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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.
