Thirty-Seventh Edition - The Languages of the European Union (EU)

EU languages increase to twenty one on May 1, 2004

As a community, the EU may speak with one voice but in many languages – twenty one as of May 1, 2004 to be exact, with the ascension of nine countries. Before the EU, the language of every member state is considered equal and, with three hundred and eighty possible language combinations, the logistics of this multilingual equality are staggering. This year alone the EU expects to translate more than two million pages. To stand up to this challenge, the EU will be adding 110 translators and freelancers per language, at a cost increase of more than $350 million.

If you are interested in reaching the expanding EU market, but cannot logistically or economically accommodate 21 languages in your product literature and/or website, this newsletter will be of interest to you. It provides useful information, such as what language(s) is(are) spoken where and their ranking according to number of native speakers.

As of May 1, 2004, the population of the EU increased to more than 450 million (Please refer to Table 1 for a breakdown of population per country and the number of speakers of each national or official language of the EU member state - Sources: CIA- The World Factbook and Ethnologue.com).

Table 1
 

Current (EU) Member States	Population*	National or Official Language(s)
Austria	8,188,207	Standard German
Belgium	10,289,088	Dutch, French, Standard German
Denmark	5,384,384	Danish, Standard German
Finland	5,190,785	Finnish, Swedish.
France	60,180,529	French
Germany	82,398,326	Standard German
Greece	10,665,989	Greek
Ireland	3,924,140	English, Gaelic
Italy	57,998,353	Italian, French, Standard German
Luxembourg	454,157	French, Standard German, Luxembourgeois
The Netherlands	16,150,511	Dutch, West Frisian, Drents, Gronings, Westerwolds
Portugal	10,102,022	Portuguese
Spain	40,217,413	Spanish, Basque, Galician, Gascon (Aranese), Catalan
Sweden	8,878,085	Swedish
United Kingdom	60,094,648	English
Subtotal	380,116,637
New (EU) Member States	Population*	National or Official Language(s)
Cyprus	771,657	Greek, Turkish
Czech Republic	10,249,216	Czech
Estonia	1,408,556	Estonian
Hungary	10,045,407	Hungarian
Latvia	2,348,784	Latvian
Lithuania	3,592,561	Lithuanian
Malta	400,420	Maltese, English
Poland	36,554,000	Polish
Slovakia	5,430,033	Slovak
Slovenia	1,935,677	Slovenian, Hungarian, Italian
Subtotal	72,736,311
Population of the EU	452,852,948

As you can see, Standard German tops the list of languages in terms of numbers of speakers, followed by French, English, Italian, Polish and Spanish (Please refer to Table 2 - Source: Ethnologe.com). Keep in mind that estimating the number of native speakers is a very difficult task, therefore these numbers and percentages should be considered approximations.

Table 2
 

EU Languages	ISO Code	Native speakers	% of total
German	de	86,154,349	21.16%
French	fr	62,810,100	15.43%
English	en	57,602,400	14.15%
Italian	it	56,024,809	13.76%
Polish	pl	36,554,000	8.98%
Spanish	es	28,218,600	6.93%
Dutch	nl	18,020,150	4.43%
Hungarian	hu	10,905,460	2.68%
Portuguese	pt	10,100,000	2.48%
Czech	cs	10,004,800	2.46%
Swedish	sv	7,825,000	1.92%
Danish	da	5,000,000	1.23%
Finnish	fi	4,900,000	1.20%
Slovak	sk	4,865,450	1.19%
Lithuanian	lt	2,955,200	0.73%
Slovenian	sl	1,727,360	0.42%
Latvian, Lettish	lv	1,394,000	0.34%
Estonian	et	953,032	0.23%
Greek	el	578,000	0.14%
Maltese	mt	300,000	0.07%
Irish	ga	260,000	0.06%
EU Languages		407,152,710	100.00%

Graph 1 illustrates the percentages of native speakers attributed to the five major languages of the EU.

Graph 1



For more detailed information about EU countries, population figures, official languages, numbers of native speakers and more, click here to access Table 3 (PDF Format - will open in a new window)

If the source language of your Company's product literature, website, etc. is English, you may want to assign a higher priority to the languages of those countries that claim the lowest numbers of English speakers, such as Spain, Portugal and Italy, where English speakers represent 20 -30% of the populations, as compared, to The Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark, for example, where English is spoken by 70 to 80% of the population. (For more information on this topic, please refer to the 35th Edition of the Global Advisor Newsletter.

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