Most languages of Europe belong to the Indo-European language family; another major family is the Finno-Ugric. The Turkic family also has several European members, while the North and South Caucasian families are important in the southeastern extremity of geographical Europe. Basque is a language isolate directly related to ancient Aquitanian, while Maltese is the only national language in Europe, but not the only language in Europe, that is Semitic.
In addition to current languages, there are many languages once used in Europe which are now extinct; see List of extinct languages of Europe. Other languages are nearly extinct; see List of endangered languages in Europe. This article also does not include languages spoken by relatively recently-arrived migrant communities.
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The Indo-European language family descended from Proto-Indo-European, believed to have been spoken thousands of years ago. Indo-European languages are spoken throughout Europe, but particularly dominate Western Europe.
Albanian has two major dialects, Gheg and Tosk. It is spoken in Albania, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, and parts of Montenegro, Serbia, Turkey, southern Italy, and northern Greece. Emigrants speak it in many other countries.
Armenian is the majority language in Armenia, which is at the junction of Western Asia and Eastern Europe. It is also spoken in the widespread Armenian diaspora in Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas. It became an official language when the Armenian alphabet was created by Saint Mesrop Mashtots during the 4th century AD. It is a diverse language including words from some surrounding nations but mainly Ancient Greek and Pahlavi (Medieval Persian).
The Baltic languages are spoken in Lithuania (Lithuanian, Samogitian) and Latvia (Latvian, Latgalian). Samogitian and Latgalian are usually considered to be dialects of Lithuanian and Latvian respectively. New Curonian language is nearly extinct. It was spoken in the Curonian Spit which is now divided between Lithuania and Kaliningrad oblast. There are also several extinct Baltic languages, including Prussian and Sudovian.
The Celtic languages are divided into
The Germanic languages make up the predominant language family in northwestern Europe, reaching from Iceland to Sweden and from England and Ireland to Austria. 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.
There are three major groupings of West Germanic languages: Anglo-Frisian, German, and Low Franconian (now primarily modern Dutch).
The Anglo-Frisian language family has two major groups:
German is spoken throughout Germany, Austria, and much of Switzerland (including the northeast areas bordering on Germany and Austria).
There are several groups of German dialects:
The North Germanic languages are spoken in Scandinavian countries and include Danish (Denmark, Greenland and the Faroe Islands), Norwegian (Norway), Swedish (Sweden), Elfdalian or Övdalian (in a small part of central Sweden), Faroese (Faroe Islands), and Icelandic (Iceland).
The Indo-Iranian languages have two major groupings, Indo-Aryan languages including Romany (or Gypsy), and Iranian languages, which include Kurdish and Ossetian.
The Romance languages descended from the Vulgar Latin spoken across most of the lands of the Roman Empire. Some of the Romance languages are official in the European Union and the Latin Union and the more prominent ones are studied in many educational institutions worldwide. Three of the Romance languages (Spanish, French, and Portuguese) are spoken by a combined roughly one billion speakers worldwide. Many other Romance languages and their local varieties are spoken throughout Europe, and some are recognized as regional languages.
The list below is a brief summary of the Romance languages commonly encountered in Europe.
Slavic languages are spoken in large areas of Central Europe, Eastern Europe and Russia.
East Slavic languages include Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Rusyn, Carpatho-Rusyn (Ruthenian), and Pannonian-Rusyn (Rusnak).
West Slavic languages include Czech, Kashubian, Silesian, Polish, Slovak, and Sorbian.
South Slavic languages include Bosnian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Macedonian, Montenegrin, Old Church Slavonic (a liturgical language), Romano-Serbian (a mixed language), Serbian, and Slovene.
The Basque language (or Euskara) is a language isolate and the ancestral language of the Basque people who inhabit the Basque Country, a region in the western Pyrenees mountains mostly in northeastern Spain and partly in southwestern France of about 3,000,000 inhabitants, where it is spoken fluently by about 750,000 and understood by more than 1,500,000.
Basque is directly related to ancient 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. The language may have been spoken since Paleolithic times.
Basque is also spoken by immigrants in Australia, Costa Rica, Mexico, the Philippines and the United States, especially in Nevada, Idaho and California.[1]
The South Caucasian languages group consists of Kartvelian languages including Georgian and the related languages of Svan, Mingrelian, and Laz. Proto-Kartvelian is believed to be a common ancestor language of all South Caucasian languages, with the earliest split occurring in the second millennium BC or earlier when Svan was separated. Megrelian and Laz split from Georgian roughly a thousand years later, roughly at the beginning of the first millennium BC (e.g. Klimov, T. Gamkrelidze, G. Machavariani).
The group is considered as isolated, and although for simplicity it is often grouped with Northern Caucasian languages, so far no linguistic relationship between South and North Caucasian languages has been observed.
North Caucasian languages (sometimes called simply Caucasic as opposed to Kartvelian, and to avoid confusion with the concept of the "Caucasian race") is a blanket term for two language phyla spoken chiefly in the north Caucasus and Turkey: the Northwest Caucasian family (including Abkhaz, spoken in Abkhazia) and the Northeast Caucasian family spoken mainly in the border area of the southern Russian Federation (including Dagestan, Chechnya, and Ingushetia).
Many linguists, notably Sergei Starostin and Sergei Nikolayev, believe that the two groups sprang from a common ancestor about 5,000 years ago.[2] However this view is difficult to evaluate, and remains controversial.
The Finno-Ugric languages are a subfamily of the Uralic language family. Europe has a number of Finno-Ugric languages and language families, including Estonian, Finnish, and Hungarian. See this classification for a detailed list.
The proposed but controversial Altaic language family is claimed to consist of five branches (Turkic, Mongolian, Tungus, Korean and Japanese) that show similarities in vocabulary, morphological and syntactic structure, and certain phonological features. On the basis of systematic sound correspondences, they are generally considered to be genetically related.
There are many Turkic languages and language families. The most prominent Turkic language in Europe is Turkish. See this classification for a detailed list.
The Mongolic languages originated in Asia, and most did not proliferate west to Europe. Kalmyk is spoken in the Republic of Kalmykia, part of the Russian Federation, in western Asia near the eastern edge of Europe.
Cypriot Maronite Arabic (also known as Cypriot Arabic) is a variety of Arabic spoken by Maronites in Cyprus. Most speakers live in Nicosia, but others are in the communities of Kormakiti and Lemesos. Brought to the island by Maronites fleeing Lebanon over 700 years ago, this variety of Arabic has been influenced by Greek in both phonology and vocabulary, while retaining certain unusually archaic features in other respects.
Hebrew has been written and spoken by the Jewish communities of all of Europe in liturgical, educational and often conversational contexts since the entry of the Jews into Europe at some uncertainly known time in late antiquity. Its restoration as the official language of Israel has accelerated its secular use. It also has been used in educational and liturgical contexts by some segments of the Christian population. Hebrew has its own consonantal alphabet, in which the vowels may be marked by diacritical marks termed pointing in English and dagesh and mappiq in Hebrew.
Maltese is a Semitic language with Romance and Germanic influences, spoken in Malta.[3][4][5][6] It is based on Sicilian Arabic, with influences from Italian (particularly Sicilian), French, and more recently, English. It is unique in being the only Semitic language written in the Latin alphabet in its standard form. It is the smallest official language of the EU in terms of speakers, and the only official Semitic language within the EU.
Europe has had a number of languages that were considered lingua francas 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 lingua francas of past and present over some of its regions for some of its populations are:
The earliest dictionaries were glossaries, i.e. 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 of lexicography can be seen from the late 15th century onwards (after the introduction of the printing press, with the growing interest in standardizing languages).
In the Middle Ages the two most important defining elements of Europe were Christianitas and Latinitas. Thus language—at least the supranational language—played an elementary role. The concept of the nation state became increasingly important. Nations adopted particular dialects as their national language. This, together with improved communications, led to official efforts to standardise the national language, and a number of language academies were established (e.g. 1582 Accademia della Crusca in Florence, 1617 Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft in Weimar, 1635 Académie française in Paris, 1713 Real Academia Española in Madrid). Language became increasingly linked to nation as opposed to culture, and was also used to promote religious and ethnic identity (e.g. different Bible translations in the same language for Catholics and Protestants).
The first languages for which 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.
The most ancient historical social structure of Europe is that of politically independent tribes, each with its own ethnic identity, based among other cultural factors on its language. For example, the Latini speaking Latin in Latium. A number of tribes with a common language might combine into a nation; for example, the Galli living in Gallia comprised many loosely confederated tribes, such as the Parisii, whose settlement became Paris, but they all spoke the Gallic language. Later, multi-ethnic political states formed, such as Rome, in which one language (Latin) dominated and was official or quasi-official. Over the centuries these formerly tribal states acquired different ethnic groups because of changes in political boundaries or due to immigration (voluntary or otherwise).
Linguistic conflict has been important in European history. Historical attitudes towards linguistic diversity are illustrated by two French laws: the Ordonnance de Villers-Cotterêts (1539), which said that every document in France should be written in French (ie neither in Latin nor in Occitan) and the Loi 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. Attempts have been made to prevent such hostilities: one such initiative was the Council of Europe, founded in 1949, whose membership is open to European nations. It offers quasi-constitutional policies and institutions designed to intervene in ethnic conflict in favor of basic human rights. Its European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages defines "regional or minority languages" as those spoken by "numerically smaller" populations of nationals and which are "different from the official language(s) of the state." Dialects of official languages and the "language of migrants" are excluded. The document affirms the right of minority-language speakers to use their language fully and freely.[12] The Council of Europe is committed to protecting linguistic diversity. Currently all European countries except France, Andorra and Turkey have signed the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, while Greece, Iceland and Luxembourg have signed it, but have not ratified it. This framework entered into force in 1998.
The European Union (EU) designates one or more languages as "official and working" with regard to any member state if they are the official languages of that state. The decision as to whether they are and their use by the EU as such is entirely up to the laws and policies of the member states. In the case of multiple official languages the member state must designate which one is to be the working language.[13]
As the EU is an entirely voluntary association established by treaty — a member state may withdraw at any time — each member retains its sovereignty in deciding what use to make of its own languages; it must agree to legislate any EU acceptance criteria before membership. The EU designation as official and working is only an agreement concerning the languages to be used in transacting official business between the member state and the EU, especially in the translation of documents passed between the EU and the member state. The EU does not attempt in any way to govern language use in a member state.
Currently the EU has designated by agreement with the member states 23 languages as "official and working:" Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish and Swedish.[13] This designation provides member states with two "entitlements:" the member state may communicate with the EU in the designated one of those languages and view "EU regulations and other legislative documents" in that language.[14]
The European Union and the Council of Europe have been collaborating in a number of tasks, among which is the education of member populations in languages for "the promotion of plurilingualism" among EU member states,[15] 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. That document defines three general levels of knowledge: A Basic User, B Independent User and C Proficient User.[16] The ability to speak the language falls under competencies B and C ranging from "can keep going comprehensibly" to "can express him/herself at length with a natural, effortless, unhesitating flow."[17]
These distinctions were simplified in a 2005 independent survey requested by the Directorate General for Education and Culture of the EU of the extent to which the major languages of Europe were spoken in the member states of the EU. The results were published in a 2006 document, "Europeans and Their Languages", or "Eurobarometer 243," which is disavowed as official by the European Commission, but does supply some scientific data concerning language use in the EU. In this study statistically relevant 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."[18] Some of the results showing the distribution of major languages are shown in the maps below. The darkest colors report the highest proportion of speakers. Only EU members were studied. Thus data on Russian speakers were gathered, but Russia is not an EU member and so Russian does not appear in Russia on the maps. It does appear as spoken to the greatest extent in the Baltic countries, which are EU members.
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