A 'regional language' is a
language spoken in a part of a state, be it may be a small area, a
federal state or
province, or a wider area. It is often mistaken for a
dialect.
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. In China,
Wu, spoken in southern
Jiangsu and northern
Zhejiang by more than 90 million speakers, can claim more native speakers than
French, and
Cantonese, a regional language of
Guangdong and nearby areas in
China with more than 60 million local and overseas speakers (North America, parts of
Malaysia), outnumbers
Italian in number of speakers. Subgroups and dialects of the
Min group have over 70 million speakers, mainly in
Fujian and in nearby
Taiwan, but also in the
Southeast Asian countries of
Malaysia and
Singapore.
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.
★
Limburgs, a regional language in
Germany,
The Netherlands and
Belgium has over 2,5 million speakers and is closely related to
Luxembourgish,
Rhinelandic and
Ripuaric.
★
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.
★ All
Chinese languages belong to the same family as
Mandarin (Putonghua) - the national standard of the PRC. Mandarin is not mutually intelligible with them. Speakers of all of them, nevertheless, use the
same standard written language (although this written language is largely based on the
Mandarin dialects group).
★
★
Wu, a regional language of Shanghai, southern
Jiangsu and northern
Zhejiang
★
★
Cantonese, a regional language of
Guangdong
★
★
Hakka, a regional language in southern China, including Guangdong, Fujian, and Taiwan.
★
Aranese,
Aragonese,
Astur-Leonese,
Catalan and
Galician in
Spain.
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 (as an
Indo-European language) 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,
Liechtenstein,
Luxembourg and
Switzerland, is a regional language of
Italy,
Denmark.
★
Hungarian, a
Finno-Ugric language and official in
Hungary, is a regional language of
Romania whose official language,
Romanian is a Romance language.
★
Cantonese, one of the official languages in
Hong Kong and
Macao (both
special administrative regions of the
People's Republic of China), is used as a regional language of the province of
Guangdong,
People's Republic of China.
See also
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Minority language
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National language
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Languages of France
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Languages of the European Union
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British-Irish Council
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Languages in the United Kingdom
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List of languages of Italy
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