A color-coded map of most languages used throughout Europe
There are over 250languages indigenous to Europe, and most belong to theIndo-European language family.[1][2] Out of atotal European population of 744 million as of 2018, some 94% are native speakers of an Indo-European language. The three largest phyla of the Indo-European language family in Europe areRomance,Germanic, andSlavic; they have more than 200 million speakers each, and together account for close to 90% of Europeans.
Of the approximately 45 million Europeans speaking non-Indo-European languages, most speak languages within either theUralic orTurkic families. Still smaller groups — such asBasque (language isolate),Semitic languages (Maltese,c. 0.5 million), and variouslanguages of the Caucasus — account for less than 1% of the European population among them. Immigration has added sizeable communities of speakers of African and Asian languages, amounting to about 4% of the population,[3] withArabic being the most widely spoken of them.
Dutch is spoken throughout theNetherlands, the northern half ofBelgium, as well as theNord-Pas de Calais region ofFrance. The traditional dialects of theLower Rhine region of Germany are linguistically more closely related to Dutch than to modern German. In Belgian and French contexts, Dutch is sometimes referred to asFlemish.Dutch dialects are numerous and varied.[12]
Low German is spoken in various regions throughout Northern Germany and the northern and eastern parts of the Netherlands.[15] It may be separated intoWest Low German andEast Low German.[16]
English has a long history of contact with Scandinavian languages, given the immigration of Scandinavians early in the history of Britain, and shares various features with the Scandinavian languages.[18] Even so, especially Dutch and Swedish, but also Danish and Norwegian, have strong vocabulary connections to theGerman language.[19][20][21]
There are six livingCeltic languages, spoken in areas of northwestern Europe dubbed the "Celtic nations". All six are members of theInsular Celtic family, which in turn is divided into:
Continental Celtic languages had previously been spoken across Europe from Iberia and Gaul to Asia Minor, but became extinct in the first millennium CE.[57][58]
TheIndo-Aryan languages have one major representative:Romani (c. 4.6 million speakers[59]), introduced in Europe during the late medieval period. Lacking a nation state, Romani is spoken as a minority language throughout Europe.[59]
Oghur languages were historically indigenous to much of Eastern Europe; however, most of them are extinct today, with the exception ofChuvash, which is spoken inChuvashia.[68]
TheBasque language (orEuskara,c. 750,000) is alanguage isolate and the ancestral language of theBasque people who inhabit theBasque Country, a region in the westernPyrenees mountains mostly in northeasternSpain and partly in southwesternFrance of about 3 million inhabitants, where it is spoken fluently by about 750,000 and understood by more than 1.5 million people. Basque is directly related toancient Aquitanian, and it is likely that an early form of the Basque language was present in Western Europe before the arrival of the Indo-European languages in the area in theBronze Age.[citation needed]
Several dozen manual languages exist across Europe, with the most widespread sign language family being theFrancosign languages, with its languages found in countries fromIberia to theBalkans and theBaltics. Accurate historical information of sign and tactile languages is difficult to come by, with folk histories noting the existence signing communities across Europe hundreds of years ago.British Sign Language (BSL) andFrench Sign Language (LSF) are probably the oldest confirmed, continuously used sign languages. AlongsideGerman Sign Language (DGS) according toEthnologue, these three have the most numbers of signers, though very few institutions take appropriate statistics on contemporary signing populations, making legitimate data hard to find.[citation needed]
Notably, few European sign languages have overt connections with the local majority/oral languages, aside from standardlanguage contact andborrowing, meaning grammatically the sign languages and the oral languages of Europe are quite distinct from one another. Due to (visual/aural) modality differences, most sign languages are named for the larger ethnic nation in which they are spoken, plus the words "sign language", rendering what is spoken across much ofFrance,Wallonia andRomandy asFrench Sign Language orLSF for:langue dessignesfrançaise.[72]
Recognition of non-oral languages varies widely from region to region.[73] Some countries afford legal recognition, even to official on a state level, whereas others continue to be actively suppressed.[74]
Though "there is a widespread belief—among both Deaf people and sign language linguists—that thereare sign language families,"[75] the actual relationship between sign languages is difficult to ascertain. Concepts and methods used in historical linguistics to describe language families for written and spoken languages are not easily mapped onto signed languages.[76] Some of the current understandings of sign language relationships, however, provide some reasonable estimates about potential sign language families:
In the Middle Ages the two most important defining elements of Europe wereChristianitas andLatinitas.[80]
The earliest dictionaries were glossaries: more or less structured lists of lexical pairs (in alphabetical order or according to conceptual fields). The Latin-German (Latin-Bavarian)Abrogans was among the first. A new wave oflexicography can be seen from the late 15th century onwards (after the introduction of the printing press, with the growing interest in standardization of languages).[citation needed]
The first languages whose standardisation was promoted included Italian (questione della lingua: Modern Tuscan/Florentine vs. Old Tuscan/Florentine vs. Venetian → Modern Florentine + archaic Tuscan + Upper Italian), French (the standard is based on Parisian), English (the standard is based on the London dialect) and (High) German (based on the dialects of the chancellery of Meissen in Saxony, Middle German, and the chancellery of Prague in Bohemia ("Common German")). But several other nations also began to develop a standard variety in the 16th century.[citation needed]
Europe has had a number of languages that were consideredlinguae francae over some ranges for some periods according to some historians. Typically in the rise of a national language the new language becomes a lingua franca to peoples in the range of the future nation until the consolidation and unification phases. If the nation becomes internationally influential, its language may become a lingua franca among nations that speak their own national languages. Europe has had no lingua franca ranging over its entire territory spoken by all or most of its populations during any historical period. Some linguae francae of past and present over some of its regions for some of its populations are:
Vulgar Latin andLate Latin among the uneducated and educated populations respectively of theRoman Empire and the states that followed it in the same range no later than 900 AD;Medieval Latin andRenaissance Latin among the educated populations of western, northern, central and part of eastern Europe until the rise of the national languages in that range, beginning with the first language academy in Italy in 1582/83;Neo-Latin written only in scholarly and scientific contexts by a small minority of the educated population at scattered locations over all of Europe;ecclesiastical Latin, in spoken and written contexts of liturgy and church administration only, over the range of theRoman Catholic Church.[citation needed]
Old Occitan in central and southern France, north-western Italy and the main territories of thecrown of Aragon (Catalonia, Valencia, the Balearic Islands and Aragon).[82]
Lingua Franca or Sabir, the original of the name, an Italian and Catalan-basedpidgin language of mixed origins used by maritime commercial interests around the Mediterranean in the Middle Ages and early Modern Age.[83]
Historical attitudes towards linguistic diversity are illustrated by two French laws: theOrdonnance de Villers-Cotterêts (1539), which said that every document in France should be written in French (neither in Latin nor in Occitan) and theLoi Toubon (1994), which aimed to eliminate anglicisms from official documents. States and populations within a state have often resorted to war to settle their differences. There have been attempts to prevent such hostilities: two such initiatives were promoted by theCouncil of Europe, founded in 1949, which affirms the right of minority language speakers to use their language fully and freely.[88] The Council of Europe is committed to protecting linguistic diversity. Currently all European countries exceptFrance,Andorra andTurkey have signed theFramework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, whileGreece,Iceland andLuxembourg have signed it, but have not ratified it; this framework entered into force in 1998. Another European treaty, theEuropean Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, was adopted in 1992 under the auspices of theCouncil of Europe: it entered into force in 1998, and while it is legally binding for 24 countries,France,Iceland,Italy,North Macedonia,Moldova andRussia have chosen to sign without ratifying the convention.[89][90]
TheGreek alphabet was derived from thePhoenician alphabet, and Latin was derived from the Greek via theOld Italic alphabet. In the Early Middle Ages,Ogham was used in Ireland andrunes (derived from Old Italic script) in Scandinavia. Both were replaced in general use by the Latin alphabet by the Late Middle Ages. The Cyrillic script was derived from the Greek with the first texts appearing around 940 AD.[citation needed]
Around 1900 there were mainly two typeface variants of theLatin alphabet used in Europe:Antiqua andFraktur. Fraktur was used most for German, Estonian, Latvian, Norwegian and Danish whereas Antiqua was used for Italian, Spanish, French, Polish, Portuguese, English, Romanian, Swedish and Finnish. The Fraktur variant was banned byHitler in 1941, having been described as "Schwabacher Jewish letters".[92] Other scripts have historically been in use in Europe, including Phoenician, from which modern Latin letters descend, AncientEgyptian hieroglyphs on Egyptian artefacts traded during Antiquity, various runic systems used in Northern Europe preceding Christianisation, and Arabic during the era of the Ottoman Empire.[citation needed]
Hungarian rovás was used by the Hungarian people in the early Middle Ages, but it was gradually replaced with the Latin-based Hungarian alphabet when Hungary became a kingdom, though it was revived in the 20th century and has certain marginal, but growing area of usage since then.[93]
TheEuropean Union (as of 2021) had 27 member states accounting for a population of 447 million, or about 60% of the population of Europe.[94]
The European Union has designated by agreement with the member states 24 languages as "official and working": Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish and Swedish.[95] This designation provides member states with two "entitlements": the member state may communicate with the EU in any of the designated languages, and view "EU regulations and other legislative documents" in that language.[96]
The European Union and theCouncil of Europe have been collaborating in education of member populations in languages for "the promotion of plurilingualism" among EU member states.[97] The joint document, "Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment (CEFR)", is an educational standard defining "the competencies necessary for communication" and related knowledge for the benefit of educators in setting up educational programs. In a 2005 independent survey requested by the EU'sDirectorate-General for Education and Culture regarding the extent to which major European languages were spoken in member states. The results were published in a 2006 document, "Europeans and Their Languages", or "Eurobarometer 243". In this study, statistically relevant[clarification needed][Do you mean "significant"?] samples of the population in each country were asked to fill out a survey form concerning the languages that they spoke with sufficient competency "to be able to have a conversation".[98]
The list is intended to include any language variety with anISO 639 code. However, it omits sign languages. Because the ISO-639-2 and ISO-639-3 codes have different definitions, this means that some communities of speakers may be listed more than once. For instance, speakers ofBavarian are listed both under "Bavarian" (ISO-639-3 codebar) as well as under "German" (ISO-639-2 codede).[99]
Thereare various definitions of Europe, which may or may not include all or parts of Turkey, Cyprus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. For convenience, the languages and associated statistics for all five of these countries are grouped together on this page, as they are usually presented at a national, rather than subnational, level.
^Ti Alkire; Carol Rosen (2010).Romance languages: a Historical Introduction. New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 3.
^Sergio Lubello (2016).Manuale Di Linguistica Italiana, Manuals of Romance linguistics. De Gruyter. p. 499.
^This includes all of the varieties of Sardinian, written with anyorthography (theLSC, used for all of Sardinian, or theLogudorese, Nugorese andCampidanese orthographies, only used for some dialects of it) but does not includeGallurese andSassarese, that even though they have sometimes been included in a supposed Sardinian "macro-language" are actually considered by all Sardinian linguists two different transitional languages between Sardinian andCorsican (or, in the case of Gallurese, are sometimes classified as a variant of Corsican). For Gallurese:ATTI DEL II CONVEGNO INTERNAZIONALE DI STUDI Ciurrata di la Linga Gadduresa, 2014, for Sassarese:Maxia, Mauro (2010).Studi sardo-corsi. Dialettologia e storia della lingua tra le due isole (in Italian). Sassari: Taphros. p. 58.La tesi che individua nel sassarese una base essenzialmente toscana deve essere riesaminata alla luce delle cospicue migrazioni corse che fin dall'età giudicale interessarono soprattutto il nord della Sardegna. In effetti, che il settentrione della Sardegna, almeno dalla metà del Quattrocento, fosse interessato da un forte presenza corsa si può desumere da diversi punti di osservazione. Una delle prove più evidenti è costituita dall'espressa citazione che di questo fenomeno fa il cap. 42 del secondo libro degli Statuti del comune di Sassari, il quale fu aggiunto nel 1435 o subito dopo. Se si tiene conto di questa massiccia presenza corsa e del fatto che la presenza pisana nel regno di Logudoro cessò definitivamente entro il Duecento, l'origine del fondo toscano non andrà attribuita a un influsso diretto del pisano antico ma del corso che rappresenta, esso stesso, una conseguenza dell'antica toscanizzazione della Corsica). They are legally considered two different languages by the Sardinian Regional Government too (Autonomous Region of Sardinia (15 October 1997)."Legge Regionale 15 ottobre 1997, n. 26" (in Italian). pp. Art. 2, paragraph 4. Archived fromthe original on 1 March 2021. Retrieved16 June 2008.).
^Aquilina, J. (1958). "Maltese as a Mixed Language".Journal of Semitic Studies.3 (1):58–79.doi:10.1093/jss/3.1.58.
^Aquilina, Joseph (July–September 1960). "The Structure of Maltese".Journal of the American Oriental Society.80 (3):267–68.doi:10.2307/596187.JSTOR596187.
^Werner, Louis; Calleja, Alan (November–December 2004)."Europe's New Arabic Connection".Saudi Aramco World. Archived fromthe original on 29 September 2012. Retrieved5 February 2016.
^"BANZSL".www.signcommunity.org.uk. Retrieved22 December 2023.
^"Chapter 2. The Linguistic Setup of Sign Languages – The Case of Irish Sign Language (ISL)",Mouth Actions in Sign Languages (in German), De Gruyter Mouton, 28 July 2014, pp. 4–30,doi:10.1515/9781614514978.4,ISBN978-1-61451-497-8
^Counelis, James Steve (March 1976). "Review [untitled] of Ariadna Camariano-Cioran, Les Academies Princieres de Bucarest et de Jassy et leur Professeurs".Church History.45 (1):115–116.doi:10.2307/3164593.JSTOR3164593.S2CID162293323....Greek, thelingua franca of commerce and religion, provided a cultural unity to the Balkans...Greek penetrated Moldavian and Wallachian territories as early as the fourteenth century.... The heavy influence of Greek culture upon the intellectual and academic life of Bucharest andJassy was longer termed than historians once believed.
^Facsimile of Bormann's Memorandum (in German) The memorandum itself is typed in Antiqua, but theNSDAPletterhead is printed in Fraktur. "For general attention, on behalf of the Führer, I make the following announcement: It is wrong to regard or to describe the so‑called Gothic script as a German script. In reality, the so‑called Gothic script consists of Schwabach Jew letters. Just as they later took control of the newspapers, upon the introduction of printing the Jews residing in Germany took control of the printing presses and thus in Germany the Schwabach Jew letters were forcefully introduced. Today the Führer, talking with Herr Reichsleiter Amann and Herr Book Publisher Adolf Müller, has decided that in the future the Antiqua script is to be described as normal script. All printed materials are to be gradually converted to this normal script. As soon as is feasible in terms of textbooks, only the normal script will be taught in village and state schools. The use of the Schwabach Jew letters by officials will in future cease; appointment certifications for functionaries, street signs, and so forth will in future be produced only in normal script. On behalf of the Führer, Herr Reichsleiter Amann will in future convert those newspapers and periodicals that already have foreign distribution, or whose foreign distribution is desired, to normal script".
^c. 130,000 in Dagestan. In addition, there are about 0.5 million speakers in immigrant communities in Russia, see#Immigrant communities.Azerbaijani atEthnologue (18th ed., 2015)(subscription required)
^recognized as official language in Nordfriesland, Schleswig-Flensburg, Flensburg and Rendsburg-Eckernförde (§ 82b LVwGArchived 3 August 2018 at theWayback Machine)
^SIL Ethnologue:"Not the dominant language for most. Formerly the main language of Sephardic Jewry. Used in literary and music contexts."ca. 100k speakers in total, most of them in Israel, small communities in the Balkans, Greece, Turkey and in Spain.
^220,000 native speakers out of an ethnic population of 550,000. Combines Komi-Permyak (koi) with 65,000 speakers and Komi-Zyrian (kpv) with 156,000 speakers.Komi atEthnologue (18th ed., 2015)(subscription required)
^ab2.6 million cited as estimate of all Germans who speak Platt "well or very well" (including L2; 4.3 million cited as the number of all speakers including those with "moderate" knowledge) in 2009.Heute in Bremen. „Ohne Zweifel gefährdet". Frerk Möller im Interview, taz, 21. Februar 2009.However, Wirrer (1998) described Low German as "moribund".Jan Wirrer:Zum Status des Niederdeutschen. In:Zeitschrift für Germanistische Linguistik. 26, 1998, S. 309. The number of native speakers is unknown, estimated at 1 million by SIL Ethnologue.Low German atEthnologue (18th ed., 2015)(subscription required),Westphalian atEthnologue (18th ed., 2015)(subscription required)
^The question whether Low German should be considered as subsumed under "German" as the official language of Germany has a complicated legal history. In the wake of the ratification of theEuropean Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (1998), Schleswig-Holstein has explicitly recognized Low German as a regional language with official status (§ 82b LVwGArchived 3 August 2018 at theWayback Machine).
^In 2008, law was passed by the Region of Campania, stating that the Neapolitan language was to be legally protected."Tutela del dialetto, primo via libera al Ddl campano".Il Denaro (in Italian). 15 October 2008. Archived fromthe original on 27 July 2011. Retrieved22 June 2013.
^total 22,000 native speakers (2010 Russian census) out of an ethnic population of 44,000. Most of these are in Siberia, with about 8,000 ethnic Nenets in European Russia (2010 census, mostly inNenets Autonomous Okrug)
^Occitan atEthnologue (18th ed., 2015)(subscription required).Includes Auvergnat, Gascon, Languedocien, Limousin, Provençal, Vivaro-Alpine. Most native speakers are in France; their number is unknown, as varieties of Occitan are treated as French dialects with no official status.
^Total 570,000, of which 450,000 in the Russian Federation.Ossetian atEthnologue (18th ed., 2015)(subscription required)
^abL1: 119 million in the Russian Federation (of which c. 83 million inEuropean Russia), 14.3 million in Ukraine, 6.67 million in Belarus, 0.67 million in Latvia, 0.38 million in Estonia, 0.38 million in Moldova. L1+L2: c. 100 million in European Russia, 39 million in Ukraine, 7 million in Belarus, 7 million in Poland, 2 million in Latvia, c. 2 million in the European portion of Kazakhstan, 1.8 million in Moldova, 1.1 million in Estonia.Russian atEthnologue (18th ed., 2015)(subscription required).
^GVG § 184 Satz 2; VwVfGBbg § 23 Abs. 5; SächsSorbG § 9, right to use Sorbian in communication with the authorities guaranteed for the "Sorbian settlement area" (Sorbisches Siedlungsgebiet,Lusatia).
^Tat atEthnologue (18th ed., 2015)(subscription required),Judeo-Tat atEthnologue (18th ed., 2015)(subscription required)2,000 speakers in the Russian Federation according to the 2010 census (includingJudeo-Tat). About 28,000 speakers in Azerbaijan; most speakers live along or just north of the Caucasus ridge (and are thus technically in Europe), with some also settling just south of the Caucasus ridge, in theSouth Caucasus.
^Total population estimated at 1.5 million as of 1991, of which c. 40% in Ukraine.Yiddish atEthnologue (18th ed., 2015)(subscription required),Eastern Yiddish atEthnologue (18th ed., 2015)(subscription required),Western Yiddish atEthnologue (18th ed., 2015)(subscription required)
^SILEthnologue gives estimates, broken down by dialect group, totalling 31 million, but with the caveat of "Very provisional figures for Northern Kurdish speaker population".Ethnologue estimates for dialect groups:Northern: 20.2M (undated; 15M in Turkey for 2009),Central: 6.75M (2009),Southern: 3M (2000),Laki: 1M (2000).The SwedishNationalencyklopedin listed Kurdish in its "Världens 100 största språk 2007" (The World's 100 Largest Languages in 2007), citing an estimate of 20.6 million native speakers.
^Thede Kahl (2006): The islamisation of the Meglen Vlachs (Megleno-Romanians): The village of Nânti (Nótia) and the "Nântinets" in present-day Turkey, Nationalities Papers, 34:01, p80-81: "Assuming that nearly the total population of Nânti emigrated, then the number of emigrants must have been around 4,000. If the reported number of people living there today is added, the whole Meglen Vlachs population is c. 5,000. Although that number is only a rough estimate and may be exaggerated by the individual interviewees, it might correspond to reality."
^Özkan, Hakan (2013). "The Pontic Greek spoken by Muslims in the villages of Beşköy in the province of present-day Trabzon".Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies.37 (1):130–150.doi:10.1179/0307013112z.00000000023.
^John M. Clifton, Gabriela Deckinga, Laura Lucht, Calvin Tiessen,"Sociolinguistic Situation of the Tat and Mountain Jews in Azerbaijan," In Clifton, ed., Studies in Languages of Azerbaijan, vol. 2 (Azerbaijan & St Petersburg, Russia: Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan & SIL International 2005). Page 3.
Reissmann, Stefan; Argador, Urion (2006)."Scpraaxoi in Europa" (in Esperanto, English, and German). Reissmann & Argador. Archived fromthe original on 22 June 2009. Retrieved2 November 2009.
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