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
Coptic language Coptic language Coptic, or Coptic Egyptian (Bohairic: "ti.met.rem.ən.kēmi" and Sahidic: "t.mənt.rəm.ən.kēme"), is the latest stage of the Egyptian language, a northern Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Egypt until at least the 17th century as an official language. Egyptian began to be written in the Coptic alphabet, an adaptation of the Greek alphabet with the addition of six or seven signs from Demotic to represent Egyptian sounds the Greek language did not have, in the 1st century AD. Several distinct Coptic dialects are identified, the most prominent of which are "Sahidic", originating in parts of Upper Egypt, and "Bohairic", originally from the