Indo-European Languages:
– Descended from Proto-Indo-European language family
– Early speakers expanded into Europe around 4,000 years ago
– Germanic languages predominant in Western, Northern, and Central Europe
– Over 500 million Europeans speak Germanic languages
– Major sub-divisions include West Germanic and North Germanic
– Anglo-Frisian includes English, Scots, and Frisian languages
– Dutch spoken in the Netherlands, northern Belgium, and parts of France
– German spoken in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Luxembourg, Belgium, and France
– Romance languages evolved from Vulgar Latin in the Roman Empire
– Roughly 215 million Europeans are native speakers of Romance languages
Latin Europe:
– Italo-Western languages include Italo-Dalmatian and Western Romance languages
– Italo-Dalmatian includes Tuscan-derived Italian and local Romance languages in Italy and Dalmatian
– Western Romance divides into Gallo-Romance, Rhaeto-Romance, and Gallo-Italic languages
– Occitano-Romance includes Occitan, Catalan, and Aragonese
– West Iberian languages comprise Astur-Leonese, Galician-Portuguese, and Castilian languages
Slavic Languages:
– West Slavic group includes Polish, Czech, Slovak, Kashubian, among others
– East Slavic group includes Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Ruthenian, Rusyn
– South Slavic group includes Slovene, Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Church Slavonic
Greek, Baltic, and Albanian Languages:
– Greek spoken in Greece, Cyprus, and various enclaves worldwide
– Greek dialects include Cappadocian, Pontic, Cretan, Cypriot, among others
– Baltic languages spoken in Lithuania (Lithuanian, Samogitian) and Latvia (Latvian, Latgalian)
– Albanian spoken in Albania, Kosovo, neighboring countries, and among the diaspora
Other Non-Indo-European Languages:
– Turkic languages include Oghuz, Kipchak, and Oghur languages
– Uralic languages include Finnic languages and Hungarian
– Basque, North Caucasian, Kalmyk, Kartvelian, and Maltese languages also present in Europe
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There are over 250 languages indigenous to Europe, and most 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. The three largest phyla of the Indo-European language family in Europe 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, c. 13 million), Baltic (c. 7 million), Albanian (c. 5 million), Celtic (c. 4 million), and Armenian (c. 4 million). Indo-Aryan, though a large subfamily of Indo-European, has a relatively small number of languages in Europe, and a small number of speakers (Romani, c. 1.5 million). However, a number of Indo-Aryan languages not native to Europe are spoken in Europe today.
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, c. 0.5 million), and various languages 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, with Arabic being the most widely spoken of them.
Five languages have more than 50 million native speakers in Europe: Russian, English, French, Italian, and German. 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.)
