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1 Definition in international law

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

"regional or minority languages" means languages that are:

1. 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
2. different from the official language(s) of that State

2 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) has more speakers than Finnish or Danish.

3 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;
• ScotsScots (or Lallans meaning 'Lowlands'), properly Lowland Scots, is a Germanic language used in Lowland Scotland, as well as parts of Northern Ireland and border areas of the Republic of Ireland, where it is known in official circles as Ulster Scots or Ulla, a regional language of the United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a state in Western Europe, usually known simply as the United Kingdom the UK Britain or less accurately as Great Britain . The UK was formed by a series of Acts of Union which united the formerly, belongs to the same family of West Germanic languagesWest Germanic is the largest branch of the Germanic family of languages, including such languages as English, Dutch, and German. The other families of Germanic are North Germanic and East Germanic. Language classification Indo-European languages Germanic as EnglishThe English language is a West Germanic language, originating from England. It is the third most common "first" language (native speakers), with around 402 million people in 2002. English has lingua franca status in many parts of the world, due to the mil.

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

• BasqueBasque is the language spoken by the Basque people, who live in northern Spain and the adjoining area of southwestern France. The Standard Basque name for the language is euskara other dialectal forms are euskera eskuara and skara''. Although it is geogra, a regional language in Spain, is non- Indo-EuropeanThe Indo-European languages include some 443 ( SIL estimate) languages and dialects spoken by about three billion people, including most of the major language families of Europe and western Asia, which belong to a single superfamily. Contemporary language, and therefore unrelated to SpanishThis article is about the international language known as Spanish. For other languages spoken in Spain see Languages of Spain Spanish is an Iberian Romance language, and the third or fourth most spoken language in the world. It is spoken as a first langua, a Romance languageThe Romance languages also called Romanic languages are a subfamily of the Italic languages, specifically the descendants of the Vulgar Latin dialects spoken by the common people evolving in different areas after the break-up of the Roman Empire. Latin it;
• Sorbian, a regional language of Germany, is a Slavic language, and therefore distantly related to German, a Germanic language.