Regional language
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A regional language is a language spoken in a part of a country - it may be a small area, a federal state or province, or a wider area. It is often mistaken for a dialect.
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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 languages of sovereign states. For example, Catalan (a regional language of Spain and France, albeit official in Andorra) has more speakers than Finnish or Danish. Cantonese has more than 60 million local and overseas speakers, as a regional language of Guangdong and nearby areas in China.
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.
- Cantonese, a regional language of Guangdong, People's Republic of China (PRC), belongs to the same family of Chinese spoken variants as Mandarin (Putonghua) - the statewide official language of the PRC. Cantonese and Mandarin share the same ideograms and writing systems.
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:
- Cantonese, de facto official language of Hong Kong and Macao, is used as a regional language of the province of Guangdong, People's Republic of China;
- 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.
See also
- Minority language
- Languages of France
- Languages of the European Union
- British-Irish Council
- Languages in the United Kingdom
- List of Languages of Italybg:Регионален език
de:Regionalsprache et:Regionaalkeel fr:Langue régionale csb:Òbéndowi jãzëk kw:Yeth ranndiryel nl:Streektaal oc:Lengas minorisadas nds:Regionaalspraak pl:Język regionalny ro:Limba regională