Official language official languages. The Northwest Territories has eleven official languages. All provinces, however, offer some necessary services in both English and French. Canadian advocates of a single official language say it promotes national identity. In Canada, debate has focused on whether the local majority language should be made the exclusive language of public business. In the Canadian province of Quebec, for example, laws restrict the use of the minority English in education, on signs, and in the workplace. According to the Finnish constitution, Finnish and Swedish are the official languages of the republic. Citizens have the right to communicate in either
Official language the country had four official languages—Serbo-Croatian, Slovene, Albanian and Macedonian. Serbo-Croatian was used as a "lingua franca" for mutual understanding and was also the language of the military. When Croatia declared independence (1991) it defined its official language as Croatian, and Serbia likewise defined its official language as Serbian. Bosnia-Herzegovina defined three official languages: Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian. From the linguistic point of view, the different names refer to national varieties of the same language, which is known under the appellation of Serbo-Croatian. It is said by some that the Bosnian government chose to define three languages to reinforce ethnic