Languages of Europe

Europe as a geographic area defined below harbors languages of several language families: Indo-European, Uralic, Turkic, Mongolic, and Semitic. The latter two are represented here by single languages: Kalmyk and Maltese, respectively. Europe also has one language isolate—Basque—a language that does not belong to any generally accepted language family.

The geographic extent of Europe is largely determined by geography; however, its delineation to the east and southeast is purely practical, allowing discussion of language units found in those areas as a whole. Europe is delineated by the Ural Mountains, the river Ural to the Caspian Sea, the Kuma–Manych depression, and the Black Sea. The Mediterranean Sea and the Strait of Gibraltar mark the southern boundaries. The languages spoken in the Caucasus and the Republic of Turkey ...