Languages of Europe

Indo-European languages

Romance

Germanic

German and Low Franconian

• High German includes several dialect families:
• * Standard German
• * Central German dialects, spoken in central Germany and including Luxembourgish
• * High Franconian, a family of transitional dialects between Central and Upper High German
• * Upper German, including Austro-Bavarian and Swiss German
• * Yiddish is a Jewish language developed in Germany and shares many features of High German dialects and Hebrew.

Anglo-Frisian

• English, the main language of the United Kingdom, also used in English-speaking Europe
• Scots, spoken in Scotland and Ulster.

North Germanic (Scandinavian)

Slavic

• West Slavic includes Polish, Czech, Slovak, Lower Sorbian, Upper Sorbian and Kashubian.
• East Slavic includes Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn.
• South Slavic is divided into Southeast Slavic and Southwest Slavic groups: Southwest Slavic languages include Serbo-Croatian and Slovene, each with numerous distinctive dialects. Serbo-Croatian boasts four distinct national standards, Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian, all based on the Eastern Herzegovinian dialect; Southeast Slavic languages include Bulgarian, Macedonian and Old Church Slavonic.

  Other

• Greek is the official language of Greece and Cyprus, and there are Greek-speaking enclaves in Albania, Bulgaria, Italy, North Macedonia, Romania, Georgia, Ukraine, Lebanon, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, and Turkey, and in Greek communities around the world. Dialects of modern Greek that originate from Attic Greek are Cappadocian, Pontic, Cretan, Cypriot, Katharevousa, and Yevanic.
• * Italiot Greek is, debatably, a Doric dialect of Greek. It is spoken in southern Italy only, in the southern Calabria region and in the Salento region. It was studied by the German linguist Gerhard Rohlfs during the 1930s and 1950s.
• * Tsakonian is a Doric dialect of the Greek language spoken in the lower Arcadia region of the Peloponnese around the village of Leonidio
• The Baltic languages are spoken in Lithuania and Latvia. Samogitian and Latgalian are usually considered to be dialects of Lithuanian and Latvian respectively.
• * There are also several extinct Baltic languages, including: Galindian, Curonian, Old Prussian, Selonian, Semigallian and Sudovian.
• Albanian has two major dialects, Tosk Albanian and Gheg Albanian. It is spoken in Albania and Kosovo, neighboring North Macedonia, Serbia, Greece, Italy, and Montenegro. It is also widely spoken in the Albanian diaspora.
• There are six living Celtic languages, spoken in areas of northwestern Europe dubbed the "Celtic nations". All six are members of the Insular Celtic family, which in turn is divided into:
• * Brythonic family: Welsh, Cornish and Breton
• * Goidelic family: Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx
• The Indo-Aryan languages have one major representation: Romani, introduced in Europe during the late medieval period.
• The Iranian languages in Europe are natively represented in the North Caucasus, notably with Ossetian.

  Non-Indo-European languages

Uralic

Turkic

• Oghuz languages in Europe include Turkish, spoken in European Turkey and by immigrant communities; Azerbaijani is spoken in Azerbaijan and parts of Southern Russia and Gagauz is spoken in Gagauzia.
• Kypchak languages in Europe include Crimean Tatar, which is spoken in Crimea; Tatar, which is spoken in Tatarstan; Bashkir, which is spoken in Bashkortostan; and Kazakh, which is spoken in Kazakhstan.
• Oghur languages were historically indigenous to much of Eastern Europe; however, most of them are extinct today, with the exception of Chuvash, which is spoken in Chuvashia.

  Other

• The Basque language 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 million inhabitants, where it is spoken fluently by about 750,000 and understood by more than 1.5 million people. 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 in the Bronze Age.
• North Caucasian languages is a geographical blanket term for two unrelated language families spoken chiefly in the north Caucasus and Turkey—the Northwest Caucasian family and the Northeast Caucasian family, spoken mainly in the border area of the southern Russian Federation.
• Kalmyk is a Mongolic language, spoken in the Republic of Kalmykia, part of the Russian Federation. Its speakers entered the Volga region in the early 17th century.
• Maltese is a Semitic language with Romance and Germanic influences, spoken in Malta. It is based on Sicilian Arabic, with influences from Sicilian, Italian, French and, more recently, English. It is unique in that it is the only Semitic language whose standard form is written in Latin script. It is also the smallest official language of the EU in terms of speakers, and the only official Semitic language within the EU.
• Cypriot Maronite 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.

  History of standardization

Language and identity, standardization processes

Lingua franca

• Classical Greek and then Koine Greek in the Mediterranean Basin from the Athenian Empire to the Eastern Roman Empire, being replaced by Modern Greek.
• Koine Greek and Modern Greek, in the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire and other parts of the Balkans south of the Jireček Line.
• Vulgar Latin and Late Latin among the uneducated and educated populations respectively of the Roman Empire and the states that followed it in the same range no later than 900 AD; medieval Latin and Renaissance Latin among the educated populations of western, northern, central and part of eastern Europe until the rise of the national languages in that range, beginning with the first language academy in Italy in 1582/83; new Latin written only in scholarly and scientific contexts by a small minority of the educated population at scattered locations over all of Europe; ecclesiastical Latin, in spoken and written contexts of liturgy and church administration only, over the range of the Roman Catholic Church.
• Lingua Franca or Sabir, the original of the name, an Italian-based pidgin language of mixed origins used by maritime commercial interests around the Mediterranean in the Middle Ages and early Modern Age.
• Old French in continental western European countries and in the Crusader states.
• Czech, mainly during the reign of Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV but also during other periods of Bohemian control over the Holy Roman Empire.
• Middle Low German.
• Spanish as Castilian in Spain and New Spain from the times of the Catholic Monarchs and Columbus, c. 1492; that is, after the Reconquista, until established as a national language in the times of Louis XIV, c. 1648; subsequently multinational in all nations in or formerly in the Spanish Empire.
• Polish, due to the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
• Italian due to the Renaissance, the opera, the Italian Empire, the fashion industry and the influence of the Roman Catholic church.
• French from the golden age under Cardinal Richelieu and Louis XIV c. 1648; i.e., after the Thirty Years' War, in France and the French colonial empire, until established as the national language during the French Revolution of 1789 and subsequently multinational in all nations in or formerly in the various French Empires.
• German in Northern, Central, and Eastern Europe.
• English in Great Britain until its consolidation as a national language in the Renaissance and the rise of Modern English; subsequently internationally under the various states in or formerly in the British Empire; globally since the victories of the predominantly English speaking countries and their allies in the two world wars ending in 1918 and 1945 and the subsequent rise of the United States as a superpower and major cultural influence.
• Russian in the former Soviet Union and Russian Empire including Northern and Central Asia.

  Linguistic minorities

Scripts

European Union

List of languages

Languages spoken in Turkey, Cyprus, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia

Immigrant communities

Sign languages