European Cultures and Languages The people of Europe

European Cultures and Languages

• The people of Europe are all considered European though their national cultures are all different • Europe is a continent of diverse languages • Often people from one country can understand the language of people from another country Why? • Many people of Europe are bilingual • The languages of Europe belong to the Indo- European Language Family

Indo-European Languages 3 Branches • Germanic – German and English is spoken in more parts of the world than any other language Spoken in northwest and central Europe Uses the Roman Alphabet • Romance – French and Italian Based on Latin, the language of the ancient Romans Spoken in the southern and western Europe Uses the Roman Alphabet • Slavic – Russian is an example of a Slavic Language Uses the Cyrillic Alphabet Spoken in central and eastern Europe

Roman Alphabet Germanic and Romance Language

Cyrillic Alphabet Slavic Language

European Languages

Why would having so many languages be a problem? • Difficult to live, work, and trade with people who could not communicate with each other

What are Europeans doing to help solve the language problems? • Europeans are trying to solve the problem by having school children learn one or more languages beside their own • The European Union has made 23 “official” languages so people will be able to understand the laws and decisions made by the government • There are special laws to protect languages, too! • Europeans want to keep alive the languages spoken only by a few people and at the same time to build a united Europe