Official multilingualism is the policy adopted by some states of recognizing multiple languages as official and producing all official documents, and handling all correspondence and official dealings, including court procedure, in these languages. It is distinct from personal multilingualism, the capacity of a person to speak several languages.
States with policies of official bilingualism
Afghanistan
uses Dari and Pashto as official languages. Many citizens are bilingual. These two languages account for 85% of Afghanis' native tongues.
is extremely diverse linguistically and uses English and French as official languages.
Canada
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, and the only officially monolingual province. The remaining provinces are predominantly English-speaking, but do not officially recognize 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. English and French are official languages in all three territories. In addition, Inuktitut is also an official language in Nunavut, and nine aboriginal languages have official status in the Northwest Territories.
Citizens of Chad speak over 120 languages, and the standardized Chadian Arabic serves as the lingua franca with colonial language French also being official.
Island nation of Cyprus has had Greek and Turkish as its languages since the 1960 Constitution. The usage of either language is complicated by the political dispute that lead to the creation of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. English is also used.
Finland
In Finland, Finnish and Swedish are both considered national languages. Municipalities of Finland are divided into three categories: unilingual Swedish, unilingual Finnish or bilingual. Finnish is the maternal language of about 90% of the population, and the bilingual or swedophone population is concentrated to the coastal areas of Ostrobothnia and Southwest Finland. The autonomous province of Åland is officially unilingual. Both Swedish and Finnish are compulsory school subjects.
The Philippine constitution designates Filipino as the national language and – along with English – as official languages. Spanish was the national and official language of the country for more than three centuries under Spanish colonial rule, and became the lingua franca of the Philippines in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It remained, along with English, as a de facto official language until removed in 1973 by a constitutional change. After a few months it was re-designated an official language by presidential decree and remained official until 1987, when the present Constitution removed its official status. Spanish and Arabic are currently designated to be promoted on a voluntary and optional basis. Some people in native Tagalog areas are bilingual, while in non-Tagalog areas it is common to be multilingual in Filipino, English, and in one or more of the regional languages, or as in other cases in languages such as Spanish, Minnan, and Arabic due to factors such as ancestry and religion. Eleven regional languages are recognised by the government as auxiliary official languages in their respective regions, while 90+ other languages and dialects are spoken by various groups.
