The Open Atlas Blog

Morocco gained independence from France in 1956 and since then the question of language has been continuously debated. Nationalists wanted to elevate Arabic with many moving to eliminate French entirely. The goal of Arabisation was put forth and by 1970 primary schools were taught completely in Arabic. Conversely, STEM classes (science, technical, engineering, maths) continued to be taught in French.  In 1983, while Morocco was having a resurgence of Arab nationalism, the government changed the language of STEM instruction from French to Arabic in an effort to further the nation's Arabization.  University was another matter however, with almost all STEM university courses remaining in French. Then i n 2020, that decision was reversed. An if you've read this far and had ideas about only French and Arabic, that's understandable. In the national discourse, that's how the question is framed - as a binary between the two languages. But Morocco has many more than t...

There's a linguistic trend going on in the Americas. Generally speaking the language of the colonizers has been and continues to be the main language of the state while indigenous languages have been spoken by much smaller and more geographically isolated groups. Again this the trend, not the rule, but you if you look at the official languages from Canada to Chile you'll notice a certain pattern. Paraguay, however is an exception to the general linguistics trends. While Spanish became an extremely important language (spoken by more than 90% of the population), it did not supplant native tongues so thoroughly as happened in other countries. Today, Paraguay has two official languages - Spanish and Guarani, both of which are enshrined in the country's constitution. This made Guarani the first Amerindian language to attain the status of a country's official language. Today other indigenous languages are recognised and named as official in South American by co...

If you look at the constitution of Vietnam (as one is want to do), you'll see that it names Vietnamese of the country's national language  in no uncertain terms . So, what would we say is Vietnam's official language? While it's tempting to assume that it's the same, Vietnam doesn't technically have an official language. Conversely, Myanmar and Laos both have official languages but no national ones. So what exactly is going? Moreover, what exactly is the difference between a  nation language  and an  official language ? Let's start with official languages. The majority of country's that have name some language as being important normally refer to it as their official language or state language.  Countries like Laos, Myanmar, Jamaica, New Zealand and Poland have one official language. Other countries, like Haiti, Morocco and Belarus have two. So what is an official language? Putting it plainly, the entire notion of an 'official language...