European languages
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Most of the many indigenous languages of Europe belong to the Indo-European language family. The scope of this article also includes languages spoken outside of continental Europe that linguistically belong to European language families (such as Afrikaans, Pennsylvania German and Persian).
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Basque
The Basque language of the northern Iberian Peninsula is a language isolate, and as such is not closely related to any other language.
Caucasian languages
Constructed languages
These languages were artificially created ("planned").
- Esperanto (Hybrid)
- Folkspraak (Pan-Germanic)
- Interlingua (Pan-Romance)
- Ido (refined Esperanto)
- Lingua Franca Nova (Pan-Romance)
- Nordien (Pan-Germanic)
- Slovio (Pan-Slavic)
- Volapük (Hybrid)
Of these, Esperanto is by far the most widely used, and speakers of the others are mostly native speakers of European languages.
Etruscan
Spoken in Tuscany (Italy) and surrounding areas before the Roman rule, now extinct.
Finno-Ugric languages
The Finno-Ugric languages are a subfamily of the Uralic language family.
Indo-European languages
Most European languages are Indo-European languages. This large language-family is descended from a common language that was spoken thousands of years ago, which is referred to as Proto-Indo-European.
Albanian
Armenian
Baltic languages
- Curonian
- Latvian
- Lithuanian
- Old Prussian - extinct
- Samogitian
- Selonian - extinct
- Semigallian - extinct
- Sudovian (Yotvingian) - extinct
Celtic languages
Brythonic
Goidelic (Gaelic)
Continental Celtic
- Gaulish - extinct
Germanic languages
North Germanic
(descending from Old Norse)
- West (Insular) Scandinavian
- Icelandic
- Faroese
- Norn (extinct)
- Norwegian Nynorsk
- East (Continental) Scandinavian
West Germanic
- High German
- German
- Middle German
- East Middle German
- Luxembourgeois
- West Middle German
- Pennsylvania German (spoken by the Amish and other groups in southeastern Pennsylvania)
- Upper German
- Swiss German, Austrian, etc
- Alsatian
- Alemn Coloneiro (spoken in Venezuela)
- Hutterite German (aka "Tirolean")
- Yiddish
- Wymysojer
- Low German
- Frisian
- Anglic (descending from Anglo-Saxon)
East Germanic
(descending from Gothic)
- Burgundian (extinct)
- Crimean Gothic (extinct in the 1800s)
- Lombardic (extinct)
- Vandalic (extinct)
Greek
Italic languages
Romance languages
The Romance languages decended from the Vulgar Latin spoken across most of the lands of the Roman Empire.
Ibero-Romance languages
Gallo-Romance languages
Italo-Romance languages
Rhaeto-Romance languages
Daco-Romance languages
Indo-Iranian languages
Indo-Aryan languages
Iranian languages
Phrygo-Armenian languages
Slavic languages
West Slavic languages
- Czech
- Polish
- Kashub
- Slovincian - extinct
- Polabian - extinct
- Slovak
- Knaanic or Judeo Slavic - extinct
- Sorbian
East Slavic languages
South Slavic languages
- Bulgarian
- Old Church Slavonic
- Macedonian
- Bosnian (previously part of Serbo-Croatian)
- Croatian (previously part of Serbo-Croatian)
- Serbian (previously part of Serbo-Croatian)
- Slovene
- Romano-Serbian (a mixed language)
Thracian languages
- Dacian language - extinct
- Thracian language - extinct
Others of note
These are some other languages which are spoken in parts of Europe:
- Maltese (Semitic language, derived from Arabic)
- Turkish (Turkic Altaic language)
- Tatar (Turkic Altaic language)
See also
External links
- Michael Everson's Alphabets of Europe (http://www.evertype.com/alphabets/index.html)
- Languages of Europe (http://www.ethnologue.com/country_index.asp?place=Europe) in the Ethnologue
- http://www.eurolinguistix.com
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