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birdienlHello everyone! Last week, I was on a short holiday in Dublin (which was amazing btw, I'll post about it in the weekend) and was intrigued by the fact that signposts, street names and information on public buildings was all in two languages: English and Irish. Therefore, todays posts in the 100 things challenge is about languages, more specifically, the languages of the European Union.
The European Union has 23 official and working languages: Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portugese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish and Swedish. Being an official language of the European Union means that letters can be send to EU institutions and a reply received in any of these languages. Also, EU regulations and legislations are published in all of these languages.
The language spoken by most people as a mother tongue is German, though 51% of European adults can understand English. The smallest language of these is Irish, estimation of the number of native speakers of this language range from 20.000 to 80.000. Most of the official languages of the European Union are written in the Latin alphabet, with the exception of Greek, which uses the Greek alphabet, and Bulgarian, which is written in Cyrillic.
These are not all the languages spoken in the countries of the European Union though, there are approximately 40 minor languages, which include migrant languages such as Russian or Arabic, local languages such as Frisian (of which I am a native speaker!) and Corsican and the language of the gypsies: Romani. Though these are not official languages of the European Union, they are often recognized constitutionally in the countries in which they are spoken.
The European Union has 23 official and working languages: Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portugese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish and Swedish. Being an official language of the European Union means that letters can be send to EU institutions and a reply received in any of these languages. Also, EU regulations and legislations are published in all of these languages.
The language spoken by most people as a mother tongue is German, though 51% of European adults can understand English. The smallest language of these is Irish, estimation of the number of native speakers of this language range from 20.000 to 80.000. Most of the official languages of the European Union are written in the Latin alphabet, with the exception of Greek, which uses the Greek alphabet, and Bulgarian, which is written in Cyrillic.
These are not all the languages spoken in the countries of the European Union though, there are approximately 40 minor languages, which include migrant languages such as Russian or Arabic, local languages such as Frisian (of which I am a native speaker!) and Corsican and the language of the gypsies: Romani. Though these are not official languages of the European Union, they are often recognized constitutionally in the countries in which they are spoken.
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Date: 2012-06-01 02:47 pm (UTC)Glad you had a good time in Dublin - that's a great city!
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Date: 2012-06-02 07:07 pm (UTC)So, you lived in Ireland. Maybe you can help me out. I was surprised how similar Ireland was to England. I had expected it to be more different in a way. For example, the same supermarkets as in England, others shops are also similar, youth behaviour and clothing style is very similar. Is this perhaps just Dublin and is the difference more apparent in the countryside?
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Date: 2012-06-02 07:38 pm (UTC)I'm not an expert on youth clothing or behaviour - I'm too old for that. I do know that kids always wanted what they saw on telly from the U.S. and U.K. but maybe what's changed is that now they can afford it. I'm not exaggerating when I say it was really, really poor when I was then - unemployment was ridiculously high and more than half of my class left Ireland after graduation. So to see Temple Bar booming like it was and to see young people wearing expensive clothes is an enormous change.
But OTOH a lot of what I saw in Dublin hadn't changed - once you get out of the tourist sections, there are still a huge number of pregnant teens or young girls pushing buggies and way too many kids strung out on heroin.
And yeah, it's not quite like that outside Dublin - it's always been the most Anglo part of the country by far. I'm curious what Galway is like these days. But for this trip, I spent most of my time in Co. Carlow and Kilkenny. What's changed there is that the farmers have gotten filthy rich, which is kind of nice to see and kind of scary too when you see the obscene mansions they've built. Fair dues to them though, they've been poor for long enough!
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Date: 2012-06-03 11:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-01 05:22 pm (UTC)I'm curious, what does Frisan sound/look like?
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Date: 2012-06-02 07:10 pm (UTC)If you want to know how it sounds, look at this vid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cni0pL9cXxA. It's from a local Frisian artist/singer (the guy with the scruffy look), who lives close to my mothers village.
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Date: 2012-06-03 03:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-03 11:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-01 07:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-02 07:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-02 06:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-02 07:43 pm (UTC)