Language Families of Europe. There are three main language families in Europe. The largest is the Indo-European language family, with six sub-families represented in Europe. The second is
the Finno-Ugric family
, with three languages represented in Northeast Europe and eastern Europe.
What are the 2 major language families spoken in the world?
Based on speaker count,
Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan
are the largest two language families, with over 4.6 billion speakers between them. The two most spoken languages are in these families – English is classified as Indo-European, and Mandarin Chinese is classified as Sino-Tibetan.
What are the 2 main language families of Europe?
Language Families of Europe. There are three main language families in Europe. The largest is the Indo-European language family, with six sub-families represented in Europe. The second is
the Finno-Ugric family
, with three languages represented in Northeast Europe and eastern Europe.
What are the major language families in Europe?
Most languages in Europe belong to
the Indo-European language family
. This family is divided into a number of branches, including Romance, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, Albanian, Celtic, Armenian and Hellenic.
What are the 3 main language family groups in Europe?
there are three main branches: 1)
Southern Slavic [Slovene
, Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian, Bulgarian], 2) Western Slavic [Polish, Sorbian, Wendish, Czech, Slovak] and 3) Eastern Slavic [Russian, White Russian, Ukrainian].
Which is the oldest European language?
The Greek language
is the oldest language in Europe, spoken since 1450 years before Christ. Currently Greek is spoken in Greece, Albania and Cyprus. About 13 million people still speak Greek today.
What is the oldest language in the world?
- Tamil: Origin (according to first appearance as script) – 300 BC. …
- Sanskrit: Origin (according to first appearance as script) – 2000 BC. …
- Greek: Origin (according to first appearance as script) – 1500 BC. …
- Chinese: Origin (according to first appearance as script) – 1250 BC.
What is the smallest language family in the world?
The Chukchi-Kamchatkan (“Paleosiberian”) Family
Perhaps the smallest family, this one includes 5 languages with 23,000 speakers in the farthest northeastern reaches of Siberia. Many linguists consider these two unrelated families.
What are the 14 main language families?
- Atlantic–Congo (1,432 languages)
- Austronesian (1,275 languages)
- Indo-European (588 languages)
- Sino-Tibetan (494 languages)
- Afro-Asiatic (373 languages)
- Nuclear Trans–New Guinea (314 languages)
- Pama–Nyungan (248 languages)
What are the 3 largest language families?
| Language family Approx. # of speakers % of world population | 1. Indo-European 2.562 billion 44.78% | 2. Sino-Tibetan 1.276 billion 22.28% | 3. Niger-Congo 358 million 6.26% | 4. Afro-Asiatic 340 million 5.93% |
|---|
What is the most common European language?
English
is still the most spoken language in the EU by far, with German now spoken by 36% of citizens and French spoken by 29% of the EU's new smaller population of 446 million people. Italian comes fourth at 18%, followed by 17% for Spanish.
What is the second most spoken language family in Europe?
English
is the most spoken second language in Europe followed by German and French. Turkish is the official language of Turkey with 70 million native Turkish speakers on the continent.
Which is the best European language to learn?
Because of this, the demand for people who can speak
Portuguese
is higher than ever. Now might be the best time for you to pick up Portuguese as the best European language to learn. In perspective, Portuguese comes in at number six in the list of the top languages spoken around the world.
Which country has more than one language?
Papua New Guinea
is the most multilingual country, with over 839 living languages, according to Ethnologue, a catalogue of the world's known languages. The site ranked countries and territories based on the number of languages spoken as a first language within their borders.
Is Frisian Dutch?
The Frisians are
a Germanic ethnic group indigenous to the coastal regions of the Netherlands and northwestern Germany
. They inhabit an area known as Frisia and are concentrated in the Dutch provinces of Friesland and Groningen and, in Germany, East Frisia and North Frisia (which was a part of Denmark until 1864).
What is the easiest language to learn?
- Norwegian. This may come as a surprise, but we have ranked Norwegian as the easiest language to learn for English speakers. …
- Swedish. …
- Spanish. …
- Dutch. …
- Portuguese. …
- Indonesian. …
- Italian. …
- French.
