Talk:Official languages of the United Nations

With Bengali, Esperanto and Turkish included in the proposal section shouldn't German be there?

There seem to be a few different reasons for inclusion, like importance/economy/area/size, number of speakers and historican reasons, and German seems to be just as good of a candidate as many others. Other personal proposals include Italian and Japanese. Perhaps these were not included (partly) because of the Second World War, or at least Germany which has only relatively recently been reunited. Portuguese may not be included (yet) because Portugal is only one, small country and Brazil is only a single former colony, but the rise of Brazil in both economy and population, and the importance of Western European countries in general also, plus the importance of the language in Africa, and also in Asia, may be enough reasons for its inclusion, as it for example has many more (native) speakers than both French and Russian. Parallels can easily be drawn to the UN Security Council (the correlation between the languages of the members of it and the official languages of the UN is astounding). Personally I'm all for a number of first language speakers approach to who should be members, meaning some of my favourites are Mandarin, Spanish, English, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Vietnamese, Hindu, Arabic and Russian. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.247.145.184 (talk) 11:54, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

esperanto isn't a realistic or even serious proposal

Doesn't really deserve its own section since Esperanto is kind of a niche project that honestly doesn't have any hope of becoming a UN language, unlike, say Hindustani jackbrown (talk) 22:29, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

ILO official laguages

ILO official laguages are only three spanish/french/englich. This should be adressed in this article. Also it should be stated why — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.157.40.35 (talk) 09:06, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Portuguese vs French

It's been noted that Portuguese “is not an international language, used in diplomacy and business the way that French is”. How correct is this? in Diplomacy that may be correct, although French is declining as a diplomatic language, but what about Business? French used in Business? As a personal view, even in Europe, although the knowledge of the language seems somewhat on the rise in IT, due to French government efforts, it was quite irrelevant in Business. Although now, at least in here, it has some value for IT professionals, for instance. But all in all, even Portuguese has importance in Business not only in South America, but in Africa. ---Pedro (talk) 11:40, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

I do not support. I am here in Brazil and big companies which make business in Latin America do not make here because of Portuguese language in a way that the whole of other countries speak Spanish and working with only one language is cheaper. And, yes, Portuguese “is not an international language, used in diplomacy and business the way that French is”.189.25.127.105 (talk) 23:03, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Not a forum

People, please, stop bringing out your own ideas as to what language should or should not be official at the UN, and stop exploring the reasons why the current official languages were chosen. Do that on some forum out there. Here we need reliable sources on stuff related to the official languages of the UN, and thoughts on how to structure the article, and such. Most other stuff simply is not beneficial.--$\color {Blue}{\mathcal {M}}$$\color {Blue}{\vec {(e\ ,}}$$\color {Blue}t)$ = ? 12:35, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

I agree. It's like "that's the way it is and this article is made just to show how it is. Period."189.25.127.105 (talk) 23:07, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Should be translated

Doesn't it seem ironic that the page on UN Languages is not translated into every language specified? Kupiakos (talk) 20:39, 29 August 2013 (UTC)