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49-624: El commonly represents the alveolar lateral approximant /l/ . In Slavic languages it may be either palatalized or slightly velarized ; see below . In some typefaces the Cyrillic letter El has a grapheme which may be confused with the Cyrillic letter Pe (П п). Note that Pe has a straight left leg, without the hook. An alternative form of El (Ʌ ʌ) is more common in Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Serbian. The Cyrillic letter El

98-972: A West Germanic language spoken in the province of Limburg in the Netherlands , Belgium and neighboring regions of Germany . It is distinct from German and Dutch, but originates from areas near where both are spoken. Roughly 215 million Europeans (primarily in Southern and Western Europe) are native speakers of Romance languages , the largest groups including: French ( c. 72 million), Italian ( c. 65 million), Spanish ( c. 40 million), Romanian ( c. 24 million), Portuguese ( c. 10 million), Catalan ( c. 7 million), Sicilian ( c. 5 million, also subsumed under Italian), Venetian ( c. 4 million), Galician ( c. 2 million), Sardinian ( c. 1 million), Occitan ( c. 500,000), besides numerous smaller communities. The Romance languages evolved from varieties of Vulgar Latin spoken in

147-604: A clear l at all, or have them only before front vowels (especially [ i ] ). Features of the voiced alveolar lateral approximant: Languages may have clear apical or laminal alveolars, laminal denti-alveolars (such as French), or true dentals, which are uncommon. Laminal denti-alveolars tend to occur in continental European languages . However, a true dental generally occurs allophonically before /θ/ in languages that have it, as in English hea l th . The voiced velarized alveolar approximant ( a.k.a. dark l )

196-634: A large subfamily of Indo-European, has a relatively small number of languages in Europe, and a small number of speakers ( Romani , c. 1.5 million). However, a number of Indo-Aryan languages not native to Europe are spoken in Europe today. Of the approximately 45 million Europeans speaking non-Indo-European languages, most speak languages within either the Uralic or Turkic families. Still smaller groups — such as Basque ( language isolate ), Semitic languages ( Maltese , c. 0.5 million), and various languages of

245-578: A lingua franca to peoples in the range of the future nation until the consolidation and unification phases. If the nation becomes internationally influential, its language may become a lingua franca among nations that speak their own national languages. Europe has had no lingua franca ranging over its entire territory spoken by all or most of its populations during any historical period. Some linguae francae of past and present over some of its regions for some of its populations are: Historical attitudes towards linguistic diversity are illustrated by two French laws:

294-564: A separate letter  Љ for the soft  /l/  – it looks as a ligature of El with the soft sign  (Ь). In these languages, ⟨Л⟩ denotes only hard  /l/ . Pronunciation of hard  /l/ is sometimes given as [l] , but it is always more velar than [l] in French or German . Slavic languages except Serbian and Macedonian use another orthographic convention to distinguish between hard and soft /l/ , so ⟨Л⟩ can denote either variant depending on

343-541: A small part of central Sweden). English has a long history of contact with Scandinavian languages, given the immigration of Scandinavians early in the history of Britain, and shares various features with the Scandinavian languages. Even so, especially Dutch and Swedish, but also Danish and Norwegian, have strong vocabulary connections to the German language . Limburgish (also called Limburgan, Limburgian, or Limburgic) Is

392-442: A state level, whereas others continue to be actively suppressed. Though "there is a widespread belief—among both Deaf people and sign language linguists—that there are sign language families," the actual relationship between sign languages is difficult to ascertain. Concepts and methods used in historical linguistics to describe language families for written and spoken languages are not easily mapped onto signed languages. Some of

441-631: Is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages . The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental , alveolar , and postalveolar lateral approximants is ⟨ l ⟩, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is l . As a sonorant , lateral approximants are nearly always voiced. Voiceless lateral approximants , /l̥/ are common in Sino-Tibetan languages , but uncommon elsewhere. In such cases, voicing typically starts about halfway through

490-494: Is a type of consonantal sound used in some languages. It is an alveolar, denti-alveolar, or dental lateral approximant, with a secondary articulation of velarization or pharyngealization . The regular symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represent this sound are ⟨ lˠ ⟩ (for a velarized lateral) and ⟨ lˤ ⟩ (for a pharyngealized lateral), though the dedicated letter ⟨ ɫ ⟩, which covers both velarization and pharyngealization,

539-559: Is an educational standard defining "the competencies necessary for communication" and related knowledge for the benefit of educators in setting up educational programs. In a 2005 independent survey requested by the EU's Directorate-General for Education and Culture regarding the extent to which major European languages were spoken in member states. The results were published in a 2006 document, "Europeans and Their Languages", or "Eurobarometer 243". In this study, statistically relevant samples of

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588-500: Is divided into three subgroups: Uralic language family is native to northern Eurasia. Finnic languages include Finnish ( c. 5 million) and Estonian ( c. 1 million), as well as smaller languages such as Kven ( c. 8,000). Other languages of the Finno-Permic branch of the family include e.g. Mari (c. 400,000), and the Sami languages ( c. 30,000). The Ugric branch of

637-598: Is intended to include any language variety with an ISO 639 code. However, it omits sign languages. Because the ISO-639-2 and ISO-639-3 codes have different definitions, this means that some communities of speakers may be listed more than once. For instance, speakers of Bavarian are listed both under "Bavarian" (ISO-639-3 code bar ) as well as under "German" (ISO-639-2 code de ). There are various definitions of Europe , which may or may not include all or parts of Turkey, Cyprus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. For convenience,

686-508: Is now extinct; the only known surviving East Germanic texts are written in the Gothic language . West Germanic is divided into Anglo-Frisian (including English ), Low German , Low Franconian (including Dutch ) and High German (including Standard German ). The Anglo-Frisian language family is now mostly represented by English (Anglic) , descended from the Old English language spoken by

735-459: Is often synonymous with hard l , especially in Slavic languages . (Cf. Hard consonants ) Features of the dark l: Symbols to the right in a cell are voiced , to the left are voiceless . Shaded areas denote articulations judged impossible. Legend: unrounded  •  rounded Languages of Europe There are over 250 languages indigenous to Europe , and most belong to

784-729: Is perhaps more common. The latter should not be confused with belted ⟨ ɬ ⟩, which represents the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative . However, some scholars use that symbol to represent the velarized alveolar lateral approximant anyway – though such usage is considered non-standard. If the sound is dental or denti-alveolar, one could use a dental diacritic to indicate so: ⟨ l̪ˠ ⟩, ⟨ l̪ˤ ⟩, ⟨ ɫ̪ ⟩. Velarization and pharyngealization are generally associated with more dental articulations of coronal consonants , so dark l tends to be dental or denti-alveolar. Clear (non-velarized) l tends to be retracted to an alveolar position. The term dark l

833-748: The Italo-Dalmatian languages (sometimes grouped with Eastern Romance), including the Tuscan-derived Italian and numerous local Romance languages in Italy as well as Dalmatian , and the Western Romance languages . The Western Romance languages in turn separate into the Gallo-Romance languages , including Langues d'oïl such as French , the Francoprovencalic languages Arpitan and Faetar ,

882-517: The Anglo-Saxons : The Frisian languages are spoken by about 400,000 (as of 2015 ) Frisians , who live on the southern coast of the North Sea in the Netherlands and Germany . These languages include West Frisian , East Frisian (of which the only surviving dialect is Saterlandic ) and North Frisian . Dutch is spoken throughout the Netherlands , the northern half of Belgium , as well as

931-838: The Castilian languages . Slavic languages are spoken in large areas of Southern, Central and Eastern Europe . An estimated 315 million people speak a Slavic language, the largest groups being Russian ( c. 110 million in European Russia and adjacent parts of Eastern Europe, Russian forming the largest linguistic community in Europe), Polish ( c. 40 million ), Ukrainian ( c. 33 million ), Serbo-Croatian ( c. 18 million ), Czech ( c. 11 million ), Bulgarian ( c. 8 million ), Slovak ( c. 5 million ), Belarusian (c. 3.7 million ), Slovene ( c. 2.3 million ) and Macedonian ( c. 1.6 million ). Phylogenetically, Slavic

980-679: The Council of Europe , founded in 1949, which affirms the right of minority language speakers to use their language fully and freely. The Council of Europe is committed to protecting linguistic diversity. Currently all European countries except France , Andorra and Turkey have signed the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities , while Greece , Iceland and Luxembourg have signed it, but have not ratified it; this framework entered into force in 1998. Another European treaty,

1029-534: The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages , was adopted in 1992 under the auspices of the Council of Europe : it entered into force in 1998, and while it is legally binding for 24 countries, France , Iceland , Italy , North Macedonia , Moldova and Russia have chosen to sign without ratifying the convention. The main scripts used in Europe today are the Latin and Cyrillic . The Greek alphabet

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1078-730: The Indo-European language family . Out of a total European population of 744 million as of 2018, some 94% are native speakers of an Indo-European language. The three largest phyla of the Indo-European language family in Europe are Romance , Germanic , and Slavic ; they have more than 200 million speakers each, and together account for close to 90% of Europeans. Smaller phyla of Indo-European found in Europe include Hellenic ( Greek , c. 13 million), Baltic ( c. 4.5 million), Albanian ( c. 7.5 million), Celtic ( c. 4 million), and Armenian ( c. 4 million). Indo-Aryan , though

1127-764: The Latin alphabet used in Europe: Antiqua and Fraktur . Fraktur was used most for German, Estonian, Latvian, Norwegian and Danish whereas Antiqua was used for Italian, Spanish, French, Polish, Portuguese, English, Romanian, Swedish and Finnish. The Fraktur variant was banned by Hitler in 1941, having been described as " Schwabacher Jewish letters". Other scripts have historically been in use in Europe, including Phoenician, from which modern Latin letters descend, Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs on Egyptian artefacts traded during Antiquity, various runic systems used in Northern Europe preceding Christianisation, and Arabic during

1176-507: The Nord-Pas de Calais region of France . The traditional dialects of the Lower Rhine region of Germany are linguistically more closely related to Dutch than to modern German. In Belgian and French contexts, Dutch is sometimes referred to as Flemish . Dutch dialects are numerous and varied. German is spoken throughout Germany , Austria , Liechtenstein , much of Switzerland (including

1225-724: The Ordonnance de Villers-Cotterêts (1539), which said that every document in France should be written in French (neither in Latin nor in Occitan) and the Loi Toubon (1994), which aimed to eliminate anglicisms from official documents. States and populations within a state have often resorted to war to settle their differences. There have been attempts to prevent such hostilities: two such initiatives were promoted by

1274-760: The Rhaeto-Romance languages , and the Gallo-Italic languages ; the Occitano-Romance languages , grouped with either Gallo-Romance or East Iberian, including Occitanic languages such as Occitan and Gardiol , and Catalan ; Aragonese , grouped in with either Occitano-Romance or West Iberian, and finally the West Iberian languages , including the Astur-Leonese languages , the Galician-Portuguese languages , and

1323-617: The national language , and a number of language academies were established: 1582 Accademia della Crusca in Florence, 1617 Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft in Weimar, 1635 Académie française in Paris, 1713 Real Academia Española in Madrid. Language became increasingly linked to nation as opposed to culture, and was also used to promote religious and ethnic identity: e.g. different Bible translations in

1372-620: The Caucasus — account for less than 1% of the European population among them. Immigration has added sizeable communities of speakers of African and Asian languages, amounting to about 4% of the population, with Arabic being the most widely spoken of them. Five languages have more than 50 million native speakers in Europe: Russian , German , French , Italian , and English . Russian is the most-spoken native language in Europe, and English has

1421-513: The chancellery of Meissen in Saxony, Middle German, and the chancellery of Prague in Bohemia ("Common German")). But several other nations also began to develop a standard variety in the 16th century. Europe has had a number of languages that were considered linguae francae over some ranges for some periods according to some historians. Typically in the rise of a national language the new language becomes

1470-502: The current understandings of sign language relationships, however, provide some reasonable estimates about potential sign language families: In the Middle Ages the two most important defining elements of Europe were Christianitas and Latinitas . The earliest dictionaries were glossaries: more or less structured lists of lexical pairs (in alphabetical order or according to conceptual fields). The Latin-German (Latin-Bavarian) Abrogans

1519-608: The era of the Ottoman Empire. Hungarian rovás was used by the Hungarian people in the early Middle Ages, but it was gradually replaced with the Latin-based Hungarian alphabet when Hungary became a kingdom, though it was revived in the 20th century and has certain marginal, but growing area of usage since then. The European Union (as of 2021) had 27 member states accounting for a population of 447 million, or about 60% of

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1568-477: The hold of the consonant. No language is known to contrast such a sound with a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative [ɬ] . In a number of languages, including most varieties of English, the phoneme /l/ becomes velarized (" dark l ") in certain contexts. By contrast, the non-velarized form is the "clear l " (also known as: "light l "), which occurs before and between vowels in certain English standards. Some languages have only clear l . Others may not have

1617-656: The language family is represented in Europe by the Hungarian language ( c. 13 million), historically introduced with the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin of the 9th century. The Samoyedic Nenets language is spoken in Nenets Autonomous Okrug of Russia, located in the far northeastern corner of Europe (as delimited by the Ural Mountains ). Several dozen manual languages exist across Europe, with

1666-437: The languages and associated statistics for all five of these countries are grouped together on this page, as they are usually presented at a national, rather than subnational, level. Recent (post–1945) immigration to Europe introduced substantial communities of speakers of non-European languages. The largest such communities include Arabic speakers (see Arabs in Europe ) and Turkish speakers (beyond European Turkey and

1715-499: The largest number of speakers in total, including some 200 million speakers of English as a second or foreign language . (See English language in Europe .) The Indo-European language family is descended from Proto-Indo-European , which is believed to have been spoken thousands of years ago. Early speakers of Indo-European daughter languages most likely expanded into Europe with the incipient Bronze Age , around 4,000 years ago ( Bell-Beaker culture ). The Germanic languages make up

1764-459: The member state may communicate with the EU in any of the designated languages, and view "EU regulations and other legislative documents" in that language. The European Union and the Council of Europe have been collaborating in education of member populations in languages for "the promotion of plurilingualism" among EU member states. The joint document, " Common European Framework of Reference for Languages : Learning, Teaching, Assessment (CEFR)",

1813-573: The most widespread sign language family being the Francosign languages , with its languages found in countries from Iberia to the Balkans and the Baltics . Accurate historical information of sign and tactile languages is difficult to come by, with folk histories noting the existence signing communities across Europe hundreds of years ago. British Sign Language (BSL) and French Sign Language (LSF) are probably

1862-969: The northeast areas bordering on Germany and Austria), northern Italy ( South Tyrol ), Luxembourg , the East Cantons of Belgium and the Alsace and Lorraine regions of France . There are several groups of German dialects: Low German is spoken in various regions throughout Northern Germany and the northern and eastern parts of the Netherlands. It is an official language in Germany . It may be separated into West Low German and East Low German . The North Germanic languages are spoken in Nordic countries and include Swedish ( Sweden and parts of Finland ), Danish ( Denmark ), Norwegian ( Norway ), Icelandic ( Iceland ), Faroese ( Faroe Islands ), and Elfdalian (in

1911-479: The oldest confirmed, continuously used sign languages. Alongside German Sign Language (DGS) according to Ethnologue , these three have the most numbers of signers, though very few institutions take appropriate statistics on contemporary signing populations, making legitimate data hard to find. Notably, few European sign languages have overt connections with the local majority/oral languages, aside from standard language contact and borrowing , meaning grammatically

1960-496: The population in each country were asked to fill out a survey form concerning the languages that they spoke with sufficient competency "to be able to have a conversation". The following is a table of European languages. The number of speakers as a first or second language (L1 and L2 speakers) listed are speakers in Europe only; see list of languages by number of native speakers and list of languages by total number of speakers for global estimates on numbers of speakers. The list

2009-425: The population of Europe. The European Union has designated by agreement with the member states 24 languages as "official and working": Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish and Swedish. This designation provides member states with two "entitlements":

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2058-574: The predominant language family in Western, Northern and Central Europe . It is estimated that over 500 million Europeans are speakers of Germanic languages , the largest groups being German ( c. 95 million), English ( c. 400 million) , Dutch ( c. 24 million), Swedish ( c. 10 million), Danish ( c. 6 million), Norwegian ( c. 5 million) and Limburgish (c. 1.3 million). There are two extant major sub-divisions: West Germanic and North Germanic . A third group, East Germanic ,

2107-462: The same language for Catholics and Protestants. The first languages whose standardisation was promoted included Italian ( questione della lingua : Modern Tuscan/Florentine vs. Old Tuscan/Florentine vs. Venetian → Modern Florentine + archaic Tuscan + Upper Italian), French (the standard is based on Parisian), English (the standard is based on the London dialect) and (High) German (based on the dialects of

2156-537: The sign languages and the oral languages of Europe are quite distinct from one another. Due to (visual/aural) modality differences, most sign languages are named for the larger ethnic nation in which they are spoken, plus the words "sign language", rendering what is spoken across much of France , Wallonia and Romandy as French Sign Language or LSF for: l angue des s ignes f rançaise . Recognition of non-oral languages varies widely from region to region. Some countries afford legal recognition, even to official on

2205-534: The subsequent letter. The pronunciations shown in the table are the primary ones for each language. In addition, л was formerly used in Chukchi to represent the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative /ɬ/ but has since been replaced by ԓ. El is sometimes used to represent the Clausen function , and if not, the capital greek letter Lambda is. Alveolar lateral approximant The voiced alveolar lateral approximant

2254-523: The various parts of the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity . Latin was itself part of the (otherwise extinct) Italic branch of Indo-European. Romance languages are divided phylogenetically into Italo-Western , Eastern Romance (including Romanian ) and Sardinian . The Romance-speaking area of Europe is occasionally referred to as Latin Europe . Italo-Western can be further broken down into

2303-434: Was among the first. A new wave of lexicography can be seen from the late 15th century onwards (after the introduction of the printing press, with the growing interest in standardisation of languages). The concept of the nation state began to emerge in the early modern period . Nations adopted particular dialects as their national language. This, together with improved communications, led to official efforts to standardise

2352-866: Was derived from the Greek letter lambda (Λ λ). In the Early Cyrillic alphabet its name was людиѥ ( ljudije ), meaning "people". In the Cyrillic numeral system , Л had a value of 30. El has two forms: one form resembles Greek capital Lambda (Ʌ ʌ), and the other form resembles the Hebrew letter ת (Л л). As used in the alphabets of various languages, El represents the following sounds: The /l/ phoneme in Slavic languages has two realizations: hard ( [l] , [ ɫ ] , or [lˠ] , exact pronunciation varies) and soft (pronounced as [lʲ] ) – see palatalization for details. Serbian and Macedonian orthographies use

2401-838: Was derived from the Phoenician alphabet , and Latin was derived from the Greek via the Old Italic alphabet . In the Early Middle Ages, Ogham was used in Ireland and runes (derived from Old Italic script) in Scandinavia. Both were replaced in general use by the Latin alphabet by the Late Middle Ages. The Cyrillic script was derived from the Greek with the first texts appearing around 940 AD. Around 1900 there were mainly two typeface variants of

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