Knowledge Center: Official And Spoken Languages Of European Countries

Wednesday, February 20, 2019

Official And Spoken Languages Of European Countries

List Of Official, National And Spoken Languages Of Europe

Europe is a continent with many countries (about 50) and almost each country has its own language, known as the national language. Some countries have even more than one national language.

At the fringes of the countries languages may overlap and used interchangeable, this means, people in the border regions of countries might understand and speak the language of the neighboring country.

Is there a common language in Europe so that all Europeans can talk to each other?

Eh, no, not really. There are Europeans who have learned Spanish, French, German, English, or even Latin as a second language, so they might be able to use it in the country where those languages are spoken.

On the other hand, English is on the rise used not only in Europe as a lingua franca, especially by the younger generation of Europeans, even so France tried hard to protect its citizens from the unwanted influence of English on French (language) culture.

However, the EU, the European union of 28 member states has 24 official languages, but in practice only two are used most often: English and French.

European Countries
Country	Official and national Languages	Other spoken Languages
Albania	Albanian (Shqip, Tosk (Toskë) is the official dialect)	Shqip-Gheg dialect (Gegë), Greek, Italian
Andorra	Catalan	French, Castilian, Portuguese
Austria	German, Slovene (official in Carinthia), Croatian and Hungarian (official in Burgenland)
Belarus	Belarusian, Russian
Belgium	Dutch 60%, French 40%, German less than 1%
Bosnia & Herzegovina	Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian
Bulgaria	Bulgarian	Turkish
Croatia	Croatian (hrvatski)
Cyprus	Greek, Turkish, English
Czech Republic	Czech (cestina)
Denmark	Danish (dansk)	Standard German
Estonia	Estonian (eesti keel)	Russian, Ukrainian, Finnish
Faroe Islands	Faroese, Danish
Finland	Finnish (suomi) 93.4%, Swedish 5.9%	small Sami- and Russian-speaking minorities
France	French (français)
Germany	German (Deutsch)
Gibraltar	English	Llanito (a mixture of Spanish and English), Spanish
Greece	Greek (elliniká, the Koine-Demotic version)	Turkish (Northern Greece)
Greenland	Greenlandic Inuktitut (Kalaallisut), Danish
Hungary	Hungarian (magyar)	German, Romanian
Iceland	Icelandic	English, Nordic languages, German widely spoken.
Ireland	Irish (Gaeilge), English (generally used),
Italy	Italian (italiano)
Latvia	Latvian (latviesu valoda)	Lithuanian, Russian
Liechtenstein	German
Lithuania	Lithuanian (lietuviu kalba)	Polish, Russian
Luxembourg	Luxembourgish (LÎtzebuergesch, the everyday spoken language), French (administrative language), German (administrative language)
Macedonia, Rep. of	Macedonian 68%, Albanian 25%
Malta	Maltese (Malti)	English
Moldova	Moldovan (virtually the same as the Romanian language),	Russian, Gagauz (a Turkish dialect)
Monaco	French	Monegasque, English, Italian,
Montenegro	Serbo-Croatian (Ijekavian dialect - official)
Netherlands	Dutch (Nederlands, official language), Frisian (official language)
Norway	Norwegian (nynorsk and bokmal)	small Sami- and Finnish-speaking minorities
Poland	Polish (polski)
Portugal	Portuguese (português)
Romania	Romanian (romana)	Hungarian, German
Russian Federation	Russian
San Marino	Italian
Serbia	Serbian 95%, Albanian 5%
Slovakia	Slovak (slovensky jazyk)	Hungarian
Slovenia	Slovenian (slovenski jezik)
Spain	Spanish (español - the Castilian version) 74%, Catalan 17%, Galician 7%, Basque 2%	note: Castilian is the official language nationwide; the other languages are official regionally.
Sweden	Swedish (svenska)	small Sami- and Finnish-speaking minorities.
Switzerland	German 63.7%, French 19.2%, Italian 7.6%, Romansch 0.6%
Turkey	Turkish (türkçe)	Kurdish, Arabic, Armenian, Greek
Ukraine	Ukrainian
United Kingdom	English	Welsh (about 26% of the population of Wales), Scottish form of Gaelic (about 60,000 in Scotland)
Vatican City State	Latin, Italian	French and various other languages.
Sources: Ethnologue, ISO Country Names (ISO 3166-1), ISO Languages Names (ISO 639-1), and others.