28

There are 28 non-sovereign entities in the world where English is the de facto or de jure official language, including this blog, where English happens to be the only language we know.

Yesterday during a White House press conference (described here in Politico http://politi.co/2w9rs3E) there was a testy exchange between a White House guy named Stephen Miller and a CNN reporter named Jim Acosta over a new immigration law which requires immigrants to speak English before being admitted. Acosta wanted to know if this meant we were going to allow immigration only from Great Britain and Australia.

English, it turns out, is not the official language by law in either Australia or the United Kingdom. It is also not the de jure official language of the United States, although it is in several of the individual states, including the one in which I live.

English is an official language, de facto or de jure, in 54 sovereign states around the world, in addition to the 28 non-sovereign entities mentioned above.

You find out a lot more about all of this, including some nifty charts and maps, on Wikipedia here: http://bit.ly/2w9FzFY

ADD
 Actually it’s a bill, not a law, and we are not endorsing it but just pointing out.