Regional language

A regional language is a language spoken in a part of a country - it may be a small area, a federal state or province, or a wider area. It is often mistaken for a dialect.

Definition in international law

For the purposes of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages:

"regional or minority languages" means languages that are:

traditionally used within a given territory of a State by nationals of that State who form a group numerically smaller than the rest of the State's population; and
different from the official language(s) of that State

Influence of number of speakers

There are many cases when a regional language can claim greater numbers of speakers than certain languages which happen to be official languages of sovereign states. For example, Catalan (a regional language of Spain and France, albeit official in Andorra) has more speakers than Finnish or Danish. In China, Wu, spoken in southern Jiangsu and northern Zhejiang, has more 90 million speakers. Cantonese has more than 60 million local and overseas speakers, and is a regional language of Guangdong and nearby areas in China.

Relationship with official languages

In some cases, a regional language may be closely related to the state's main language or official language. For example:

Walloon, a regional language of France and Belgium, belongs to the same family of Oïl languages as French;
Scots, a regional language of Scotland and Ireland, belongs to the same family of West Germanic languages as English.
Frisian, a regional language of The Netherlands and Germany, belongs to the same language family as Dutch and German
Võro, a regional language of Estonia, belongs to the same family of Finno-Ugric languages as Estonian.
Cantonese, a regional language of Guangdong, People's Republic of China (PRC), belongs to the same family of Chinese spoken variants as Mandarin (Putonghua) - the national official language of the PRC. Cantonese and Mandarin are mutually unintelligible but both use the same standard written language, although this written language is largely based on the Mandarin dialects group.
Tibetan is a regional language of the Tibet Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China, while Standard Mandarin is the statewide official language. Both languages are classified into the Sino-Tibetan language family.^
Aranese in Spain.

In other cases, a regional language may be very different from the state's main language or official language. For example:

Basque, a regional language in Spain and France, is non-Indo-European, and therefore unrelated to Spanish or French, both Romance languages;
Sorbian, a regional language of Germany, is a Slavic language, and therefore only distantly related to German, a Germanic language.

Official languages as regional languages

An official language of a country may also be spoken as a regional language in a region of a neighbouring country. For example:

Cantonese, de facto official language of Hong Kong and Macao, is used as a regional language of the province of Guangdong, People's Republic of China;
Catalan, the official language of Andorra, is a regional language in Spain, France and Italy;
German, the official language of Austria, Belgium, Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Switzerland, is a regional language of Italy and Denmark;
Hungarian, a Finno-Ugric language and official in Hungary, is a regional language of Romania whose official language, Romanian is a Romance language.

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Definition in international law

Influence of number of speakers

Relationship with official languages

Official languages as regional languages

See also