Languages of Europe

Most languages of Europe belong to the Indo-European language family. Out of a total European population of 744 million as of 2018, some 94% are native speakers of an Indo-European language. Within Indo-European, the three largest phyla are Romance, Germanic, and Slavic, they have more than 200 million speakers each and together account for close to 90% of Europeans. Smaller phyla of Indo-European found in Europe include Hellenic ( Greek, 13 million), Baltic ( 7 million), Albanian ( 5 million), Celtic ( 4 million), Armenian ( 4 million) and Indo-Aryan (Romani, 1.5 million).

Of the approximately 45 million Europeans speaking non-Indo-European languages, most speak languages within either the Uralic or Turkic families. Still smaller groups — such as Basque (language isolate), Semitic languages (Maltese, 0.5 million), and various languages of the Caucasus — account for less than 1% of the European population between them. Immigration has added sizeable communities of speakers of African and Asian languages, amounting to about 4% of the population, with Arabic being the most widely spoken of them.

Five languages have more than 50 million native speakers in Europe: Russian, French, Italian, German, and English. Russian is the most-spoken native language in Europe, and English has the largest number of speakers in total, including some 200 million speakers of English as a second or foreign language. (See English language in Europe.)

Indo-European languages

The Indo-European language family is descended from Proto-Indo-European, which is believed to have been spoken thousands of years ago. Early speakers of Indo-European daughter languages most likely expanded into Europe with the incipient Bronze Age, around 4,000 years ago ( Bell-Beaker culture).

Germanic

The Germanic languages make up the predominant language family in Western, Northern and Central Europe. An estimated 210 million Europeans are native speakers of Germanic languages, the largest groups being German ( 95 million), English ( 70 million), Dutch ( 24 million), Swedish ( 10 million), Danish ( 6 million), Norwegian ( 5 million) and Limburgish (c. 1.3 million).

There are two extant major sub-divisions: ''West Germanic'' and ''North Germanic''. A third group, East Germanic, is now extinct; the only known surviving East Germanic texts are written in the Gothic language. West Germanic is divided into Anglo-Frisian (including English), Low German, Low Franconian (including Dutch) and High German (including Standard German).

Anglo-Frisian

The Anglo-Frisian language family is now mostly represented by English (Anglic), descended from the Old English language spoken by the Anglo-Saxons:

* English, the main language of the United Kingdom and the most widespread language in the Republic of Ireland, also spoken as a second or third language by many Europeans.
* Scots, spoken in Scotland and Ulster, recognized by some as a language and by others as a dialect of English.
The Frisian languages are spoken by about 500,000 Frisians, who live on the southern coast of the North Sea in the Netherlands and Germany. These languages include West Frisian, East Frisian (only surviving dialect of it is Saterlandic) and North Frisian.

Dutch

Dutch is spoken throughout the Netherlands, the northern half of Belgium, as well as the Nord-Pas de Calais region of France. The traditional dialects of the Lower 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 as Flemish. Dutch dialects are varied and cut across national borders.

German

German is spoken throughout Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, much of Switzerland (including the northeast areas bordering on Germany and Austria), northern Italy (South Tyrol), Luxembourg, the East Cantons of Belgium and the Alsace and Lorraine regions of France.

There are several groups of German dialects:

* High German includes several dialect families:
** Standard German
** Central German dialects, spoken in central Germany and including Luxembourgish
** High Franconian, a family of transitional dialects between Central and Upper High German
** Upper German, including Bavarian and Swiss German
** Yiddish is a set of two Jewish languages developed in Germany and later Eastern Europe. They share many features of High German dialects and Hebrew.
* Low German (or Low Saxon) is spoken in various regions throughout Northern Germany and the northern and eastern parts of the Netherlands. It is an official language in Germany. It may be separated into West Low German and East Low German.

North Germanic (Scandinavian)

The ''North Germanic languages'' are spoken in Scandinavian countries and include Danish (Denmark), Norwegian (Norway), Swedish ( Sweden and parts of Finland), or Elfdalian (in a small part of central Sweden), Faroese (Faroe Islands), and Icelandic (Iceland).

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. Even so, especially Swedish, but also Danish and Norwegian, have strong vocabulary connections to the German language.

Romance

Roughly 215 million Europeans (primarily in Southern and Western Europe) are native speakers of Romance languages, the largest groups including:

French ( 72 million),
Italian ( 65 million),
Spanish ( 40 million),
Romanian ( 24 million),
Portuguese ( 10 million),
Catalan ( 7 million),
Sicilian ( 5 million, also subsumed under Italian),
Venetian ( 4 million),
Galician ( 2 million),
Sardinian ( 1 million),
Occitan ( 500,000), besides numerous smaller communities.

The Romance languages evolved from varieties of Vulgar Latin spoken in the various parts of the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity. Latin was itself part of the (otherwise extinct) Italic branch of Indo-European.
Romance languages are divided phylogenetically into '' Italo-Western'', '' Eastern Romance'' (including Romanian) and '' Sardinian''. The Romance-speaking area of Europe is occasionally referred to as '' Latin Europe''.

We can further break down Italo-Western into the ''Italo-Dalmatian languages'' (sometimes grouped with Eastern Romance), including the Tuscan-derived Italian and numerous local Romance languages in Italy as well as Dalmatian, and the ''Western Romance languages''. The Western Romance languages in turn separate into the Gallo-Romance languages, including Langues d'oïl such as French, the Francoprovencalic languages Arpitan and Faetar, the Rhaeto-Romance languages, and the Gallo-Italic languages; the Occitano-Romance languages, grouped with either Gallo-Romance or East Iberian, including Occitanic languages such as Occitan and Gardiol, and Catalan; Aragonese, grouped in with either Occitano-Romance or West Iberian, and finally the West Iberian languages, including the Astur-Leonese languages, the Galician-Portuguese languages, and the Castilian languages.

Slavic

Slavic languages are spoken in large areas of Southern, Central and Eastern Europe. An estimated 250 million Europeans are native speakers of Slavic languages, the largest groups being
Russian ( 110 million in European Russia and adjacent parts of Eastern Europe, Russian forming the largest linguistic community in Europe),
Polish ( 45 million),
Ukrainian ( 40 million),
Serbo-Croatian ( 21 million),
Czech ( 11 million),
Bulgarian ( 9 million),
Slovak ( 5 million)
Belarusian and Slovene ( 3 million each)
and Macedonian ( 2 million).

Phylogenetically, Slavic is divided into three subgroups:

* '' West Slavic'' includes Polish, Czech, Slovak, Lower Sorbian, Upper Sorbian, Silesian and Kashubian.
* '' East Slavic'' includes Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn.
* '' South Slavic'' includes Slovene and Serbo-Croatian in the southwest and Bulgarian, Macedonian and Church Slavonic (a liturgical language) in the southeast, each with numerous distinctive dialects. South Slavic languages constitute a dialect continuum where standard Slovene, Macedonian and Bulgarian are each based on a distinct dialect, whereas pluricentric Serbo-Croatian boasts four mutually intelligible national standard varieties all based on a single dialect, Shtokavian.

Others

* Greek ( 13 million) is the official language of Greece and Cyprus, and there are Greek-speaking enclaves in Albania, Bulgaria, Italy, North Macedonia, Romania, Georgia, Ukraine, Lebanon, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, and Turkey, and in Greek communities around the world. Dialects of modern Greek that originate from Attic Greek (through Koine and then Medieval Greek) are Cappadocian, Pontic, Cretan, Cypriot, Katharevousa, and Yevanic.
** Italiot Greek is, debatably, a Doric dialect of Greek. It is spoken in southern Italy only, in the southern Calabria region (as Grecanic) and in the Salento region (as Griko). It was studied by the German linguist Gerhard Rohlfs during the 1930s and 1950s.
** Tsakonian is a Doric dialect of the Greek language spoken in the lower Arcadia region of the Peloponnese around the village of Leonidio

* The Baltic languages are spoken in Lithuania (Lithuanian ( 3 million), Samogitian) and Latvia ( Latvian ( 2 million), Latgalian). Samogitian and Latgalian are usually considered to be dialects of Lithuanian and Latvian respectively.
** There are also several extinct Baltic languages, including: Galindian, Curonian, Old Prussian, Selonian, Semigallian and Sudovian.
* Albanian ( 5 million) has two major dialects, Tosk Albanian and Gheg Albanian. It is spoken in Albania and Kosovo, neighboring North Macedonia, Serbia, Greece, Italy, and Montenegro. It is also widely spoken in the Albanian diaspora.
* Armenian ( 7 million) has two major forms, Western Armenian and Eastern Armenian. It is spoken in Armenia, Artsakh and Georgia ( Samtskhe-Javakheti), also Russia, France, Italy, Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus. It is also widely spoken in the Armenian Diaspora.
* There are six living Celtic languages, spoken in areas of northwestern Europe dubbed the "Celtic nations". All six are members of the Insular Celtic family, which in turn is divided into:
** Brittonic family: Welsh (Wales, 700,000), Cornish (Cornwall, 500) and Breton (Brittany, 200,000)
** Goidelic family: Irish (Ireland, 2,000,000), Scottish Gaelic (Scotland, 50,000), and Manx (Isle of Man, 1,800)
: Continental Celtic languages had previously been spoken across Europe from Iberia and Gaul to Asia Minor, but became extinct in the first millennium AD.
* The Indo-Aryan languages have one major representation: Romani ( 1.5 million speakers), introduced in Europe during the late medieval period. Lacking a nation state, Romani is spoken as a minority language throughout Europe.
* The Iranian languages in Europe are natively represented in the North Caucasus, notably with Ossetian ( 600,000).

Non-Indo-European languages

Turkic

* Oghuz languages in Europe include Turkish, spoken in East Thrace and by immigrant communities; Azerbaijani is spoken in Northeast Azerbaijan and parts of Southern Russia and Gagauz is spoken in Gagauzia.
* Kipchak languages in Europe include Karaim, Crimean Tatar and Krymchak, which is spoken in mainly Crimea; Tatar

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