Citizens of a country may be denied the right to vote because they cannot pass a literacy test in a language which is not their mother tongue. This requirement gives advantages to members of the dominant language group and serves as a way to exclude non-members from participation in government. Language tests for immigration may be more lenient than those for voting. This kind of discrimination may affect naturalized immigrants or members of a plural society.
Constitutions of multilingual societies such as Botswana, Gambia, Ghana, Guyana, Kenya, Lesotho, Sierra Leone and Uganda require the command of English for election to the central legislative; while French is mandatory in Cameroon, Congo, Mali, and Niger.
So many languages are spoken in the world (upwards of 2,500) and so many language groups are so small (consisting perhaps of only a few hundred persons) that they can scarcely all have equal status. Sufficient ground for differentiation exists, so differentiation is inevitable.