Charter of the French Language Sąjūdis movement during which the people of Lithuania declared their language the sole official language and began working on a language policy modeled on the experience of Quebec. Mart Rannut, vice-dean of research at the Department of philology of the University of Tallinn, in Estonia, recalled the influence of Quebec's expertise in the field of linguistic human rights and language planning which helped countries that have gained independence from the former Soviet Union and concluded that "Bill 101 indirectly touched one sixth of the planet". Ina Druviete, at the time dean of the department of sociolinguistics at the Linguistic Institute
Official language after unifying the country in 221 BC. Classical Chinese would remain the standard written language for the next 2000 years. Standardization of the spoken language received less political attention, and Mandarin developed on an "ad hoc" basis from the dialects of the various imperial capitals until being officially standardized in the early twentieth century. According to an undated chart by the American pro-English-only organization known as U.S. English, 178 countries have an official language at the national level. Among those, English is the most common with 67 nations giving it official status. French is second with 29 countries, Arabic is