2006-09-24 10:43:58 · 12 answers · asked by jenniebee 2 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Geography
There are 20 official language in the EU:
Spanish
Danish
German
Greek
English
French
Italian
Dutch
Portuguese
Finnish
Swedish
Czech
Estonian
Latvian
Lithuanian
Hungarian
Maltese
Polish
Slovak
Slovene
21 when Irish becomes official in 2007.
2006-09-24 10:48:40 · answer #1 · answered by sarcasticquotemarks 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The lists given are only "official", and assume that the EU = Europe, which is far from the truth. We can add, purely within the EU:
Gaelic,
Welsh,
Saami (probably actually 2 or 3 different languages)
Basque
Frisian
Flemish
Limburghish
Plattedeutsch
Provencale
Romany
Yiddish
Scots/Doric
Allemanic (Swieseduetsch/Lichtensteinish/Tyrolean)
Sardinian
Breton
Cornish (debatable, an artificial revival)
Move outside the EU and we add
Norwegian (really at least two languages, Landsmal and Riksmal, and a possible third, Nynorsk)
Icelandic
Russian
Ukrainian
Byelorussian
Bulgarian
Romanian
Serbo-Croat (1 or 2 languages depending on how you view them)
Transsylvanian..
Then add the immigrant languages, including:
Urdu/Hindi
Gujarati
Punjabi
Bengali
all widely used in England, and Turkish in Germany....
And I'm sure I've missed plenty.
Part of the problem is defining "language". Norwegian and Swedish differ less from each other than do, say, Geordie and Standard English (Received Pronunciation or RP), but Geordie isn't afforded "language" status. Scots (not to be confused with Gaelic) differs from Standard Scottish English about as much as the Geordie/RP gap, but is considered a language in its own right.
Traditionally, variants of Welsh are almost unintelligible to each other, but there is a Standard Welsh, so that counts as 1, officially.
To answer your question: Europe has as many languages as you want to define, but however you cut it it can't be less than about 40, probably nearer 100.
To put that in perspective, Papua New Guinea (population about 4 million) has at least 750 languages! So we're not quite as diverse as we like to think!
2006-09-24 11:28:02 · answer #2 · answered by Paul FB 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
There was a quiz on the radio the other day and one of the questions was how many languages are there in Hackney in London and the answer is 95. So god only knows about the whole of europe.
2006-09-24 10:48:51 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
20
2006-09-24 10:48:53 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
To the above lists you must add Catalan and Gallego in Spain, Occitan, Corsican, Alsatian in France, Romansch in Switzerland, Veneto, Sicilian, Friulian and Ladino in Italy, Montenegrin, Albanian, Macedonian, Turkish (not as an immigrant language but as the language of European Turkey), Georgian, Azeri, Chechen, Ossetian, Abkhazian, Tatar, Komi, and a few dozen other languages in European Russia. There's one along the German/Polish border beginning with "L" I've forgotten the name of and several more, but people are harrassing me on this hostel computer and I don't have time to look them up.
2006-09-27 13:56:25 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
You could probably add...
Manx
Auregnaise
Dgernesaise
Jerraise
Sercquiaise
...and they are just languages from the British Isles, I am sure Italy has quite a few languages spoken too.
I do not know how many speakers these languages have though !
2006-09-24 13:18:55 · answer #6 · answered by Robert Abuse 7 · 0⤊ 1⤋
LOTS...
just counting official languages there are at least one per country, with a few exceptions like austria(german), slovakia (czech)... think 50 or so
many related to each other, but still different
2006-09-24 10:52:15 · answer #7 · answered by wolschou 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Please see the webpage for more details on the Languages of Europe.
2006-09-27 05:48:15 · answer #8 · answered by gangadharan nair 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Lots, but not as many as California !
2006-09-25 00:14:29 · answer #9 · answered by Perseus 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Who cares everyone is learning english
2006-09-28 08:33:43 · answer #10 · answered by Ben H 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋