Linguistic Maps Of Europe | Languages Of Europe
Below are represented 10 distinct maps which showcase the languages spoken in Europe. According to the mainstream linguistic classification, in Europe there are 6 major Indo-European language families, namely Romance, Slavic, Germanic, Baltic, Celtic, and Hellenic (alongside a non-Indo-European family, specifically the Finno-Ugric linguistic branch which comprises Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian).
Beside the aforementioned branches, there are also Albanian and Basque (each acting as a separate linguistic family of its own). Unlike Albanian (which is an Indo-European language), Basque is an isolated language spoken in northern Spain and southern France with no certain roots discovered to date.
Some of these maps are based on ethnic criterion, others solely on the linguistic one. The entire major linguistic classification in Europe by linguistic arch is the following one (in no particular order):
- Romance languages: Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Romanian, Catalan, Romansh;
- Germanic languages: German, Dutch, English, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Scots, Frisian, Faroese, Elfdalian;
- Slavic languages: Russian, Serbian, Polish, Croatian, Slovakian, Slovenian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Czech, Belorussian, Macedonian, Bosnian, Montenegrin;
- Hellenic languages: Greek (including Cypriot Greek);
- Albanian;
- Finno-Ugric languages: Finnish, Hungarian, Estonian;
- Baltic languages: Latvian and Lithuanian;
- Celtic languages: Irish, Breton, Manx, Cornish, Welsh, Scottish Gaellic.
Statistics by number of native speakers worldwide (top 5 for each linguistic family):
Romance languages
- Spanish (410 million speakers);
- Portuguese (250 million speakers);
- French (75 million speakers);
- Italian (60 million speakers);
- Romanian (24 million speakers).
Germanic languages
- English (360 million speakers);
- German (100 million speakers);
- Dutch (23 million speakers);
- Swedish (9 million speakers);
- Danish (5.5 million speakers).
Slavic languages
- Russian (155 million speakers);
- Polish (40 million speakers);
- Ukrainian (30 million speakers);
- Serbo-Croatian (19 million speakers);
- Czech (10 million speakers).
Baltic languages
- Lithuanian (3 million speakers)
- Latvian (1.75 million speakers)
Current linguistic map of Europe. Image source: Wikimedia Commons
The word for ‘Christmas’ in various European languages. Source: i.imgur.com
The word for ‘flower’ in various European languages. Source: www.folk.ntnu.no
Detailed map of languages and dialects spoken in Europe and parts of Eurasia and northern Africa. Image source: www.deviantart.com
An alternative map depicting the distribution of the European languages with afferent classifications. Image source: Wikimedia Commons
French-language linguistic map of Central Europe in 1898. Image source: Wikimedia Commons
‘Multilingual Europe, showing the genealogy of the languages, together with the alphabets and modes of writing of all peoples.’ by Gottfried Hensel, 18th century. Image source: Wikimedia Commons
Languages in Central Europe in 1904. Image source: Wikimedia Commons
Ethnolinguistic map of Europe in 1918. Image source: Wikimedia Commons
Black and white linguistic map of Europe (September 2008). Image source: Wikimedia Commons
You can also type a word and map it using this application which will automatically detect the language and highlight the geographical area in which the respective idiom is spoken.
What about Maltese?
Maltese is a mixture of Arabic (c 40%) and Romance languages.esp Italian and French (c 55 %). There are also words of English origin (c 5%)
Maltese is a very interesting language indeed! But I do not know that much about it apart from what you mentioned and the fact that it has a relatively few number of native speakers compared to other European languages from its proximity. Thank you for your comment as well as for your time, interest, and readership on The Dockyards! All the best!
Es bueno conocer todos los idiomas y de donde son.
Absolutely, I agree! Thank you very much for your readership! 🙂
Amazing , thanks!
You’re most welcome! Thank you for your appreciation and readership! 🙂
This is incredible! Unbelievably comprehensive and extremely useful
Thank you so much for the research and compilation.
You’re most welcome! I’m glad you liked it! Thank you very much for your appreciation and readership! 🙂
Very intresting, love lenguaje, I’m french teacher.
Thank you for your readership! I’m also a French speaker! 🙂
Very enlightening! I always wondered about the language relationships in Europe. Thank you for posting.
You’re most welcome! Thank you very much for your readership! 🙂
You are my inspiration, I own few blogs and often run out from to brand.
Thank you very much for the consideration, appreciation, and readership! 🙂
There is another mistake, as far as I can tell. In one of the maps, the third one down, Ireland is marked with ‘Erse’ and Scotland is marked as ‘Gaelic’. Ireland should be marked as ‘Gaelic’ and Scotland as ‘Galic’. I only know this because I am a native Irish speaker 😉
Thank you very much for pointing out that respective mistake. I was not the creator of any map, i just compiled them as best as I could and I tried as much as I could at that time to compile the best they were from my searches on the internet. Thank you very much for your time, readership, and attention on The Dockyards! All the best and Sláinte!
Lithuanian flower is gelė, not žiedas.
Thank you very much for pointing out that respective mistake. I was not the creator of that map, i just compiled it since I thought it was thorough enough. Thank you very much for your time, readership, and attention on The Dockyards! All the best!
[…] Language map of Europe. Source: The Dockyards […]
impressive effort on making this map.
but Flower in Lithuanian is “gėlė” a general word for flower.
flowers would be Gėlės (plural)
word Žiedas in lithuanian means (colorful part of a flower.)
Thank you very much for pointing out that respective mistake. It was previously pointed out. And thank you for your comment and nice words. Nevertheless, I was not the creator of that map, i just compiled it since I thought it was thorough enough. It’s very interesting to get to know a bit of Lithuanian. Thank you very much for your time, readership, and attention on The Dockyards! All the best!
Besides flower in English there is a Germanic word bloom
Yes, of course. Thank you for pointing it out! Thank you for your time, attention, and readership on The Dockyards! All the best!
I’m a reader from China, visiting this website through VPN. Thank you so much for collecting these pictures, which are really useful!!!
Thank you very much for your time, attention, and readership on The Dockyards! I am really glad you liked this compilation of maps! All the best!
Bulgarian language is the father of old Slavic languages. Bulgarians also cteated the Cyrillic alphabet for Slavic Languages. Why Bulgarian language (South Slavic Language Group) and North Macedonian Language (South Slavic Language Group) are not inlcuded in the list of Slavic languages? Bulgarians count to 10 million (7 million in the country and 3 million living out of it) .