Languages in Europe

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Most languages of Europe belong to the Indo-European language family. Out of a total population of 740 million, some 94% are native speakers of an Indo-European language; within Indo-European, the three largest phyla are Slavic, Germanic, and Romance, with more than 200 million speakers each, between them accounting for close to 90% of Europeans.

Five languages have more than 50 million native speakers in Europe: Russian, German, French, Italian, and English. While Russian has the most significant number of native speakers (more than 100 million in Europe and 258 million worldwide), English in Europe has the largest number of speakers in total, including some 200 million speakers of English as a second language.

Detailed map of the languages spoken in Europe

This map below created by Reddit use girthynarwhal to prioritize minority languages. In most areas, the minority language is spoken in addition to the majority language.

Language id’s labeled and emboldened show languages that have a native (L1) speaking population of over 5 million. Macrolanguages such as German, Arabic, and Italian are not counted here.

A total of about 200 different languages are in use in Europe, with many more dialects.

Dialects and indigenous minority languages in Europe

Below is the map poster of European languages and dialects created by eurominority.eu.

The lexical distance among the languages of Europe

The map below presents the lexical distance – that is, overall vocabulary difference – between the major languages of Europe.

The size of each circle depicts the number of speakers for that language. Rings of the same color relate to the same language group. All the groups except for Finno-Ugric (in yellow) are, in turn, members of the Indo-European language family.

Many European countries have an extremely high level of English because of the population due to having learned it from an early age. For example, in Scandinavia, at least 67 percent of the population speak English and even as high as 71 percent in Denmark. Nowadays, about 13% of European citizens speak English as their native language. The total reach of English in Europe is approximately 51%.

English is a member of the Germanic group (blue) within the Indo-European family. But thanks to 1066, William of Normandy, and all that, about 75 percent of the contemporary English vocabulary originates from French and Latin (ie, the Romance languages, in orange) rather than Germanic sources. As a result, English (a Germanic language) and French (a Romance language) are closer to each other in lexical terms than Romanian (a Romance language) and French.

So why has English still considered a Germanic language? Two reasons. First, the most regularly used 80 percent of English words come from Germanic sources, not Latinate sources. Those famous Anglo-Saxon monosyllables live on! Second, although much simplified from its Old English origins, the syntax of English remains recognizable Germanic. The Norman conquering added French vocabulary to the language, and through pidginization, it arguably removed some Germanic grammar, but it did not add French grammar.

As a result of the growing popularity of English and globalization, many languages are disappearing.

Critically and severely endangered languages

The map below illustrates the languages that will disappear in the near future.