Regional language

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A regional language is a language spoken in a small area of a national state, such as a province, municipality or region.

It can be understood as regional languages those which have traditionally been used in a territory of a state but which constitute a numerically lower group than the rest of the state population or also those languages which are different from the official languages of the state in question, at least as defined by the European Charter for Minority or Regional Languages.

Influence on the number of speakers
There are many cases where some regional languages have more speakers than national or official languages in sovereign states. For example, Catalan (regional in France, Spain and Italy and official in Andorra) has more speakers than Finnish and Danish, official and national languages in Finland and Denmark, respectively. In China, the Wu language, spoken south of Jiangsu, has more than 90 million speakers, outnumbered the same French, and Cantonese, a regional language of Guangdong, Hong Kong and in some parts of China, outnumber the Italian language.

Official languages as regional languages
An official language in a given country may also be a regional language spoken in a neighbouring country. For example:
Afrikaans, an official language of South Africa, is a regional language in Namibia.
Cantonese, one of the official languages in Hong Kong and Macao, is a regional language in Guangdong Province, China.
Casubio, the regional language in Poland.
Catalan, the official language of Andorra and Spain, is a regional language in Spain (Catalonia, Balearic Islands and Valencia), France (Pyrénées Orientales) and Italy (Alghero).
German, an official language in Austria, Belgium, Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Switzerland, is a regional language in Italy (Bolzano Autonomous Province), Poland (Silesia), France (Alsace and Lorraine) and Denmark.
Hungarian, an official language in Hungary, is a regional language in Romania whose official language, Romanian, is a Romanesque language.
Irish, the first official language of the Republic of Ireland, is a regional language in Northern Ireland which is a constituent country of the UK.
Korean, the official language of Korea, is a regional language in China.
Russian, an official in Russia and Belarus, is a regional language in Abkhazia, South Ossetia and others.
Turkey, the official language of Turkey and Cyprus, is a regional language in Kosovo.

Languages