Eritrea is a multilingual country. The nation has no official language, as the Constitution establishes the "equality of all Eritrean languages". However, Tigrinya serves as the de facto language of national identity. With 2,540,000 total speakers of a population of 5,254,000 in 2006, Tigrinya is the most widely spoken language, particularly in the southern and central parts of Eritrea. Modern Standard Arabic and English serve as de facto working languages, with the latter used in university education and many technical fields. Italian, the former colonial language, is widely used in commerce and is taught as a second language in schools, with a few elderly monolinguals.