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The UK does not have an official language.
by jjgreen 3y ago
The UK does not have an official language.
- OnlyMortal 3y agoCorrect. It’s the defacto. Indeed, there’s even no official version of English unlike, say, French and Dutch.
- jjgreen 3y agoThat there is no Académie anglaise is a fact which surprises and appalls the French.
- switch007 3y agoThe degree to which we do not care what the French think about our lack of an official body overseeing and dictating the language of English can not be accurately described in words. We would have to invent a new unit of measurement to measure it. :)
- HKH2 3y agoPrescriptivism only gets you so far.
- switch007 3y agoDe facto it does De jure, Wales does Cambridge Dictionary defines official language as: > the language or one of the languages that is accepted by a country's government, is taught in schools, used in the courts of law, etc. There is no debate whatsoever that English meets that criteria in the UK
- jameshart 3y agoBut by that criterion the US also has an official language.
- switch007 3y agoYes, the de facto language of the US is English. What's your argument there?
- sin7 3y agoDe facto is not the same as official.
- switch007 3y agoNot much of an argument but when it comes to English it is. “Official” as in widely and universally recognised and accepted by government authorities? English in the UK (and US) absolutely is Though now we’re just descending in to semantics which is not very entertaining
- hot_gril 3y agoCalifornia recognizes Spanish quite a bit, including on official forms like the DMV.