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Europe is home to 24 official languages, while about 200 languages are used over the continent. That might not look like many, opposed to Africa, where you can find almost 2 thousand tongues.
94% of Europeans speak a language descended from Proto-Indo-European.
The maps below show the 10 most spoken languages In Europe.
Russian is the most spoken language in Europe, with roughly 160 million native speakers. It’s the official language of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgistan, and some other post-soviet countries: Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Tadjikistan, Uzbekistan. However, it’s also spoken in many EU countries. Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet instead of the Latin alphabet. The map below illustrates the percentage of Russian speakers in the EU countries. In Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, most of the population understands and can communicate in Russian.
2. German
German is the second-largest native-speaking language in Europe. It’s the single official language of Germany, Austria, and Liechtenstein, a co-official language in Belgium, Switzerland, and Luxembourg. With all of those nations united, almost 100 million people in Europe speak German as their first language. Moreover, German is the most widely understood language after English because it’s accepted as a second, third, or fourth language in Denmark, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Hungary, Poland, Sweden, Finland, and many other European nations.
3. French
Next on the most spoken languages in Europe is French, with about 85 million native speakers. It is the official language of France and a co-official language of Belgium, Switzerland, and Luxembourg. More than 30% of European inhabitants know the language as a second language.
4. Turkish
Turkish is the official language of Turkey and has approximately 78 million native speakers in Europe, including 1.3 million Turks who live in Germany. It additionally has co-official status in Northern Cypress and is broadly spoken throughout the Mediterranean, especially in Greece and Serbia.
5. Italian
Italian is naturally the official language of Italy, but it’s also a co-official language of Switzerland and Vatican City. Except for Italy and the Vatican City, reside in Switzerland, Slovakia, Croatia, Albania, Monaco, Malta, San Marino. That is why there are about 68 million people in Europe for whom Italian is a native language.
6. English
English has just about 60 million native speakers in Europe, but about 360 million people worldwide speak English as their first language. English is native to the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. d. Outward of these nations, it has a special status in the Isle of Man, Jersey, Guernsey, Gibraltar, and Malta. In the Netherlands, English has an official status as a provincial language on the isles of Saba and Sint Eustatius. Moreover, many English-speaking ex-pats living in Europe also attach to this number. As for 2nd language speakers, approximately 40% of Europeans can speak English.
7. Spanish
Forty-three million Europeans claim Spanish as their mother tongue. Over 470 million people are native speakers throughout the earth, making it the 2nd most popularly spoken native language globally.
8. Polish
There are 36 million Polish native speakers who reside in Europe. Most of them live in Poland. Overall, about 6% of Europeans speak Polish as a 1st, 2nd, or 3rd language.
9. Ukrainian
There are about 27 million people in Europe whose native language is Ukrainian. In addition, Russian-speaking people understand Ukrainian quite easily.
10. Dutch
Dutch is the official language of the Netherlands but also has co-official status in Belgium. In sum, about 22 million Europeans speak Dutch as their mother language. The map below shows the distribution of the Dutch standard language and Low Franconian dialects (Old Dutch) in Europe.
“Europe” and “EU” are NOT synonymes!
Where is Romanian??? I believe it has around 24-28 million speakers…? more than Dutch…check Wikipedia out!