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
Official languages of the United Nations to have Hindi recognized as an official language of the UN. In 2015, Nepal's Vice President Parmananda Jha stated his firm support for the inclusion of Hindi as an official language of the UN. Because of the linguistic diversity in India, the expansion of Hindi has become political and has led to a rise of English in the post-British colonial period. This is why English is included along with Hindi on Indian passports. If the Indian government is able to grant more federal-level protection for other languages such as Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu, as a compromise then