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 to the government in their native languages. In countries that do not formally designate an official language, a "de facto" national language usually evolves. English is the most common official language, with recognized status in 51 countries. Arabic, French, and Spanish are also widely recognized. An official language that is also an indigenous language is called "endoglossic", one that is not indigenous is "exoglossic". An instance is Nigeria which has three endoglossic official languages. By this the country aims to protect the indigenous languages although at the same time recognising the English language as its lingua franca. Around 500 BC,