Official languages in schools as well as government

[DanyTNT]

Did you know that the US doesn't have an "official" language at the federal level while the EU has 24 languages?

[LoaderSaints]

And Finland has 2 official languages,finnish and swedish.

Now that's sth I learnt today! Never knew that Finland has 2 official languages!

Unfortunately yes.
Finland has two official languages, Finnish and Swedish. And because of that in the areas where the amount of Swedish speaking population is high enough traffic signs are bilingual. Those areas are mainly on the coasts, South and West. In some areas where the Swedish speaking population is higher than Finnish speaking population the text in the signs is in Swedish followed by the Finnish version (if there is a Finnish name for the specific place) while in other areas where bilingual signs are used Finnish is the primary language.

Basically the thing why Swedish is the 2nd official language in Finland is due to Finland being part of Sweden ages ago. Finnish as a language is so ´young´ so to speak. About 89% of the population have Finnish as their first language and about 5% have Swedish as their first language.

Also a sidenote here:
If one speaks of a Finnish city/place using English he or she should always use the Finnish name of the place, not the Swedish one.

[lykopotoboy]

Did you know that the US doesn't have an "official" language at the federal level while the EU has 24 languages?

yeh, but road signs are in English and schools teach in English.

[MandelSoft]

Read closely: ... at a federal level...

This says nothing about the state level. I don't know if I'm right, but I guess that the official language is determined by state law, rather than federal law...

[DanyTNT]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_ ... age_status

31 states set English as the official language and Hawaii set both English and Hawaiian.

[plykkegaard]

Official languages in schools as well as government

IIRC the offical language in some states (USA) is not english but spanish

[tkk7406]

Even though it's not an official language, I still am obliged to learn Ancient Greek at high school, I think in some classes in senior high it's optional (that I WON'T select).

[Barrett_killz]

My country's official language is Romanian (some people call it Moldovan, but it's not recognized as a language, just because it's literally the same one), but we speak Russian at college, Russian with friends, Russian on the streets, Russian everywhere, only Romanian at home with my family, because we're all Moldovans, only my great grandfather was Ukrainian, but w/e. Unsurprisingly we're in the poorest country in Europe.
You either talk in Russian, or you're isolated from the society, people just ignore you or even call you a gipsy for some reason (probably because of anti-romanian propaganda).

[tkk7406]

Unsurprisingly we're in the poorest country in Europe.

Till Greece comes charging along... We've voted for a new prime minister, I hope he's good.
[/politics]

[Rocar 512E]

I'm obliged to learn french even if i don't want to! AAAAAAAAARRRGH!