There are over 250 languages indigenous to Europe, and most belong to the Indo-European language family. Out of a total European population of 744 million as of 2018, some 94% are native speakers of an Indo-European language. The three largest phyla of the Indo-European language family in Europe are Romance, Germanic, and Slavic; they have more than 200 million speakers each, and together account for close to 90% of Europeans.
Smaller phyla of Indo-European found in Europe include Hellenic (Greek, 13 million), Baltic ( 4.5 million), Albanian ( 7.5 million), Celtic ( 4 million), and Armenian ( 4 million). Indo-Aryan, though a large subfamily of Indo-European, has a relatively small number of languages in Europe, and a small number of speakers (Romani, 1.5 million). However, a number of Indo-Aryan languages not native to Europe are spoken in Europe today.
Of the approximately 45 million Europeans speaking non-Indo-European languages, most speak languages within either the Uralic or Turkic families. Still smaller groups — such as Basque (language isolate), Semitic languages (Maltese, 0.5 million), and various languages of the Caucasus — account for less than 1% of the European population among them. Immigration has added sizeable communities of speakers of African and Asian languages, amounting to about 4% of the population, with Arabic being the most widely spoken of them.
Five languages have more than 50 million native speakers in Europe: Russian, German, French, Italian, and English. Russian is the most-spoken native language in Europe, and English has the largest number of speakers in total, including some 200 million speakers of English as a second or foreign language. (See English language in Europe.)
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European language family is descended from Proto-Indo-European, which is believed to have been spoken thousands of years ago. Early speakers of Indo-European daughter languages most likely expanded into Europe with the incipient Bronze Age, around 4,000 years ago (Bell-Beaker culture).
Germanic
The Germanic languages make up the predominant language family in Western, Northern and Central Europe. It is estimated that over 500 million Europeans are speakers of Germanic languages, the largest groups being German ( 95 million), English ( 400 million), Dutch ( 24 million), Swedish ( 10 million), Danish ( 6 million), Norwegian ( 5 million) and Limburgish (c. 1.3 million).
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. West Germanic is divided into Anglo-Frisian (including English), Low German, Low Franconian (including Dutch) and High German (including Standard German).
Anglo-Frisian
The Anglo-Frisian language family is now mostly represented by English (Anglic), descended from the Old English language spoken by the Anglo-Saxons:
English, the main language of the United Kingdom and the most widespread language in the Republic of Ireland, also spoken as a second or third language by many Europeans. Scots, spoken in Scotland and Ulster, recognized by some as a language and by others as a dialect of English (not to be confused with Scots-Gaelic of the Celtic language family). The Frisian languages are spoken by about 400,000 () Frisians, who live on the southern coast of the North Sea in the Netherlands and Germany. These languages include West Frisian, East Frisian (of which the only surviving dialect is Saterlandic) and North Frisian.
Dutch
Dutch is spoken throughout the Netherlands, the northern half of Belgium, as well as the Nord-Pas de Calais region of France. The traditional dialects of the Lower Rhine region of Germany are linguistically more closely related to Dutch than to modern German. In Belgian and French contexts, Dutch is sometimes referred to as Flemish. Dutch dialects are numerous and varied.
German
German is spoken throughout Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, much of Switzerland, northern Italy (South Tyrol), Luxembourg, the East Cantons of Belgium and the Alsace and Lorraine regions of France.
There are several groups of German dialects:
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 Bavarian and Swiss German Yiddish is a Jewish language developed in Germany and Eastern Europe. It shares many features of High German dialects and Hebrew.
Low German Low German is spoken in various regions throughout Northern Germany and the northern and eastern parts of the Netherlands. It may be separated into West Low German and East Low German.
North Germanic (Scandinavian) The North Germanic languages are spoken in Nordic countries and include Swedish (Sweden and parts of Finland), Danish (Denmark), Norwegian (Norway), Icelandic (Iceland), Faroese (Faroe Islands), and Elfdalian (in a small part of central Sweden).
English has a long history of contact with Scandinavian languages, given the immigration of Scandinavians early in the history of Britain, and shares various features with the Scandinavian languages. Even so, especially Dutch and Swedish, but also Danish and Norwegian, have strong vocabulary connections to the German language.
Romance
Roughly 215 million Europeans (primarily in Southern and Western Europe) are native speakers of Romance languages, the largest groups including:
French ( 72 million), Italian ( 65 million), Spanish ( 40 million), Romanian ( 24 million), Portuguese ( 10 million), Catalan ( 7 million), Neapolitan ( 6 million), Sicilian ( 5 million), Venetian ( 4 million), Galician ( 2 million), Sardinian ( 1 million),This includes all of the varieties of Sardinian, written with any orthography (the LSC, used for all of Sardinian, or the Logudorese, Nugorese and Campidanese orthographies, only used for some dialects of it) but does not include Gallurese and Sassarese, that even though they have sometimes been included in a supposed Sardinian "macro-language" are actually considered by all Sardinian linguists two different transitional languages between Sardinian and Corsican (or, in the case of Gallurese, are sometimes classified as a variant of Corsican). For Gallurese: ATTI DEL II CONVEGNO INTERNAZIONALE DI STUDI Ciurrata di la Linga Gadduresa, 2014, for Sassarese: ). They are legally considered two different languages by the Sardinian Regional Government too (). Occitan ( 500,000), besides numerous smaller communities.
The Romance languages evolved from varieties of Vulgar Latin spoken in the various parts of the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity. Latin was itself part of the (otherwise extinct) Italic branch of Indo-European. Romance languages are divided phylogenetically into Italo-Western, Eastern Romance (including Romanian) and Sardinian. The Romance-speaking area of Europe is occasionally referred to as Latin Europe.
Italo-Western can be further broken down into the Italo-Dalmatian languages (sometimes grouped with Eastern Romance), including the Tuscan-derived Italian and numerous local Romance languages in Italy as well as Dalmatian, and the Western Romance languages. The Western Romance languages in turn separate into the Gallo-Romance languages, including Langues d'oïl such as French, the Francoprovencalic languages Arpitan and Faetar, the Rhaeto-Romance languages, and the Gallo-Italic languages; the Occitano-Romance languages, grouped with either Gallo-Romance or East Iberian, including Occitanic languages such as Occitan and Gardiol, and Catalan; Aragonese, grouped in with either Occitano-Romance or West Iberian, and finally the West Iberian languages, including the Astur-Leonese languages, the Galician-Portuguese languages, and the Castilian languages.
Slavic
Slavic languages are spoken in large areas of Southern, Central and Eastern Europe. An estimated 315 million people speak a Slavic language, the largest groups being Russian ( 110 million in European Russia and adjacent parts of Eastern Europe, Russian forming the largest linguistic community in Europe), Polish ( 40 million), Ukrainian ( 33 million), Serbo-Croatian ( 18 million), Czech ( 11 million), Bulgarian ( 8 million), Slovak ( 5 million), Belarusian (c. 3.7 million), Slovene ( 2.3 million) and Macedonian ( 1.6 million).
Phylogenetically, Slavic is divided into three subgroups:
West Slavic includes Polish, Polabian, Czech, Knaanic, Slovak, Lower Sorbian, Upper Sorbian, Silesian and Kashubian. East Slavic includes Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Ruthenian, and Rusyn. South Slavic includes Slovene and Serbo-Croatian in the southwest and Bulgarian, Macedonian and Church Slavonic (a liturgical language) in the southeast, each with numerous distinctive dialects. South Slavic languages constitute a dialect continuum where standard Slovene, Macedonian and Bulgarian are each based on a distinct dialect, whereas pluricentric Serbo-Croatian boasts four mutually intelligible national standard varieties all based on a single dialect, Shtokavian.
Others Greek ( 13 million) 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 (through Koine and then Medieval 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 (as Grecanic)F. Violi, Lessico Grecanico-Italiano-Grecanico, Apodiafàzzi, Reggio Calabria, 1997.Paolo Martino, L'isola grecanica dell'Aspromonte. Aspetti sociolinguistici, 1980. Risultati di un'inchiesta del 1977Filippo Violi, Storia degli studi e della letteratura popolare grecanica, C.S.E. Bova (RC), 1992Filippo Condemi, Grammatica Grecanica, Coop. Contezza, Reggio Calabria, 1987; and in the Salento region (as Griko). 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 (Lithuanian ( 3 million), Samogitian) and Latvia (Latvian ( 1.5 million), Latgalian). Samogitian and Latgalian used to be considered dialects of Lithuanian and Latvian respectively. There are also several extinct Baltic languages, including: Curonian, Galindian, Old Prussian, Selonian, Semigallian, and Sudovian. Albanian ( 7.5 million) has two major dialects, Tosk Albanian and Gheg Albanian. It is spoken in Albania and Kosovo, neighboring North Macedonia, Serbia, Italy, and Montenegro. It is also widely spoken in the Albanian diaspora. Armenian ( 7 million) has two major forms, Western Armenian and Eastern Armenian. It is spoken in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia (Samtskhe-Javakheti) and Abkhazia, also Russia, France, Italy, Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus. It is also widely spoken in the Armenian 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: Brittonic family: Welsh (Wales, 843,500), Cornish (Cornwall, 500) and Breton (Brittany, 206,000) Goidelic family: Irish (Ireland, 1.7 million), Scottish Gaelic (Scotland, 57,400), and Manx (Isle of Man, 1,660) Continental Celtic languages had previously been spoken across Europe from Iberia and Gaul to Asia Minor, but became extinct in the first millennium CE.