Pub quiz: official languages
Question 1: In how many countries is Japanese an official language?
Question 2: Name the country (-ies).
The answer might surprise you!
The answer to the first question is one. Which country is it, though?
If you guessed Japan, score no points for the second question. Japanese is de facto the national language of Japan, but that isn’t actually codified anywhere in the law of Japan.
In case that’s hard to believe, here’s a supporting excerpt from a Ministry of Foreign Affairs document:
例えば公用語、日本には公用語というのは実はないわけでございますけれども ...
Roughly translated:
For example, Japan does not in fact have an official language …
However, I’ve already stated that there is, in fact, one place in the world where Japanese is the second language:
It’s Palau—specifically, the island of Angaur, which forms one state of the Republic of Palau.
Weird, huh?
2007-02-05 20:27 UTC. Comments: 2.
Tom Ward
Wrote at 2007-02-06 10:14 UTC using Firefox 2.0.0.1 on Windows XP:
That is awesome. Easily the best fact I’ve learnt all week.Harry Blanchard
Wrote at 2007-02-20 19:08 UTC using Firefox 1.5.0.9 on Windows XP:
Not surprizing—after the fact of course. The main or only reason why a government makes a language official is because there’s a (perceived) need to protect or promote it (as in Quebec or the US English movement). When there’s no question about a dominant language (e.g. Japan – goes for the U.S. too if you’re being rational about it) then there’s no practical need to codify or enforce it. Oddly enough, historically (turn of the last century) some Japanese intellectuals wanted to make German or English the official language of Japan, because they thought the Japanese language was an impediment to modernization.