Which country has world's best language policy?

When asking the question “which country has the world’s best language “policy”” a variety of answers are often given. With “contenders” including, but not limited to: Singapore, South Africa, Luxembourg, Namibia, India, Switzerland, Uganda, Morocco, USA, Philippines, Scandinavian countries, Nigeria, Malaysia, Mexico, Aruba, Suriname…and so on.

I once posted a lesson on this topic, Login - LingQ, and the academic in that lesson listed the following reasons, or criteria, for coming to his own conclusion (he believed Australia had the best policy):

*No “official” language policy. That is, the government is not restricted to a particular language(s), and can provide a variety of multilingual government services (codification of laws in a wide variety of prominent languages, legal aid in a wide variety of languages, free and unfettered radio and tv services in a wide variety of languages – with SBS being a prominent example, free translation services etc).

*Government support and development for community languages, with each community language considered a “precious community cultural resource”.

*English promoted as a lingua franca, common language.

*Government promotion for bilingualism/multilingualism.

My own criteria:

What is the country’s relationship / policy with regards to the world’s lingua franca - English. Does it promote English? Like it, or not, this is an important question to address.

What is the country’s relationship with other major world languages (“major” in terms of numbers of world population “fluent”) – Spanish, Mandarin, Hindi etc.

Does it have an official language? Does this restrict multilingualism?

Does it promotes more than just English, or English + Romance languages. That is, does it give diversity beyond Indo-European languages. Is there a “challenge” with regards to speaking and learning something “completely different” to Indo-Eur… such as African languages, or so-called Sino-Tibetan branches of languages etc.

How do the language policies promote respect for other cultures?

What are the results? Particularly economic results, or results in terms of standard of living and population well being.

So which county ticks the most boxes, for me? I would say- Singapore ticks the most of my criteria.

Thoughts from lingq-ers? Which country and why?

that has to be south Africa with 11 official languages which are all promoted including English and Afrikaans (a Dutch variation)

Is this too many official languages? Does this result in any kind of “tribalism” “us versus them” amongst different speakers? What happens to languages that aren’t official, are they genuinely supported in any way? Does this policy help SA’s economy, in what ways? < /devil’s advocate/> < /genuine enquiry>