What's the difference between "official language" & "national language"??

Question

Okay, I know the definitions of "official" & "national".. but so what??

Well.. I live in S'pore, & our national language is Malay, while our four official languages are English, Mandarin, Malay & Tamil.

Answer 1

official language is the languare commonly used. while the national language is the "traditional" language. In singapore's context, the officail language is english. Our national exams are english, our signs are in english, our public annoucements are first said in english. But our singapore's national language is malay. For a reason that the singapore land was first populated and belonged to malays before other immigrants came.

Answer 2

It is the difference between usage and law. An "Official language" is the language or languages that have been declared by the ruling body to be the language for use in all governmental functions. The United States has no official language. A "National language" is the language or languages that are actually spoken by the majority of people in the country. The national language of the United States is English.

Answer 3

Let's take the Kurds, who consider themselves a nation, although they live in the territory of different states. Their national language is "Kurmandshi", spoken by ca 9 million people, but it is not an official language anywhere.
Switzerland has 3 official languages, but none of them is "the" national language.
May be that helps to clarify things a bit.

Answer 4

An official language is the language (or one of the languages) mandated by law to be used in government-related things. I think the expression "national language" must differ from place to place. Switzerland has three official languages (German, French, and Italian) but four "national" languages, those three plus Romansch. Romansch is on the money but national laws need not be published in it.

Answer 5

National language is what people speak in their country for everyday use and Official is used for legalities and communicating internationally. In my Country we have 2 Official languages Maltese and English, but Nationally it is Maltese. In official matters you have a choice of what language you want.

Answer 6

official Language means the language declared by Law of country for official purposes & transaction of its bussiness where as national language is all the languages by constitution . OFFICIAL LANGUAGE WILL BE SINGLE IN NUMBER WHEREAS Idia has a number of national languages in schedule of constitution

Answer 7

The deficit is time limited. For the debt we tal about the year. The debt or surplace is the cummlative amount from all the years combined. Ex: if you started at 0 and had 1 trillion dollar deficit for each year for 16 years then the debt is 16 trillion but the deficit would just be the current year and equal to 1 trillion. Budgets do not have deficits or surpluses. They are just estimates of where the spending will happen. Only reality creates deficit or debt. Tha is why they say Clinton produced a surplus but he never did. His budget projected one but we had negative cash flow for the year (deficit).