European Languages
The first obstacle you face when travelling through Europe is the large amount of different languages. Even the multi-lingual super stars amongst us can’t understand all the languages that are scattered around Europe. But that doesn’t give us a reason to not try and learn the language of the country we are visiting.
Language is the first impression we receive of a culture. It tells us about the past of the country, reflects the people and creates a sound of the land. Throughout Europe there are several groups where majority of the languages stem from. The simplest form include three groups; Romance, Germanic and Slavic. There are of course many other groups and branches from these groups.
The Romance languages are spoken in countries that used to be part of the Roman Empire and descend from Latin. Predominate Romance languages include French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Romanian. Spanish also spread to South America and is now one of the world’s most spoken languages.
The Germanic languages are spoken in the northwestern countries in Europe; from Germany up into Scandinavia and Iceland. German and English are the two most widely spoken Germanic languages in the world with over 100 million native speakers. Germanic languages have greater differences between them than other language groups. If you speak English, you won’t necessarily understand fluent Swedish.
Slavic languages generally cover most of Eastern Europe and the Balkans. It is split into three sub branches; East, West and South depending on the location. Russian and Ukrainian are the main languages in the East, Polish and Czech in the west, and Serbo- Croatian in the south.
The abundance of different languages is what makes Europe special and such a joy to travel through.
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