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[edit] East Timor and Eritrea?

Given that the article states that working languages are used by supra-national groups, bodies, etc., why are East Timor and Eritrea, both countries, listed?

Either they should be removed, or else we might as well add in a whole long list of multi-lingual nations, including for example the United States, where Spanish could be considered a working language, especially in those states where it is not an official language. -- Eliyahu S ^Talk 07:34, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Working languages

How many working languages has Europe? Why does the page say there are only three working languages if all European official languages are working languages?

Council Regulation No. 1 of 15 April 1958 determining the languages to be used by the European Economic Community, as amended after each enlargement:

Article 1

The official languages and the working languages of the institutions of the Union shall be Czech, Danish, German, Greek, English, Spanish, Estonian, Finnish, French, Hungarian, Italian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Maltese, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Slovak, Slovenian, and Swedish.

http://europa.eu/languages/en/chapter/33

"Although Regulation No 1/58 does not clarify the difference between official language and working languages, experts tend to define the official languages of the Community as those used in communications between the institutions and the outside world, and working languages of the Community as those used between institutions, within institutions and during internal meetings convened by the institutions (Labrie, 1993: 82)."

http://www.uemilano.it/multilinguismo/multilinguismo_unione_europea_en.htm

"An analysis of the internal rules and consolidated linguistic practices in all the organisations that make up the political framework of the Union revealed the following picture: there is a group of organisations in whose internal activities the working languages coincide with the eleven official languages, and a second group which has limited the number of its internal working languages."

http://www.uemilano.it/multilinguismo/multilinguismo_unione_europea_en.htm

The United Nations has six official languages (Arabic, Chinese, French, Spanish, English, and Russian) and TWO working languages (English and French) http://www.un.org/Depts/DGACM/faq_languages.htm 128.135.229.183 20:06, 11 April 2007 (UTC)