United Nations Language policy

The official languages of the United Nations are the six languages used in United Nations (UN) meetings and in which the UN writes all its official documents. For the United Nations to select a language to be official, a majority of the 193 members need to vote in favor of it. Afterward, it is up to the respective country (or countries) of the new language to help financially support translation and interpretation services. Five languages were chosen in 1946 as official languages around when the United Nations was founded: Chinese English (British English with Oxford spelling) French Russian Spanish (Modern Standard) Arabic was later voted to be an additional official language in 1973.