Nowhere Recognized Minority Languages
The largest communities of speakers that of a language not recognized as a nation-wide official language anywhere:
- Punjabi language: 28 million speakers, regional status in Pakistan and India
- Javanese language: 80 million speakers, regional status in Suriname
- Marathi language: 60 million speakers, regional status in India
- Wu Chinese: 77 million speakers, no official status
- Cantonese: 70 million speakers, regional status in Hong Kong and Macau
- Chinese dialects other than Mandarin, Wu and Cantonese: Min (60 million), Gan (20-50 million), Hakka (34 million), Xiang (30-36 million); see identification of the varieties of Chinese
- Sindhi language: 60 million speakers, regional status in Pakistan and India
- Gujarati language: 40 million speakers, regional status in India
- Maithili language: 20 million speakers, regional status in India
- Pashto language: 45 million speakers, regional status in Afghanistan and Pakistan
- Kurdish language: 16-26 million speakers, regional status in Iraq
- Malayalam language: 52 million speakers, regional status in India
- Kannada language: 40 million speakers, regional status in India
- Telugu language: ≈90 million speakers, regional status in India
- Bhojpuri language: 35 million speakers, formerly considered a dialect of Hindi, in the process of being granted regional status on its own right in India
- Oriya language: 30 million speakers, regional status in India
- Sundanese language: 27 million speakers, regional status in West Java, Indonesia
- Oromo language: 25 million speakers, regional status in Ethiopia and Kenya
- Cebuano language: 20 million speakers, regional status in Central Visayas, Philippines
- Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo with close to 20 million speakers each are the major languages of Nigeria, all three with regional status, and none with majority status.
- Zhuang languages: 14 million speakers, regional status in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region
- Assamese language: 13 million speakers, regional status in India
- Madurese language: 13 million speakers, no official status
- Berber languages: 10 million speakers, no official status
- Lombard language: 9 million speakers, no official status, treated as an Italian dialect
- Uyghur language: 8-10 million speakers, regional status in Xinjiang
- Neapolitan language: 8 million speakers, no official status, treated as an Italian dialect
- Balochi language: 8 million speakers, regional status in Balochistan
- Ilokano language: 8 million speakers, regional status in Ilocos Region, Philippines
- Hiligaynon language: 7 million speakers, regional status in Western Visayas, Philippines
- Minangkabau language: 7 million speakers, no official status
- Krio: 6 millions speakers, de facto national language of Sierra Leone but without official status
- Bhili language: 6 million speakers, largest linguistic community of India without regional status
- Sicilian language: 5 million speakers, no official status
- Hmong language: 4 million speakers, no official status
- Yiddish language: 3 million speakers, no official status
- Silesian language: 2 million speakers, no official status
- Aramaic language: 2 million speakers, no official status
- Yi language: 2 million speakers, no official status
- American Sign Language: 500,000 to 2 million signers, many states recognize as a "foreign language" for educational purposes; some recognize as a language of instruction in schools.
Read more about this topic: Minority Language
Famous quotes containing the words recognized, minority and/or languages:
“Not to over-breed will be one day recognized as not less essential for national well- being than breeding is.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“It is time for dead languages to be quiet.”
—Natalie Clifford Barney (1876–1972)