Languages in the European Union

The languages in the European Union are not only limited to the Official languages of the European Union of the twenty-seven Member States.

Linguistic policy

See also: Political linguistics of the European Union

The language that Europeans speak contributes to define what they are. The European Union respects this right to the identity of the 450 million citizens. While being attached to integration between its Member States, the Union also works for the freedom of its people of speaking and writing their own language. These two objectives are complementary and incarnate its currency: “ Plain in diversity ”.

The Union encourages its citizens highly to learn from other European languages, as well to increase professional mobility and personal as to support the contacts and mutual comprehension. The Union also supports the use of the regional and minority languages which, without counting among its official languages, is spoken by nearly 50 million people and thus makes integral part of her cultural heritage.

Official languages of the European Union

The Union, as an organization, works in twenty-three official languages (at January 1st 2007). These official languages are not the languages cash the greatest number of speakers in the Union; they are official languages of the Member States.

With some 90 million speakers, the German is the Native tongue the most spoken in the Union. In this decreasing order, the English, the Italian and the French, are each one the native tongue of approximately 60 million citizens. However English is the first foreign language of a third of the European citizens, which makes of it the language most used in the Union. German and French are each one the first foreign language of approximately 10% of the European population.

The official languages of the Union the best known ones (in 2001) were, in the order of importance: English 47%; German 32%; French 28%; Italian 18%; Spanish 15%; Dutch 7%; Greek 3%; Portuguese 3%; Swedish 3%; Danish 2%; Finnish 1% (like Native tongue or sufficiently for holding a conversation well). These proportions were modified by widening with 27.

Knowledge of languages of the citizens of the European Union

The following classifications are based on l'" special Eurobaromètre 243" European commission having for title “Europeans and their languages” (ref.), which was published in February 2006 and whose study was carried out in November and December 2005. The results were published with the widening of 2007, having allowed Bulgaria and Romania to become members. They are there only figures obtained by a Sondage and not by Recensement. 28.694 citizens of more than 15 years were questioned in the 25 Member States of the time like in the two future members (Bulgaria and Romania) and in the States candidates (the Croatia and the Turkey), at the time of the study.

The first table shows, for each language, the percentage of citizens affirming to be able to hold a conversation in this language as a Native tongue and a secondary Langue or Foreign language (only the languages having a figure of more than 2% are posted).

Source: , given for the UE25, published before the widening of the European Union of 2007.-->

Regional and minority languages

The regional and minority languages can be presented in three categories:

own languages with an area, which can extend on part of one or several Member States. In this category are included of the languages such as the Galician , the Basque, the Catalan, the clippings, the Ligure, the Welsh, the Sarde, the regional Langues of France, the regional Langues of Germany…

the spoken languages by a minority in a Member State, but which have the statute of official language in another. This definition covers for example German in the south of the Denmark, French in the Val of Aoste, the Hungarian as Slovakia, Swedish in Finland, etc

the languages which are not associated with a precise territory, like those of the communities Tzigane S and Jewish, or the Armenian .

See too

European Charter of the regional or minority languages

External bond

Europa: Languages and Europe - Gate of the European Union on the languages.
the European Parliament: Data sheets 4.16.3. Linguistic policy
European commission > fields of action > Languages.

Zh-min-nan: Europa Liân-bêng E koaⁿ-hong gí-giân

Random links: