Official Languages Act

Official Language Act or Official Languages Act may refer to:

  • the Official Languages Act (Canada) passed in Canada to enshrine official bilingualism
  • the Official Language Act (Quebec) passed in Quebec to ensure that French retained its primary status
  • the Official Languages Act (Ireland) passed in Ireland to promote the provision of state services in Irish
  • Several acts passed in Sri Lanka:
    • the Official Language Act No. 33 of 1956 (Ceylon), commonly known as the Sinhala Only Act, passed in Ceylon in 1956 to replacing English with Sinhala as the official language of the country
    • the Tamil Language (Special Provisions) Act No. 28 of 1958 (Ceylon) passed in Ceylon in 1958 allows Tamil in education, public service entrance exams and administration in the Northern and Eastern provinces
    • the Official Languages Act of 1987 (Sri Lanka) passed in Sri Lanka in 1987 to make Tamil an official language of the country
    • the Official Languages Commission Act No. 18 of 1991 (Sri Lanka) passed in Sri Lanka in 1991 to establish the Official Languages Commission of Sri Lanka
  • the Official Languages Ordinance passed in Hong Kong in 1974 to bring the English and Chinese languages to equal status as official languages of the territory

Famous quotes containing the words official, languages and/or act:

    “We were that generation called “silent,” but we were silent neither, as some thought, because we shared the period’s official optimism nor, as others thought, because we feared its official repression. We were silent because the exhilaration of social action seemed to many of us just one more way of escaping the personal, of masking for a while that dread of the meaningless which was man’s fate.”
    —Joan Didion (b. 1935)

    “The less sophisticated of my forbears avoided foreigners at all costs, for the very good reason that, in their circles, speaking in tongues was commonly a prelude to snake handling. The more tolerant among us regarded foreign languages as a kind of speech impediment that could be overcome by willpower.”
    —Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)

    “I wish my countrymen to consider that whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can ever commit the least act of injustice against the obscurest individual without having to pay the penalty for it. A government which deliberately enacts injustice, and persists in it, will at length even become the laughing-stock of the world.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)