Maps every country to its official, recognized, working, or de facto national languages with ISO 639 language codes. Countries with multiple official languages (Switzerland, India, South Africa, Belgium, Singapore, Canada) appear in multiple rows. Includes a status column distinguishing fully official from regional, recognized, working, or de facto status.
Pro tip: The United States has no official language at the federal level — English is "de facto" by usage and law in many states but is not legally designated as official by Congress. A few countries (UK, Australia, Japan, Mexico) are similar — official by tradition, not statute.
Select which columns to include in your download.
About the Countries to Languages Dataset
Designating an official language is a deliberate constitutional or legislative act. Some countries (France, Germany, Iran) have a single official language defined in their constitution. Others (Switzerland with four, South Africa with 11, India with two official plus 22 scheduled) recognize many. This dataset reflects the legally-designated official languages as of 2025, plus widely-spoken "de facto" languages where no formal designation exists.
Common Use Cases
Translation pipeline planning, localization scope estimation, i18n library configuration, locale-default detection logic, regulatory-compliance documentation, language-rights research, and any system that needs to map a country to a default UI language.
Column Reference
- country, iso2 — country name and ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code.
- language — English name of the language.
- language_code — ISO 639 language code (mostly 639-1 two-letter, with 639-3 three-letter for languages without a 639-1 code).
- status — Official, Recognized, National, Working, De facto, Regional, Scheduled, Administrative, or Disputed.
Status Levels Explained
Official means designated by constitution or statute. National usually means widely-used and constitutionally-recognized but not designated for government business. Working (used by Eritrea, Ethiopia) means used in government but not constitutionally enshrined. De facto means used as official without legal designation (e.g. English in the US and UK). Recognized covers minority or regional languages with legal protection but limited official scope. Scheduled is a specifically Indian designation under the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution.
Edge Cases
Belgium has three official languages (Dutch, French, German) split by region. South Africa has 11 official languages. India has Hindi and English as official-of-the-Union plus 22 scheduled languages. Switzerland has four (German, French, Italian, Romansh). Eritrea uses three "working" languages but has not formally designated any as official. Hong Kong and Macau (SARs of China) have their own official-language regimes distinct from mainland China.
