Surprisingly, there is no law declaring English the official language of the UK.
In fact, English is just the de facto official language of the UK, which means it is not legally sanctioned as official but spoken by the majority.
England and Scotland do not have any official languages. Northern Ireland’s official languages are English and Irish.
It’s likely only recognized in Northern Ireland and Wales because they’d already supresed Gaelic out of the Scots. England itself doesn’t need English listed as a language because the ruling class never tried to stamp another language/culture out of Englad they way have Scotland, Ireland, or Wales.
Well for starters you’re missing Cornish off your list.
Doesn’t sound right to me. As someone living in Scotland, my understanding is that the Scottish Government recognises 4 official languages: Scots, English, Gaelic, and BSL.
Edit: Wikipedia lists those 4 as official languages in Scotland https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Scotland
Same with the US, no official language.
A good addendum to this is that the recognition of Irish as an official language in Northern Ireland only happened last year (may, 2022) with the passing of the The Identity and Language (Northern Ireland) Bill
Loads of stuff in the UK is not set into law but rather into custom iirc. So instead of “because the law says so” they have a bunch of “because we’ve always done it this way”.
Turns out that’s how a lot of the US government functions as well. We all saw how that worked out.
Unfortunately we are fighting against that effect too. Thankfully it’s not as effective over here. A lot of our customs and culture are deep rooted, historically. This makes it a lot harder to overturn, without creating problematic ripples. It’s not stopping them trying however.
As the saying goes. In America, 200 years is old, in England, 200 miles is far. A lot of our customs have been shaken out and tested over the centuries. They still exist because they both work and are hard to dislodge. America’s government is a lot younger, and was made as a whole. This leaves it a lot more brittle, and so easier to break.