“In the near future, we all need to know Chinese.” Kyrgyzstan Kyrgyz is the state language and Russian "used in the capacity of an official language". Tajikistan Tajik as the state language and Russian, designated as language of interethnic communication in the constitution, are widely spoken. Uzbekistan In Uzbekistan, Uzbek (official), Tajik, and Russian are all widely spoken. Use of Russian (alongside Uzbek) is foreseen for notarized documents and civic records Karakalpakstan In the autonomous Karakalpakstan, Karakalpak language is an official one, alongside Uzbek. East Asia In Mainland China, Standard Mandarin (Putonghua) is the official language and is spoken in all regions. It is used for official and formal purposes, by the media, and in education as the language of instruction. However, on money notes, there are texts both in Mandarin (Han) and in Mongolian, Tibetan, Uyghur, and Zhuang. In every locality and region, local varieties of Chinese are spoken in daily life. These range from being quite similar to Putonghua, such as Tianjin dialect, to those that are mutually unintelligible with Putonghua such as Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai dialect (Wu) or Guangzhou dialect (Cantonese). In the autonomous regions, minority languages are used (such as Tibetan in Tibet or Mongolian in Inner Mongolia, Uyghur, Kazakh and others in Xinjiang). Japan: a special law provides for promotion of Ainu language in Hokkaido Taiwan: A national language in Taiwan is legally defined as "a natural language used by an original people group of Taiwan and the Taiwan Sign Language". This includes Formosan languages, Hakka, Mandarin and Taiwanese Hokkien. In Hong Kong, English and Chinese are official languages. All road signs are written in both languages. English is the dominant language in the judiciary and in higher education. Hong Kong Cantonese is the first language of the majority of the population, and is the dominant language in many aspects of everyday life. While Cantonese is the widely spoken form of Chinese in Hong Kong, Standard Mandarin is also taught in schools. The degrees of proficiency in English and Mandarin vary from person to person. In Macau, both Chinese and Portuguese are official languages. While Cantonese is the dominant form of Chinese, Standard Mandarin (Putonghua) is also spoken. Chinese is taught in all schools, while Portuguese is mainly taught in government schools. In addition, English is also taught in many schools. Macanese Patois, a local Portuguese-based creole generally known as Patuá, is now spoken