Languages

Top minority languages of Europe

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Six hundred ninety-five million citizens of Europe (94 percent) are speaking Indo-European languages. Forty-five million Europeans are speaking non-Indo-European languages. Five common languages have more than fifty million native speakers in Europe: Russian, German, French, Italian, and English. While Russian has the most significant number of native speakers (more than 140 million in Europe), English in Europe has the most considerable amount of speakers in total, including some two hundred million speakers of English as a second language.

The map shows the different language families grouped in various colours:

  • Blue: Indo-European languages, such as Germanic languages ​​(German, English…) or Italic (French, Spanish…)
  • Green: Uralic languages, such as Finnish or Hungarian.
  • Red: Turkic languages, such as Turkish or Tatar.
  • Yellow: Northwest Caucasian languages, one of the least spoken language families in the world, all concentrated in the Caucasus, like Lezgian.
Top minority languages of Europe

The top 20 languages by the number of speakers as a first language in Europe:

  1. Russian – 106 million
  2. German – 97 million
  3. French – 71.5 million
  4. Italian – 65 million
  5. English – 63 million
  6. Polish – 45 million
  7. Spanish – 38 million
  8. Ukrainian – 32.6 million
  9. Romanian – 24 million
  10. Dutch – 24 million
  11. Azerbaijani – 23 million
  12. Austro-Bavarian – 14 million
  13. Hungarian – 13 million
  14. Turkish – 12 million
  15. Swedish – 11.1 million
  16. Creek – 11 million
  17. Czech – 10.6 million
  18. Portuguese – 10 million
  19. Serbian – 9 million
  20. Bulgarian 7.8 million

The top 10 languages by the number of speakers as a first and second language in Europe:

  1. English – 260 million
  2. German – 170 million
  3. Russian – 160 million
  4. French – 135 million
  5. Italian – 82 million
  6. Spanish – 76 million
  7. Poland – 50 million
  8. Ukranian – 35 million
  9. Dutch – 29 million
  10. Romanian – 28 million
Top minority languages of Europe
Top minority languages of Europe
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Andreas
Andreas
2 years ago

Turkish is not a minority language of Austria. The top minority language of Austria is Hungarian.

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