Language
Europe has 30-40 major languages depending on definition.
The European Union (EU), which currently excludes many European countries (i.e. Norway, Russia and Switzerland), recognises 23 official languages as of 2007. According to the same source, the eight most natively spoken languages in the EU are (percentage of total EU population):
- 19% German
- 13% French
- 12% English
- 11% Italian
- 9% Spanish
- 9% Polish
- 7% Romanian
- 5% Dutch
These figures change when foreign language skills are taken into account. The list below shows the top eight European languages ordered by total number of speakers in the EU:
- 49% English
- 35% German
- 26% French
- 16% Italian
- 15% Spanish
- 10% Polish
- 7% Russian
- 6% Dutch
This makes German the most frequently spoken native language and English the most frequently spoken non-native language overall in the European Union, with German the second-most common language overall.
Read more about this topic: Demographics Of Europe
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“Theoretically, I grant you, there is no possibility of error in necessary reasoning. But to speak thus “theoretically,” is to use language in a Pickwickian sense. In practice, and in fact, mathematics is not exempt from that liability to error that affects everything that man does.”
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“To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. There are no reliable words.... Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence. He is struggling against vagueness, against obscurity, against the lure of the decorative adjective, against the encroachment of Latin and Greek, and, above all, against the worn-out phrases and dead metaphors with which the language is cluttered up.”
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