Charter of the French Language the linguistic situation in Québec", promoting the official language, and conducting research. In 2016–17, the budget of the OQLF was . The office is frequently accused of abusing its powers, such as occurred in 2013 during the pastagate affair when an Italian restaurant was cited for having pasta, antipasti, calamari, and the like on its menu, instead of using French equivalents. The office also objects to the sale of "grilled cheese sandwiches", insisting that they be called , which literally translates to "melted cheese sandwich". Likewise, the Quebec language office objects to "on/off" switches and to the sale of "steaks",
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