Regional Language

DEFINITION IN INTERNATIONAL LAW

For the purposes of the European Charter For Regional Or Minority Languages :

"regional or minority languages" means languages that are:

#''traditionally used within a given territory of a State by nationals of that State who form a group numerically smaller than the rest of the State's population; and ''
#''different from the official language(s) of that State''

INFLUENCE OF NUMBER OF SPEAKERS

There are many cases when a regional language can claim greater numbers of speakers than certain languages which happen to be Official Language s of sovereign states. For example, Catalan (a regional language of Spain and France , albeit official in Andorra ) has more speakers than Finnish or Danish .

RELATIONSHIP WITH OFFICIAL LANGUAGES

In some cases, a regional language may be closely related to the state's main language or official language. For example:

Walloon , a regional language of France and Belgium , belongs to the same family of Oïl Languages as French ;

Scots , a regional language of Scotland and Ireland , belongs to the same family of West Germanic Languages as English .

Frisian , a regional language of The Netherlands and Germany , belongs to the same language family as Dutch and German

Võro , a regional language of Estonia , belongs to the same family of Finno-Ugric Languages as Estonian .

Tibetan is a regional language of the Tibet Autonomous Region of the People's Republic Of China , while Standard Mandarin Chinese is the statewide official language. Both languages are classified into the Sino-Tibetan Language Family .

In other cases, a regional language may be very different from the state's main language or official language. For example:

Basque , a regional language in Spain and France, is non- Indo-European , and therefore unrelated to Spanish or French , both Romance Languages ;

Sorbian , a regional language of Germany, is a Slavic Language , and therefore only distantly related to German, a Germanic Language .

OFFICIAL LANGUAGES AS REGIONAL LANGUAGES

An official language of a country may also be spoken as a regional language in a region of a neighbouring country. For example:

Catalan , the official language of Andorra , is a regional language in Spain , France and Italy ;

German , the official language of Austria , Belgium , Germany , Leichtenstein , Luxembourg and Switzerland , is a regional language of Italy and Denmark ;

Hungarian , a Finno-Ugric Language and official in Hungary , is a regional language of Romania whose official language, Romanian is a Romance language.

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Regional Language