query: where is german an official language?

title: Official language

text: both English and Hindi. The selection of an official language (or no official language) is often contentious. An alternative to having a single official language is "official multilingualism", where a government recognizes multiple official languages. Under this system, all government services are available in all official languages. Each citizen may choose their preferred language when conducting business. Most countries are multilingual and many are officially multilingual. Taiwan, Canada, Philippines, Belgium, Switzerland, and the European Union are examples of official multilingualism. This has been described as controversial and, in some other areas where it has been proposed, the idea has been

title: German language

text: German language German ( ) is a West Germanic language that is mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official or co-official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Tyrol (Italy), the German-speaking Community of Belgium, and Liechtenstein. It is also one of the three official languages of Luxembourg and a co-official language in the Opole Voivodeship in Poland. The languages which are most similar to German are the other members of the West Germanic language branch: Afrikaans, Dutch, English, the Frisian languages, Low German/Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, and Yiddish. There are also strong similarities in vocabulary

title: Official language

text: language with government agencies. German is the official language of Germany. However, its minority languages include Sorbian (Upper Sorbian and Lower Sorbian), Romani, Danish and North Frisian, which are officially recognised. Migrant languages like Turkish, Russian and Spanish are widespread, but are not officially recognised languages. Hong Kong has two official languages: English and Chinese. Hong Kong Cantonese is used in daily conversation and Traditional Chinese used to be the common Chinese writing system in Hong Kong. English is considered as second language of most of the Hong Kongers. Since 1997 handover, Hong Kong's written official spoken Chinese language are

title: Official Language Act (Quebec)

text: Official Language Act (Quebec) The Official Language Act of 1974 (French "Loi sur la langue officielle"), also known as Bill 22, was an act of the National Assembly of Quebec, commissioned by Premier Robert Bourassa, which made French the sole official language of Quebec, Canada. Provincial desire for the Official Language Act came after the repeal of Bill 63. It was ultimately supplanted by the Charter of the French Language (also known as Bill 101) in 1977, which imposed French as the only language for advertising and education (with many exceptions). The legislation was drafted in an attempt to follow

title: Romansh language

text: Forces attempted to introduce Romansh as an official language of command between 1988 and 1992. Attempts were made to form four entirely Romansh-speaking companies, but these efforts were abandoned in 1992 due to a lack of sufficient Romansh-speaking non-commissioned officers. Official use of Romansh as a language of command was discontinued in 1995 as part of a reform of the Swiss military. Grisons is the only canton of Switzerland where Romansh is recognized as an official language. The only working language of the Three Leagues was German until 1794, when the assembly of the leagues declared German, Italian, Sursilvan, and

title: Dutch language

text: Dutch language Dutch is a West Germanic language spoken by around 23 million people as a first language and 5 million people as a second language, constituting the majority of people in the Netherlands (where it is the sole official language) and Belgium (as one of three official languages). It is the third most widely spoken Germanic language, after its close relatives English and German. Outside the Low Countries, it is the native language of the majority of the population of Suriname where it also holds an official status, as it does in Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten, which are

title: Official language

text: official languages. The Northwest Territories has eleven official languages. All provinces, however, offer some necessary services in both English and French. Canadian advocates of a single official language say it promotes national identity. In Canada, debate has focused on whether the local majority language should be made the exclusive language of public business. In the Canadian province of Quebec, for example, laws restrict the use of the minority English in education, on signs, and in the workplace. According to the Finnish constitution, Finnish and Swedish are the official languages of the republic. Citizens have the right to communicate in either

title: National language

text: offices where a university degree is required. The constitution also grants the Sami and the Roma peoples the right to maintain and develop their languages: The Sami have partial right to use Sami languages in official situations according to other laws. French is the official language of France, according to Article 2 of the French Republic's constitution. The official and national language of Germany is Standard German, with over 95% of the country speaking Standard German or German dialects as their first language. Haiti's official languages are Haitian Creole and French. While French is the language used in the media,

title: German language

text: dialect of a specific region but as a written language. However, there are places where the traditional regional dialects have been replaced by new vernaculars based on standard German; that is the case in large stretches of Northern Germany but also in major cities in other parts of the country. It is important to note, however, that the colloquial standard German differs greatly from the formal written language, especially in grammar and syntax, in which it has been influenced by dialectal speech. Standard German differs regionally between German-speaking countries in vocabulary and some instances of pronunciation and even grammar and

title: Romansh language

text: Romansh language Romansh (also spelled Romansch, Rumantsch, or Romanche; Romansh: , "rumàntsch", or ) is a Romance language spoken predominantly in the southeastern Swiss canton of Grisons (Graubünden), where it has official status alongside German and Italian. It is used as the medium of instruction in schools in Romansh-speaking areas. Romansh has also been recognized as a national language of Switzerland since 1938, and as an official language since 1996, along with German, French and Italian. It is sometimes grouped by linguists with Ladin and Friulian as a Rhaeto-Romance language, though this is disputed. Romansh is one of the descendant

title: German language

text: in the Low German area are Hamburg and Dortmund. The Low Franconian dialects are the dialects that are more closely related to Dutch than to Low German. Most of the Low Franconian dialects are spoken in the Netherlands and in Belgium, where they are considered as dialects of Dutch, which is itself a Low Franconian language. In Germany, Low Franconian dialects are spoken in the northwest of North Rhine-Westphalia, along the Lower Rhine. The Low Franconian dialects spoken in Germany are referred to as Meuse-Rhenish or Low Rhenish. In the north of the German Low Franconian language area, North Low

title: German language

text: is considered to be an important step towards the evolution of the Early New High German. It aimed to be understandable to a broad audience and was based mainly on Central and Upper German varieties. The Early New High German language gained more prestige than Low German and became the language of science and literature. Around the same time, the Hanseatic League, based around northern ports, lost its importance as new trade routes to Asia and the Americas were established, and the most powerful German states of that period were located in Middle and Southern Germany. The 18th and 19th

title: French language

text: ignored) and legal contracts; advertisements must bear a translation of foreign words. In Belgium, French is the official language of Wallonia (excluding a part of the East Cantons, which are German-speaking) and one of the two official languages—along with Dutch—of the Brussels-Capital Region, where it is spoken by the majority of the population often as their primary language. French is one of the four official languages of Switzerland (along with German, Italian, and Romansh) and is spoken in the western part of Switzerland, called Romandy, of which Geneva is the largest city. The language divisions in Switzerland do not coincide

title: German Sign Language

text: have a legal entitlement to Sign Language interpreters when communicating with federal authorities, free of charge. Very few television programs include an interpreter; those that do are the news and a news "round-up". There is at least one programme conducted entirely in German Sign Language called "Sehen statt Hören" (Seeing Instead of Hearing), a documentary-style programme produced by the Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR) and broadcast on Saturday mornings on Bayerischer Rundfunk and the other regional state broadcasters in Germany. German Sign Language is unrelated to spoken German. While spoken German builds sentences following a "subject – verb – object" pattern, German

title: German-speaking Switzerland

text: German-speaking Switzerland The German-speaking part of Switzerland (, , , ) comprises about 65 percent of Switzerland (North Western Switzerland, Eastern Switzerland, Central Switzerland, most of the Swiss Plateau and the greater part of the Swiss Alps). The variety of the German language spoken in Switzerland is called Swiss German which refers to any of the Alemannic dialects and which are divided into Low, High and Highest Alemannic. The only exception within German-speaking Switzerland is the municipality of Samnaun where an Austro-Bavarian dialect is spoken. German is the sole official language in 17 Swiss cantons (Aargau, Appenzell Ausserrhoden, Appenzell Innerrhoden,

title: German Sign Language

text: German Sign Language German Sign Language or Deutsche Gebärdensprache is the sign language of the deaf community in Germany and in the German-speaking community of Belgium. It is often abbreviated as DGS. It is unclear how many use German Sign Language as their main language; Gallaudet University estimated 50,000 in 1986. The language has evolved through use in deaf communities over hundreds of years. Germany has a strong oralist tradition and historically has seen a suppression of sign language. German Sign Language was first legally recognised in "The Federal Disability Equality Act (2002)" in May 2002. Since then, deaf people

title: German Sign Language

text: is not related to Austrian Sign Language, which is used in parts of southern Germany, nor to Swiss Sign Language, both of which are part of the French Sign Language family, though they have had some influence from German Sign Language. Everyday users of German Sign Language use no written form of the language. In academic contexts, German Sign Language is usually described with the Hamburg notation system or HamNoSys. SignWriting also has its adherents in Germany. The grammar of German Sign Language may be described in terms of the conventional linguistic categories phonology, morphology, morphosyntax and syntax. Signs are

title: German language

text: If a narrow definition of language based on mutual intelligibility is used, many German dialects are considered to be separate languages (for instance in the Ethnologue). However, such a point of view is unusual in German linguistics. The German dialect continuum is traditionally divided most broadly into High German and Low German, also called Low Saxon. However, historically, High German dialects and Low Saxon/Low German dialects do not belong to the same language. Nevertheless, in today's Germany, Low Saxon/Low German is often perceived as a dialectal variation of Standard German on a functional level even by many native speakers. The

title: Language Management

text: of interconnection (airports, parking lots, ...). The Internet, finally, produces commercial exchanges indifferent to linguistic frontiers, and virtual communities, like Wikipedia, are where the participants speaking different languages can dialog and exchange information and knowledge. International institutions, governments, and firms are faced with language management needs. In international institutions, languages can have different statutes: Official language or work language. Plenty of states have multiple official languages in their territory: This is the case: in Belgium (Dutch, French, German) in Switzerland (German, French, Italian, Romansch) in Canada (French and English) in numerous African countries, and in Luxembourg (French, German, Luxembourgish) In

title: German language

text: Germany either. The traditional varieties there are Low German, whereas Standard German is a High German "variety". Because their linguistic distance to it is greater, they do not mesh with Standard German the way that High German dialects (such as Bavarian, Swabian, Hessian) can. German is a member of the West Germanic language of the Germanic family of languages, which in turn is part of the Indo-European language family. The German dialects are the traditional local varieties; many of them are hardly understandable to someone who knows only standard German, and they have great differences in lexicon, phonology and syntax.

title: Romansh language

text: Surmiran, a minor intermediate dialect. Following a referendum on March 10, 1996, Romansh was recognized as a partial official language of Switzerland alongside German, French, and Italian in article 70 of the federal constitution. According to the article, German, French, Italian, and Rhaeto-Romansh are national languages of Switzerland. The official languages are declared to be German, French, and Italian, and Rhaeto-Romansh is an official language for correspondence with Romansh-speaking people. This means that in principle, it is possible to address the federal administration in Romansh and receive an answer in the same language. In what the Federal Culture Office itself

title: Pennsylvania German language

text: word "Dutch"; compare German ('German'), Dutch ('German'), ('Dutch'), which once referred to any people speaking a non-peripheral continental West Germanic language on the European mainland. Speakers of the dialect today are primarily found in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and other Midwestern states of the United States, and in Ontario in Canada. Historically, the dialect was also spoken in several other regions where its use has either largely or entirely faded. The practice of Pennsylvania German as a street language in urban areas of Pennsylvania (such as Allentown, Reading, Lancaster, and York) was declining by the arrival of the 20th century, while

title: Danish language

text: Greenlandic population has Danish as their first language; a large percentage of the native Greenlandic population speaks Danish as a second language since its introduction into the education system as a compulsory language in 1928. Danish was an official language in Iceland until 1944, but is today still widely used and is a mandatory subject in school taught as a second foreign language after English. In addition, a noticeable community of Danish speakers is in Southern Schleswig, the portion of Germany bordering Denmark, where it is an officially recognized regional language, just as German is north of the border. Furthermore,

title: German Sign Language

text: the exception of verbs) can be topicalised by being moved to the beginning of the sentence and marked with raised eyebrows. Often, a topic doesn't otherwise have any other role in the sentence. In these cases, it represents a limitation of the scope of the sentence. Compare the following three sentences. German Sign Language German Sign Language or Deutsche Gebärdensprache is the sign language of the deaf community in Germany and in the German-speaking community of Belgium. It is often abbreviated as DGS. It is unclear how many use German Sign Language as their main language; Gallaudet University estimated 50,000

title: German language

text: was declared its standard definition. The (literally, German stage language) had established conventions for German pronunciation in theatre (Bühnendeutsch) three years earlier; however, this was an artificial standard that did not correspond to any traditional spoken dialect. Rather, it was based on the pronunciation of Standard German in Northern Germany, although it was subsequently regarded often as a general prescriptive norm, despite differing pronunciation traditions especially in the Upper-German-speaking regions that still characterize the dialect of the area today – especially the pronunciation of the ending as [ɪk] instead of [ɪç]. In Northern Germany, Standard German was a foreign language

title: German Sign Language

text: 18th century; it is related to manual alphabets used across Europe and in North America. Regional variants of German Sign Language include Hamburg, Berlin, and Munich sign. Sign languages of regions in the former East Germany have a greater divergence from sign languages of the western regions; some may be unrelated. Polish Sign Language is descended from German Sign Language. Israeli Sign Language may be as well, as it evolved from the sign language used by German Jewish teachers who opened a school for deaf children in Jerusalem in 1932, and still shows some resemblance to its German counterpart. It

title: The Awful German Language

text: The Awful German Language "The Awful German Language" is an 1880 essay by Mark Twain published as Appendix D in "A Tramp Abroad". The essay is a humorous exploration of the frustrations a native speaker of English has with learning German as a second language. Twain made his first unsuccessful attempt to learn German in 1850 at age fifteen. He resumed his study 28 years later in preparation for a trip to Europe. Upon his arrival in Germany, the fruit of this recent scholarship was attested to in the advice of a friend: "Speak in German, Mark. Some of these

title: Swiss-German Sign Language

text: Sign Language ("Langage gestuel suisse"). The former just means 'natural sign', like those for "sleep" or "eat", in contrast to "Abstrakte Gebärden" 'conceptual sign', and so the term is no longer used. Most English sources today uses the term "German-Swiss Sign Language" or "Swiss-German Sign Language". Wittmann (1991) suspects that Swiss-German Sign Language may be part of the French Sign Language family, but it is not close and this is not easy to demonstrate. In Switzerland, the parentage of this language is still in research. Research on whether DSGS could be a derivative of the German Sign Language (DGS) is

title: German Namibians

text: Germany lost its colonial possessions, including South West Africa (see History of Namibia); after the war, the former German colony was administered as a South African mandate. The German settlers were allowed to remain and, until independence in 1990, German remained an official language of the territory alongside Afrikaans and English. Today, English is the country's sole official language, but about 30,000 Namibians of German descent (around 2% of the country's overall population) and possibly 15,000 black Namibians (many of whom returned from East Germany after Namibian independence) still speak German or Namibian Black German, respectively. However, the numbers of

title: Swiss-German Sign Language

text: Swiss-German Sign Language Swiss-German Sign Language (German: "Deutschschweizer Gebärdensprache", abbreviated DSGS) is the primary deaf sign language of the German-speaking part of Switzerland and of Liechtenstein. The language was established around 1828. In 2011 it was estimated that 7,500 deaf and 13,000 hearing people use DSGS. There are six dialects which developed in boarding schools for the deaf, in Zurich, Bernese, Basel, Lucerne, and St. Gallen, as well as in Liechtenstein. In Switzerland, the language is called "Gebärdensprache" ("sign language") if a distinction from other languages is not required. Some sources call it "Natürliche Gebärden" or "Natürliche Gebärdensprache", or Swiss

title: Official multilingualism

text: are the local Kirundi language as well as the colonial French. Cameroon is extremely diverse linguistically and uses English and French as official languages. In Canada English and French have special legal status over other languages in Canada’s courts, parliament and administration. At the provincial level, New Brunswick is the only official bilingual province, while Quebec is the only province where French is the sole official language. The remaining provinces have English as the only official language. In practice, all provinces, including Quebec, offer some bilingual services and some education in both official languages up to the high school level.

title: German language

text: at least some knowledge of German. In Europe, German is the second most widely spoken mother tongue (after Russian) and the second biggest language in terms of overall speakers (after English). The area in central Europe where the majority of the population speaks German as a first language and has German as a (co-)official language is called the "German Sprachraum". It comprises an estimated 88 million native speakers and 10 million who speak German as a second language (e.g. immigrants). Excluding regional minority languages, German is the only official language of It is a co-official language of the Although expulsions

title: German language

text: three years and other estimated parameters. According to a 2012 survey, 47 million people within the EU (i.e., up to two thirds of the 75–100 million worldwide) claimed to have sufficient German skills to have a conversation. Within the EU, not counting countries where it is an official language, German as a foreign language is most popular in Eastern and Northern Europe, namely the Czech Republic, Croatia, Denmark, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Sweden and Poland. German was once and, to some extent, is still, a lingua franca in those parts of Europe. Standard German originated not as a traditional

title: Official language

text: third with 26 countries and Spanish is fourth with 19 countries, Portuguese is the official language of 9 countries and German is official in 6. Some countries—like Australia, United Kingdom and the United States—have no official language recognized as such at national level. On the other extreme, Bolivia officially recognizes 37 languages, the most by any country in the world. Second to Bolivia is India with 23 official languages. South Africa is the country with the most official languages, all at equal status to one another, in the world. As Bolivia gives primacy to Spanish and India gives primacy to

title: German language in Namibia

text: English as a working language of the government. Only in 1984 would German officially be added as an official language. After independence in 1990, English became the sole official language of Namibia, and German thus lost its official status, but German today continues to be used in a wide range of spheres of Namibian life. German is more widely used than may be assumed by its lack of official status. About 31,000 Namibians speak German as a mother tongue, and several tens of thousands of Namibians, either white native speakers of English or Afrikaans or well-to-do black Namibians, speak German

title: Official language

text: to the government in their native languages. In countries that do not formally designate an official language, a "de facto" national language usually evolves. English is the most common official language, with recognized status in 51 countries. Arabic, French, and Spanish are also widely recognized. An official language that is also an indigenous language is called "endoglossic", one that is not indigenous is "exoglossic". An instance is Nigeria which has three endoglossic official languages. By this the country aims to protect the indigenous languages although at the same time recognising the English language as its lingua franca. Around 500 BC,

title: Official language

text: languages in Pakistan. Pakistan has more than 60 languages. 52 of them are types of Punjabi. Russian is the official language of the Russian Federation and in all federal subjects, however many minority languages have official status in the areas where they are indigenous. One type of federal subject in Russia, republics, are allowed to adopt additional official languages alongside Russian in their own constitutions. Republics are often based around particular native ethnic groups, and are often areas where ethnic Russians and native Russian-language speakers are a minority. South Africa has eleven official languages that are mostly indigenous. Due to

title: Official language

text: a hurricane, pandemic, or...another terrorist attack". Professor of politics Alan Patten argues that disengagement (officially ignoring the issue) works well in religious issues but that it is not possible with language issues because it must offer public services in some language. Even if it makes a conscious effort not to establish an official language, a "de facto" official language, or the "national language", will nevertheless emerge. Indeed, two-thirds of Americans believe that English is the United States' official language. Sometimes an official language definition can be motivated more by national identity than by linguistic concerns. When Yugoslavia dissolved in 1991,

title: German language

text: translations of Latin originals; as a result, the surviving texts are written in highly disparate regional dialects and exhibit significant Latin influence, particularly in vocabulary. At this point monasteries, where most written works were produced, were dominated by Latin, and German saw only occasional use in official and ecclesiastical writing. The German language through the OHG period was still predominantly a spoken language, with a wide range of dialects and a much more extensive oral tradition than a written one. Having just emerged from the High German consonant shift, OHG was also a relatively new and volatile language still undergoing

title: German language in Namibia

text: German language in Namibia Namibia is a multilingual country wherein German is recognised as a national language (a form of minority language). While English is the sole official language of the country since 1990, in many areas of the country German enjoys official status at a community level. German is especially widely used in central and southern Namibia and was until 1990 one of three official languages in what was then South West Africa, alongside Afrikaans and English. German is the main or mother tongue of about 30,000 Namibians, a number composed roughly equally of German Namibians as well as

title: German language in the United States

text: to Wisconsin did not develop into a leveled dialect form, like e.g. in South East Pennylvania, where Pennsylvania German as a leveled dialect emerged, but remained distinct. An urban legend, sometimes called the Muhlenberg legend after Frederick Muhlenberg, states that English only narrowly defeated German as the U.S. official language. In reality, the proposal involved a requirement that government documents be translated into German. The United States has no statutory official language; English has been used on a "de facto" basis, owing to its status as the country's predominant language. In Pennsylvania, which had a large German-American population, German was

title: German language in Namibia

text: (s.) Werft (w.) Winkel (m.) wundern (v.) wüst (adv.) zu (adv.) zünden (v.) German language in Namibia Namibia is a multilingual country wherein German is recognised as a national language (a form of minority language). While English is the sole official language of the country since 1990, in many areas of the country German enjoys official status at a community level. German is especially widely used in central and southern Namibia and was until 1990 one of three official languages in what was then South West Africa, alongside Afrikaans and English. German is the main or mother tongue of about

title: Official language

text: Official language An official language is a language given a special legal status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically a country's official language refers to the language used within government (judiciary, legislature, administration). Since "the means of expression of a people cannot be changed by any law", the term "official language" does not typically refer to the language used by a people or country, but by its government. About half the countries of the world have declared one or more official languages. The government of Italy officialised Italian only in 1999, and some nations (such as the

title: Official language

text: (according to Article 77 of the Satversme), the initiative, in fact, proposed discontinuing an existing state and establishing a new one that is no longer a nation-state wherein Latvians exercise their rights to self-determination, enjoying and maintaining their cultural uniqueness New Zealand has three official languages. English is the "de facto" and principle official language, accepted in all situations. The Māori language and New Zealand Sign Language both have limited "de jure" official status under the Māori Language Act 1987 and New Zealand Sign Language Act 2006 Urdu is the national language of Pakistan. Urdu and English both are official

title: Official language

text: differences and keep the country divided. The language used in Montenegro, traditionally considered a dialect of Serbian, became standardized as the Montenegrin language upon Montenegro's declaration (2006) of independence. Official language An official language is a language given a special legal status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically a country's official language refers to the language used within government (judiciary, legislature, administration). Since "the means of expression of a people cannot be changed by any law", the term "official language" does not typically refer to the language used by a people or country, but by its government.

title: Official language

text: languages of Taiwan. In 2012 debate over adopting Russian as a regional language in Ukraine caused "an all-out brawl in Parliament", protests, and the resignation of a lawmaker in attempt to block the bill. The de facto official language of the United Kingdom is English. In Wales, the Welsh language, spoken by approximately 20% of the population, has limited de jure official status.. English is the de facto national language of the United States. While there is no official language at the federal level, 32 of the 50 U.S. states and all six inhabited U.S. territories have designated English as

title: German language

text: areas where German is spoken. Due to the German diaspora as well as German being the second most widely spoken language in Europe and the third most widely taught foreign language in the US and the EU (in upper secondary education) amongst others, the geographical distribution of German speakers (or "Germanophones") spans all inhabited continents. As for the number of speakers of any language worldwide, an assessment is always compromised by the lack of sufficient, reliable data. For an exact, global number of native German speakers, this is further complicated by the existence of several varieties whose status as separate

title: German language

text: and Afrikaans was a co-official language of Namibia from 1984 until its independence from South Africa in 1990. At this point, the Namibian government perceived Afrikaans and German as symbols of apartheid and colonialism, and decided English would be the sole official language, claiming that it was a "neutral" language as there were virtually no English native speakers in Namibia at that time. German, Afrikaans and several indigenous languages became "national languages" by law, identifying them as elements of the cultural heritage of the nation and ensuring that the state acknowledged and supported their presence in the country. Today, German

title: German language

text: Duden is updated regularly, with new editions appearing every four or five years. , it is in its 27th edition and in 12 volumes, each covering different aspects such as loanwords, etymology, pronunciation, synonyms, and so forth.The first of these volumes, (German Orthography), has long been the prescriptive source for the spelling of German. The "Duden" has become the bible of the German language, being the definitive set of rules regarding grammar, spelling and usage of German. The ("Austrian Dictionary"), abbreviated , is the official dictionary of the German language in the Republic of Austria. It is edited by a

title: Official language

text: after unifying the country in 221 BC. Classical Chinese would remain the standard written language for the next 2000 years. Standardization of the spoken language received less political attention, and Mandarin developed on an "ad hoc" basis from the dialects of the various imperial capitals until being officially standardized in the early twentieth century. According to an undated chart by the American pro-English-only organization known as U.S. English, 178 countries have an official language at the national level. Among those, English is the most common with 67 nations giving it official status. French is second with 29 countries, Arabic is

title: German language

text: to most inhabitants, whose native dialects were subsets of Low German. It was usually encountered only in writing or formal speech; in fact, most of Standard German was a written language, not identical to any spoken dialect, throughout the German-speaking area until well into the 19th century. Official revisions of some of the rules from 1901 were not issued until the controversial German orthography reform of 1996 was made the official standard by governments of all German-speaking countries. Media and written works are now almost all produced in Standard German (often called , "High German") which is understood in all

title: Official language

text: the country had four official languages—Serbo-Croatian, Slovene, Albanian and Macedonian. Serbo-Croatian was used as a "lingua franca" for mutual understanding and was also the language of the military. When Croatia declared independence (1991) it defined its official language as Croatian, and Serbia likewise defined its official language as Serbian. Bosnia-Herzegovina defined three official languages: Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian. From the linguistic point of view, the different names refer to national varieties of the same language, which is known under the appellation of Serbo-Croatian. It is said by some that the Bosnian government chose to define three languages to reinforce ethnic

title: Official language

text: one, or the only, official language, while courts have found that residents in the 50 states do not have a right to government services in their preferred language. Public debate in the last few decades has focused on whether Spanish should be recognized by the government, or whether all business should be done in English. California allows people to take their driving test in the following 32 languages: Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Chinese, Croatian, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hmong, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Laotian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Samoan, Spanish, Tagalog/Filipino, Thai, Tongan, Turkish, and

title: Official Language Act (Quebec)

text: is misleading in that it suggests that English is not also an official language in Quebec, which it is by virtue of Section 133 of the BNA Act and the federal Official Languages Act. ... No legislation in the National Assembly proclaiming French the sole official language in the province can affect these bilingual areas protected by the BNA Act. John Ciaccia and George Springate were suspended from the Liberal caucus for almost two months in 1974 for voting with the Opposition when the Robert Bourassa government passed Bill 22. Official Language Act (Quebec) The Official Language Act of 1974

title: German language

text: extended only as far east as the Elbe and Saale rivers, the MHG period saw a number of these tribes expanding beyond this eastern boundary into Slavic territory (this is known as the "Ostsiedlung"). Along with the increasing wealth and geographic extent of the Germanic groups came greater use of German in the courts of nobles as the standard language of official proceedings and literature. A clear example of this is the "mittelhochdeutsche Dichtersprache" employed in the Hohenstaufen court in Swabia as a standardized supra-dialectal written language. While these efforts were still regionally bound, German began to be used in

title: Official language

text: United States) have never declared official languages at the national level. Other nations have declared non-indigenous official languages. "The Philippines and parts of Africa live with a peculiar cultural paradox. Although the official languages [in Africa] may be French or English, these are not the languages most widely spoken by [the country's] residents." Worldwide, 178 countries have at least one official language, and 101 of these countries recognise more than one language. Many of the world's constitutions mention one or more official or national languages. Some countries use the official language designation to empower indigenous groups by giving them access

title: German language

text: connotations from their Germanic counterparts and are usually perceived as more scholarly. The size of the vocabulary of German is difficult to estimate. The ("The German Dictionary") initiated by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm already contained over 330,000 headwords in its first edition. The modern German scientific vocabulary is estimated at nine million words and word groups (based on the analysis of 35 million sentences of a corpus in Leipzig, which as of July 2003 included 500 million words in total). The Duden is the "de facto" official dictionary of the German language, first published by Konrad Duden in 1880. The

title: German language in Namibia

text: and 1920 about half of the Germans were transferred out of the country. In 1920 Dutch (later to be superseded by Afrikaans) and English replaced German as the official languages of the country. The German-speaking population wished German to be reinstated as an official language and in 1932 the Treaty of Cape Town encouraged South Africa to do so. It was hoped that this would throw a spanner in the works against South Africa annexing South West Africa into the Union of South Africa. South Africa did not officially recognise German; however, de facto German was added to Afrikaans and

title: German language

text: One of the largest communities consists of the speakers of "", a variety of Low German, concentrated in and around Wartburg. The small town of Kroondal in the North-West Province also has a mostly German-speaking population. The South African constitution identifies German as a "commonly used" language and the Pan South African Language Board is obligated to promote and ensure respect for it. The community is strong enough that several German International schools are supported such as the Deutsche Schule Pretoria. In the United States, the states of North Dakota and South Dakota are the only states where German is

title: Official language

text: Cantonese and Mandarin, with spoken Chinese language are simplified and traditional. China's official language is Mandarin and Simplified Chinese which is used as the standard writing system. As time goes by, signage in simplified characters has gained some popularity in a few areas. Some Hong Kong companies may have changed the characters of the signs whilst nearly all Hong Kong people continue to use traditional characters. The Constitution of India (part 17) designates the official language of the Government of India as English as well as Standard Hindi written in the Devanagari script. The Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution

title: German language

text: association of citizens in the world. The VDS has more than thirty-five thousand members in over seventy countries. Its founder, statistics professor Dr. Walter Krämer, has remained chairperson of the association from its beginnings. The German state broadcaster is the equivalent of the British BBC World Service and provides radio and television broadcasts in German and 30 other languages across the globe. Its German language services are tailored for German language learners by being spoken at slow speed. also provides an website to learn German. German language German ( ) is a West Germanic language that is mainly spoken in

title: Official Language Act (Quebec)

text: the recommendations of the Commission of Inquiry on the Situation of the French Language and Linguistic Rights in Quebec. The act made French the official language in a number of areas: That English was an official language in Quebec as well, was declared on July 19, 1974, by McGill University law faculty's most expert counsellors, disputing Bill 22. The testifiers were Dean Frank R. Scott, John Peters Humphrey, chief planner of the United Nations' Declaration of Human Rights, Irwin Cotler and four additional legal teachers: Section 1, which provides that French is 'the official language of the province of Quebec,'

title: German language

text: spoken language. There is also an important German creole being studied and recovered, named , spoken in the former German colony of German New Guinea, across Micronesia and in northern Australia (i.e. coastal parts of Queensland and Western Australia), by a few elderly people. The risk of its extinction is serious and efforts to revive interest in the language are being implemented by scholars. Like French and Spanish, German has become a classic second foreign language in the western world, as English (Spanish in the US) is well established as the first foreign language. German ranks second (after English) among

title: German language

text: and 50% of businesses identifying these two languages as the most useful, respectively). German is an inflected language with four cases for nouns, pronouns and adjectives (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative), three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter), two numbers (singular, plural), and strong and weak verbs. German derives the majority of its vocabulary from the ancient Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family. A portion of German words are derived from Latin and Greek, and fewer are borrowed from French and Modern English. With slightly different standardized variants (German, Austrian and Swiss Standard German), German is a pluricentric language. It is also

title: Official language

text: main teaching language is Hebrew, English is taught as a second language, and most students learn a third language, usually Arabic but not necessarily. Other public schools have Arabic as their main teaching language, and they teach Hebrew as a second language and English as a third one. There are also bilingual schools which aim to teach in both Hebrew and Arabic equally. Some languages other than Hebrew and Arabic, such as English, Russian, Amharic, Yiddish and Ladino enjoy a somewhat special status, but are not considered to be official languages. For instance, at least 5% of the broadcasting time

title: German language

text: umlauts and not capitalizing nouns): The use and learning of the German language are promoted by a number of organisations. The government-backed (named after the famous German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe) aims to enhance the knowledge of German culture and language within Europe and the rest of the world. This is done by holding exhibitions and conferences with German-related themes, and providing training and guidance in the learning and use of the German language. For example, the teaches the German language qualification. The Dortmund-based , which was founded in 1997, supports the German language and is the largest language

title: The Orissa Official Language Act, 1954

text: Official Language Act, 1954 is the Orissa Act 14 of 1954 which received the assent of Governor on 1 October 1954 and was published in the Orissa Gazette on 15 October 1954. This section has been inserted by the Amendment Act 1963 which states about Continuance of English language for use in Legislature: The Orissa Official Language Act, 1954 The Orissa Official Language Act, 1954 is an Act of Odisha Legislative Assembly that recognizes Oriya(Odia) "to be used for all or any of the official purposes of the State of Orissa." Article 345 of the Constitution of India empowers the

title: German language

text: with Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, although those belong to the North Germanic group. German is the second most widely spoken Germanic language, after English. One of the major languages of the world, German is the first language of almost 100 million people worldwide and the most widely spoken native language in the European Union. Together with French, German is the second most commonly spoken foreign language in the EU after English, making it the second biggest language in the EU in terms of overall speakers. German is also the second most widely taught foreign language in the EU after English

title: Geographical distribution of German speakers

text: role in settling the states of South Australia and Queensland. Barossa German, a dialect of German, was once common in and around the German-settled Barossa Valley in South Australia. However, the German language was actively suppressed by Australian governments during World War I and World War II, resulting in a sharp decline in the use of German in Australia. German Australians are today overwhelmingly English speaking, with the German language as a home language in heavy decline. The German language is spoken in a number of countries and territories in Europe, where it is used both as an official language

title: German language in Namibia

text: 1884 to 1915 German was the only official language in German Southwest Africa, as Namibia was then known. Boers, i.e. South African whites who spoke Dutch (South African Dutch would later develop into Afrikaans) already lived in the country alongside Orlam tribes and mixed-race Reheboth Basters. South Africa took over administration of the country in 1915. However, German language privileges and education remained in place. In 1916 the "Allgemeine Zeitung" newspaper was founded under its original name of "Der Kriegsbote". After the end of the First World War the South African attitude to the German Namibians changed, and between 1919

title: German language

text: is used in a wide variety of spheres, especially business and tourism, as well as the churches (most notably the German-speaking Evangelical Lutheran Church in Namibia (GELK)), schools (e.g. the ), literature (German-Namibian authors include Giselher W. Hoffmann), radio (the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation produces radio programs in German), and music (e.g. artist EES). The is one of the three biggest newspapers in Namibia and the only German-language daily in Africa. Mostly originating from different waves of immigration during the 19th and 20th centuries, an estimated 12,000 people speak German or a German variety as a first language in South Africa.

title: Official script

text: aspects of life. Below is a partial list of official scripts used in different countries. Those in "italics" are states that have limited international recognition. Official script An official script is a writing system that is specifically designated to be official in the constitutions or other applicable laws of countries, states, and other jurisdictions. Akin to an official language, an official script is much rarer. It is used primarily where an official language is in practice written with two or more scripts. As, in these languages, use of script often has cultural or political connotations, proclamation of an official script

title: Official script

text: Official script An official script is a writing system that is specifically designated to be official in the constitutions or other applicable laws of countries, states, and other jurisdictions. Akin to an official language, an official script is much rarer. It is used primarily where an official language is in practice written with two or more scripts. As, in these languages, use of script often has cultural or political connotations, proclamation of an official script is sometimes criticised as having a goal of influencing culture or politics or both. Desired effects also may include easing education, communication and some other

title: Official language

text: of privately owned TV-channels must be translated into Russian (a similar privilege is granted to Arabic), warnings must be translated to several languages, signs are mostly trilingual (Hebrew, Arabic and English), and the government supports Yiddish and Ladino culture (alongside Hebrew culture and Arabic culture). The Constitution of Latvia (or Satversme) designated Latvian as the state language. In 2012 there was initiative to hold a referendum on constitutional amendments, elevating Russian as a state language. Kristīne Jarinovska in her analysis describes the proposal in the following way: It proposed several constitutional amendments for introducing Russian as Latvia's second official language—i.e.,

title: Romansh language

text: and that any municipality is free to change its official language. In 2003, Romansh was the sole official language in 56 municipalities of Grisons, and 19 were bilingual in their administrative business. In practice, even those municipalities which only recognize Romansh as an official working language, readily offer services in German as well. Additionally, since the working language of the canton is mainly German and many official publications of the canton are available only in German, it is virtually impossible for a municipal administration to operate only in Romansh. Within the Romansh-speaking areas, three different types of educational models can

title: The Orissa Official Language Act, 1954

text: The Orissa Official Language Act, 1954 The Orissa Official Language Act, 1954 is an Act of Odisha Legislative Assembly that recognizes Oriya(Odia) "to be used for all or any of the official purposes of the State of Orissa." Article 345 of the Constitution of India empowers the Legislature of the State to adopt 'any one or more of the languages in use in the State or Hindi as the language or languages to be used for all or any of the official purposes' of the concerned State. But it provides for the continued use of English for the 'purposes within

title: The Awful German Language

text: continued to give lectures into the 20th century regarding the language. Twain describes his exasperation with German grammar in a series of eight humorous examples that include separable verbs, adjective declension, and compound words. He is, as the subject suggests, focusing on German as a language, but Twain is also dealing with English to compare the two languages. This allows for an analysis in linguistic weight assigned to various typological and stylistic aspects of language which revolve around the difference between an analytic language like English with a language like German that is a synthetic language with some analytic characteristics.

title: Official language

text: limited funding, however, the government rarely produces documents in most of the languages. Accusations of mismanagement and corruption have been leveled against the Pan South African Language Board, which is in charge of maintaining the system. Standard Chinese is the de facto official language of Taiwan. Note that Standard Chinese spoken in Taiwan is slightly different from that in Mainland China, and variant forms of the former are called Taiwanese Mandarin, locally known as 國語. The Hakka Basic Act and the Indigenous Languages Development Act have recognized the Formosan languages and Taiwanese Hakka (variant forms of Hakka Chinese) as national

title: German language

text: notable for its broad spectrum of dialects, with many unique varieties existing in Europe and also other parts of the world. Due to the limited intelligibility between certain varieties and Standard German, as well as the lack of an undisputed, scientific difference between a "dialect" and a "language", some German varieties or dialect groups (e.g. Low German or Plautdietsch) are alternatively referred to as "languages" and "dialects". Modern Standard German is a West Germanic language descended from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. The Germanic languages are traditionally subdivided into three branches: North Germanic, East Germanic, and West Germanic.

title: Official language

text: lists 22 languages, which have been referred to as scheduled languages and given recognition, status and official encouragement. In addition, the Government of India has awarded the distinction of classical language to Tamil, Sanskrit, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam and Odia. On 19 July 2018, the Knesset passed a basic law under the title , which defines Hebrew as "the State's language" and Arabic as a language with "a special status in the State" (article 4). The law further says that it should not be interpreted as compromising the status of the Arabic language in practice prior to the enactment of the

title: Low German

text: many places where assimilation has occurred. Members and friends of the Historical Society of North German Settlements in Western New York (Bergholz, NY), a community of Lutherans who trace their immigration from Pomerania in the 1840s, hold quarterly "Plattdeutsch lunch" events, where remaining speakers of the language gather to share and preserve the dialect. Mennonite colonies in Paraguay, Belize, and Chihuahua, Mexico have made Low German a "co-official language" of the community. East Pomeranian is also spoken in parts of Southern and Southeastern Brazil, in the latter especially in the state of , being official in five municipalities, and spoken

title: German Sign Language

text: Sign Language uses a "subject object verb" strategy. Thus, the two have very different grammars, though as the dominant language of the region, German has had some influence on German Sign Language. A signed system that follows German grammar, Signed German ("Lautsprachbegleitende Gebärden" or "Lautbegleitende Gebärden", "sound-accompanying signs"), is used in education. It is not used as a natural means of communication between deaf people. Another system of manually representing German is cued speech, known as "Phonembestimmes Manualsystem" (Phonemic Manual System). German Sign Language uses a one-handed manual alphabet ('Fingeralphabet' in German) derived from the French manual alphabet of the

title: German language

text: "languages" or "dialects" is disputed for political and/or linguistic reasons, including quantitatively strong varieties like certain forms of Alemannic (e.g., Alsatian) and Low German/Plautdietsch. Mostly depending on the inclusion or exclusion of certain varieties, it is estimated that approximately 90–95 million people speak German as a first language, 10–25 million as a second language, and 75–100 million as a foreign language. This would imply approximately 175–220 million German speakers worldwide. It is estimated that also including all persons who are or were taking German classes, i.e., regardless of their actual proficiency, would amount to about 280 million people worldwide with

title: Palatine German language

text: Palatine German language Palatine German or Pfaelzisch ("Pälzisch"; ) is a West Franconian dialect of German which is spoken in the Upper Rhine Valley roughly in an area between the cities of Zweibrücken, Kaiserslautern, Alzey, Worms, Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Mannheim, Heidelberg, Speyer, Landau, Wörth am Rhein and the border to the Alsace region in France but also beyond. Pennsylvania German, or Pennsylvania Dutch is descended primarily from the Palatine German dialects spoken by Germans who immigrated to North America from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries and who chose to maintain their native language. Danube Swabians in Croatia and Serbia

title: Official language

text: when Darius the Great annexed Mesopotamia to the Persian Empire, he chose a form of the Aramaic language (the so-called Official Aramaic or Imperial Aramaic) as the vehicle for written communication between the different regions of the vast empire with its different peoples and languages. Aramaic script was widely employed from Egypt in the southwest to Bactria and Sogdiana in the northeast. Texts were dictated in the native dialects and written down in Aramaic, and then read out again in the native language at the places they were received. The First Emperor of Qin standardized the written language of China

title: German language

text: and Minority Languages; however, they are widely considered separate languages and neither German nor Dutch dialects. Namibia was a colony of the German Empire from 1884 to 1919. Mostly descending from German settlers who immigrated during this time, 25–30,000 people still speak German as a native tongue today. The period of German colonialism in Namibia also led to the evolution of a Standard German-based pidgin language called "Namibian Black German", which became a second language for parts of the indigenous population. Although it is nearly extinct today, some older Namibians still have some knowledge of it. German, along with English

title: German youth language

text: German youth language German youth language or youth communication is a term used to describe the linguistic patterns and characteristics used by various groups at different ages, time periods and locations. According to Helmut Glück (2005) the term is not strictly defined. Heinrich Löffler refers to Jugendsprache as a transitory non-standard language (“Lebensalter-Sprache”: “age-language”) specifically with attention to the time limitation of linguistic patterns in one’s life. In German and West European philology Jugendsprache is considered to be not only a non-standard language but a complex subform of the base language, and is specifically defined as the style of a

title: German language

text: vernacular German asserted itself against the dominance of Latin as a legitimate language for courtly, literary, and now ecclesiastical subject-matter. Further, his Bible was ubiquitous in the German states with nearly every household possessing a copy. Nevertheless, even with the influence of Luther's Bible as an unofficial written standard, it was not until the middle of the 18th century after the ENHG period that a widely accepted standard for written German appeared. German was the language of commerce and government in the Habsburg Empire, which encompassed a large area of Central and Eastern Europe. Until the mid-19th century, it was

title: German language

text: principalities and kingdoms was stronger than ever. As a spoken language German remained highly fractured through this period with a vast number of often mutually-incomprehensible regional dialects being spoken throughout the German states; the invention of the printing press c.1440 and the publication of Luther's vernacular translation of the Bible in 1534, however, had an immense effect on standardizing German as a supra-dialectal written language. The ENHG period saw the rise of several important cross-regional forms of chancery German, one being "gemeine tiutsch," used in the court of the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, and the other being "Meißner Deutsch",

title: German language

text: in the fields of architecture, finance, and music. The influence of the French language in the 17th to 19th centuries resulted in an even greater import of French words. The English influence was already present in the 19th century, but it did not become dominant until the second half of the 20th century. At the same time, the effectiveness of the German language in forming equivalents for foreign words from its inherited Germanic stem repertory is great. Thus, Notker Labeo was able to translate Aristotelian treatises in pure (Old High) German in the decades after the year 1000. The tradition

title: German youth language

text: usage of acronyms, such as "YOLO" ('You only live once'), has increased over the past years. Syntactic variations in spoken language include repetitions, ellipsis, word order variation and incomplete sentences. German youth language German youth language or youth communication is a term used to describe the linguistic patterns and characteristics used by various groups at different ages, time periods and locations. According to Helmut Glück (2005) the term is not strictly defined. Heinrich Löffler refers to Jugendsprache as a transitory non-standard language (“Lebensalter-Sprache”: “age-language”) specifically with attention to the time limitation of linguistic patterns in one’s life. In German and

title: German language

text: English language still has, disappeared on the continent in German with the consonant shifts between the 8th and the 10th centuries. It is sometimes possible to find parallels between English and German by replacing the English th with d in German: "Thank" → in German , "this" and "that" → and , "thou" (old 2nd person singular pronoun) → , "think" → , "thirsty" → and many other examples. Likewise, the gh in Germanic English words, pronounced in several different ways in modern English (as an f, or not at all), can often be linked to German ch: "to laugh"

title: German language

text: at primary school level (but third after English and French at lower secondary level), the fourth most widely taught non-English language in the US (after Spanish, French and American Sign Language), and the second most commonly used scientific language as well as the second most widely used language on websites after English. The German-speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of annual publication of new books, with one tenth of all books (including e-books) in the world being published in the German language. In the United Kingdom, German and French are the most-sought after foreign languages for businesses (with 49%

title: German language

text: often replaced by the infinitive. The order at the end of such strings is subject to variation, but the latter version is unusual. Most German vocabulary is derived from the Germanic branch of the European language family. However, there is a significant amount of loanwords from other languages, in particular from Latin, Greek, Italian, French and most recently English. In the early 19th century, Joachim Heinrich Campe estimated that one fifth of the total German vocabulary was of French or Latin origin. Latin words were already imported into the predecessor of the German language during the Roman Empire and underwent

title: Serbian language

text: rečnik srpskog jezika" (Etymological Dictionary of Serbian). So far, two volumes have been published: I (with words on A-), and II (Ba-Bd). There are specialized etymological dictionaries for German, Italian, Croatian, Turkish, Greek, Hungarian, Russian, English and other loanwords (cf. chapter "word origin"). Serbian language Serbian ( / , ) is the standardized variety of the Serbo-Croatian language mainly used by Serbs. It is the official language of Serbia, the territory of Kosovo, and one of the three official languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In addition, it is a recognized minority language in Montenegro where it is spoken by the

title: Pennsylvania German language

text: archaic — and for a long time artificial — koiné language in a very long process that started in the time of classical Middle High German (1170–1250), see Standard German: Origins. Pennsylvania German instead reflects the independent development of Palatine German, especially from the region that is called in German. Several vowel and consonant in Pennsylvania German represent older forms of the German language, e.g. "p" instead of "pf" or "v" instead of "b", while Standard German consonants shifted. They only appear as shifts if Standard German is erroneously seen as the basis from which Pennsylvania German evolved. The correspondence

title: Where Is Fred?

text: film "politically incorrect", but praised the performance of Christoph Maria Herbst. Claudia Wente also praised the performance of Jürgen Vogel and wrote that he "played with convincing ease". won for her performance, while Til Schweiger won Jupiter Award for Best German Actor. Where Is Fred? Where Is Fred? (German: "Wo ist Fred?"), also credited as Where Is Fred!?, is a 2006 German film directed by Anno Saul, and produced by and Eberhard Junkersdorf. Written by Ken Daurio, Cinco Paul and Bora Dağtekin, it stars Til Schweiger, Alexandra Maria Lara, Jürgen Vogel and Christoph Maria Herbst. Fred plans to marry his

title: German language

text: continued to be used as a first language into the twentieth century but now its use is limited to a few older speakers. German migration to New Zealand in the 19th century was less pronounced than migration from Britain, Ireland, and perhaps even Scandinavia. Despite this there were significant pockets of German-speaking communities which lasted until the first decades of the 20th century. German-speakers settled principally in Puhoi, Nelson, and Gore. At the last census (2013), 36,642 people in New Zealand spoke German, making it the third most spoken European language after English and French and overall the ninth most

title: AP German Language and Culture

text: AP German Language and Culture Advanced Placement German Language and Culture (also known as AP German Language and Culture, AP German Language or AP German) is a course and examination provided by the College Board through the Advanced Placement Program. This course is designed to give high school students the opportunity to receive credit in a college-level German language course. It is generally taken in the fourth year of high school German study. The AP German Language and Culture exam administered around the end of the academic year is split into two parts, a multiple choice section and a free

title: Official status of Romanian language in Vojvodina

text: Official status of Romanian language in Vojvodina The Romanian language is one of six official languages in the Serbian province of Vojvodina. The official use of the Romanian language is determined in Vojvodina by the law, and established at the provincial level in the bodies of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, as well at local level in 8 municipalities. 29,512 citizens of Vojvodina dispersed within 42 settlements (forming majority in 19 settlements) declared Romanian language as their mother tongue at the 2002 census, accounting for 1.45% of the total population of Vojvodina and representing the fourth largest language spoken in