point of political debate and political debate as being a source of violence. For example, the situation in Canada is classified as "moderate, serious in the past", presumably because terrorism existed in the 60/70s and does not exist anymore. However, from a political point of view, the situation is as serious as ever, and definitely more than in Belgium. If the classification is an indication of the level of violence, it is not clear and does not belong there; if it is an indication of political relevance, it is not well done and should be corrected.

I'm going to change Canada's status to "serious." It may be "confined" to Quebec, but as that province has almost 25% of the country's people and has flirted with secession, it's definitely a serious issue. Funnyhat 20:26, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Languages in Spain

All Spanish official languages at regional level, namely, Catalan, Galician, Basque, were forbidden by Franco's dictatorship in any public event or media during nearly 40 years time . This lack of recognition for these Spain's languages ended when a unprecedented democratic political and social transition took place in the 1970s. Since then, Catalan, Basque and Galician recovered their official status in their respective regions. These languages have achieved such a recognition in Spain that the Spanish Government even tried to make them also official in the European Union institutions in 2005. Catalan, Galician and Basque languages are part of the primary and secondary educational schedules across these regions, to the extent that, for instance, Catalan is the common language in most of Catalonia's schools and universities. The number of taught hours of both Castilian's (so called Spanish) and regional 's literature and language lessons is the nowadays debate between the Central and the regional Autonomous Governments.

it's interesting that, turkey with its issues with kurdish people and the kurdish language, is absent on the list.

[edit] Kurdish in Turkey/Iran/Iraq/Syria

Kurdish is official only in Iraq, and there are severe restrictions on its use in public life and Eduaction in Turkey and Iran and Syria.Heja Helweda 02:18, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Historical issues

A list of states where language (and nationalism based on language) was issue could be useful, encyclopedic and not much disputed. Examples: Austria-Hungary (and before Austrian Empire) - very serious issue, on border of civil war, Czechoslovakia dtto, Finland and Russian language and so on. Pavel Vozenilek 13:19, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bizarre Problems.....

While the list of states shows the severity of the language problems in each country, it does not go into any detail about the problem, and many of the articles on the countries (i.e. Estonia, Bahrian) mention nothing of a language problem in the country's article. Plus, there are no souces in this article.--ikiroid | (talk) 18:15, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree completely. If you are going to list Bahrain as having "serious Arabic/Persian language problems", then it needs to be discussed in more detail & supported by sources. This page provides no sources, and the Bahrain article as you said doesn't mention any language difficulties. Maybe there are such serious difficulties, and then again maybe the author(s) of this page are blowing some minor issue way out of proportion. Since I'm nowhere near Bahrain, then without sources or details provided, I've got no way to tell. --SJK 00:41, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
This article is fit for the bin. No references, POV, tries to compare apples and oranges, no explantions, smacks of original research, if not personal musings ("this sounds good"), and the criteria are contradictory. . What does one find out when they read "Country X - serious". What does that tell a reader?--Merbabu 00:37, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree that this article is pretty disappointing at the moment, but the idea behind it is a good one. However, as many people have said already, the ranking system is a snake pit. It cannot avoid being so compromised by personal opinion and political agendas as to make it pretty useless. For one thing, it makes disputes not mentioned in the list appear relatively unimportant. Since the current list only touches a tiny fraction of the total number of disputes over language in the world today (I could double its length just from the bits and pieces already in my head, and given a couple of days research I bet I could make it five or ten times as long) that is a serious problem. I mean let's face it, the List of states where language is NOT a political issue wouldn't exactly be a long one. I bet they even get steamed up in the Vatican about Italian vs. everything else—and you know how handy some of those cardinals can be with a stiletto…

What I personally would find useful would be a "List of political disputes about language" (although a more precise title would be needed to exclude controversies about foul language in the Australian parliament and such). What I have in mind would simply be a list of wikilinks organised (for the most part) geographically. The links could be to articles specifically about the particular issue or dispute (e.g. Spanish in the United States), whether the article had yet been written or not, or they could be to other articles mentioning the dispute, such as those about a particular language, a particular nation, a particular city or a particular nationalist or separatist movement. Inevitably this would be an enormously long list, so splitting it up into shorter lists arranged by, say, continent might be the way to go. Ireneshusband 07:12, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Shouldn't we mention Ukrainian in Moldova

If we are going to mention the dispute about the difference between Romanian and Moldovan, shouldn't we definitely mention that there are lots of Ukrainian speakers (in Transnistria)? Evilbu 20:26, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Iran ?

Don't know about the other countries , but about Iran , that's an original research : Indeed language is not a serious or moderate problem in Iran : some one can say that's important for a few people , but that's not serious .--Alborz Fallah 14:11, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Anyway, I change the Iran's status to Minor , because by definition ,language issues are the concern of a small minority of the population (though those people may take them very seriously.)--Alborz Fallah 07:21, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
Maybe Minor to moderate is more correct .--Alborz Fallah 07:26, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Violations of Wikipedia policies

This article is in clear violation of both WP:OR and WP:V. The biggest problem is the ratings assigned to each country.

Although there was no consensus during the previous deletion discussion, a majority of editors favouring "keep" in that discussion also supported removing the subjective and unsourced "Assessments of gravity". A review of this discussion page shows that many editors in the past have also raised concerns time and time again with violations of WP:NPOV and the policies mentioned above. Editors who have defended the article typically depend on arguments that are straight out of Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions (e.g. "it's useful"). Moreover, the article's edit history shows that editors often revise the serious, moderate and minor ratings based on their own personal opinions -- no sources are ever provided, and the ratings remain unverifiable.

I don't propose that we delete the article. But I do believe that it is essential that the "assessments of gravity" section be deleted, along with the rating for each country. The article would still be lacking sources, but at least the most pressing problem would have been addressed.Skeezix1000 19:17, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Given that the rankings were clearly in violation of WP:V and WP:OR, I removed them pursuant to WP:BOLD after no response over 4 days. I'm not sure that WP:BOLD is particularly applicable, though, given that editors have been calling for the removal of the rankings since 2003.

Obviously, assessments of the gravity of the situations in individual countries can be added to the article as long as they are properly sourced and referenced. Skeezix1000 20:51, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] all of them, silly

language is a political issue in every country on earth. This list as it stands is plain silly. What material we have should be merged into language politics. The article belongs {{prod}}ed, and pending that redirected to list of countries. dab (𒁳) 20:23, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

a more reasonable solution, maybe, is moving this to a title that actually makes sense. dab (𒁳) 20:25, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Second that. IMHO, one can argue that language is a political issue in Nepal also. maybe some sysop will come and AfD it. --Click me! 17:10, 1 August 2007 (UTC) --Click me!

First, the recent title of the article, "List of issues in language and politics", made no sense. The original title, " List of states where language is a political issue", wasn't great, but it was certainly a lot better. I am not sure why the recent title was even chosen -- it's a misnomer. The article isn't a list of issues. It's a list of states where language is a political issue. I have changed the title to something more accurate -- I will fix the double redirects shortly.

Second, it is a debatable point as to whether or not language is a significant political issue in every country. Maybe it is, but that really should be a point of discussion.

I disagree with the merge with Language politics -- that article does not need to be messed up with this list. This list is not in great shape, and even if it could be improved, there are many many cases where lists are kept as separate articles from the substantive article on the same point.

Merging the article with List of countries makes even less sense.

I'm no fan of this article, but it was already the subject of a formal AfD process, and there was no consensus to delete it. That does not mean that deletion cannot be proposed again, but certainly the comments in the prior AfD should first be considered. Skeezix1000 12:05, 2 August 2007 (UTC)