a language that is associated with a nation and whose residents are generally presumed to be speakers of that language. Its status in a given nation may or may not have been made official. For ex-ample, by legal decree, French is the national language of France; in contrast, English has no official status in the United States although it is by far the dominant language of public and private discourse in the country. A nation may have more than one national language; for example, both French and English are the national languages of Canada. See also OFFICIAL LANGUAGE.

See language, national.

A language or dialect spoken by a group of people.