Languages of the European Union

The continent of Europe is made up of 45 different countries and covers an area of 3,930,000 square miles (10,180,000 sq km). As such, it is a highly diverse place with many different cuisines, cultures, and languages. The European Union (EU) alone has 27 different member states and there are 23 official languages spoken in it.

Official Languages of the European Union

To be an official language of the European Union, the language must be both an official and a working language within a member state. For example, French is the official language in France, which is a member state of the European Union, and thus it is also an official language of the EU.

By contrast, there are many minority languages spoken by groups in countries throughout the EU. While these minority languages are important to those groups, they are not official and working languages of the governments of those countries; thus, they are not official languages of the EU.

A List of the EU's Official Languages

The following is a list of the 23 official languages of the EU arranged in alphabetical order:

1) Bulgarian
2) Czech
3) Danish
4) Dutch
5) English
6) Estonian
7) Finnish
8) French
9) German
10) Greek
11) Hungarian
12) Irish
13) Italian
14) Latvian
15) Lithuanian
16) Maltese
17) Polish
18) Portuguese
19) Romanian
20) Slovak
21) Slovene
22) Spanish
23) Swedish

<sub>References

European Commission Multilingualism. (24 November 2010). European Commission - EU Languages and Language Policy.

Wikipedia.org. (29 December 2010). Europe - Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe

Wikipedia.org. (8 December 2010). Languages of Europe - Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Europe</sub>