Which country has the most dialects?

September 26th is European Language Day. The purpose of setting up Language Day is to publicize the importance of language, culture and language knowledge on the European continent. This is not an easy job, because there are more than 2200 languages and dialects in Europe. For this amazing diversity, a reporter from Deutsche Welle interviewed the linguist Professor Wolfgang Schulz.

Deutsche Welle: How many languages are there in Europe?

Professor Schultz: It depends on people's definition of Europe. Generally speaking, people define Europe by its geographical boundaries, which extend from the Urals to the Caucasus and along the so-called Georgian military highway, including Armenia, northern Turkey and the Black Sea. The north, west and south of Europe are bounded by the sea. There are more than 200 languages in this range, each of which belongs to a completely different language family. The largest Indo-European Germanic language family is divided into Germanic, Celtic, Roman, Baltic, Slavic, Albanian, Greek and Armenian. The largest language families are Roman (such as French, Spanish and Spanish) and Slavic (such as Russian, Ukrainian and Czech), followed by Germanic (such as English, German and Danish). The second largest language family is the so-called Finnish-Ugric language family, including Finnish, Hungarian and some small languages in northern Russia. In addition, there are a large number of Turkic branches in Europe (represented by Turkish, there are many languages in western and central Russia, such as Baschir, Tuwahi, Kalmye, Kamm-Tatar, etc. There are also some non-Indosinian Germanic languages in the West Caucasus and the South Caucasus, the most famous of which are Georgian (South Caucasus) and Cherkesh (West Caucasus). We can't miss languages that we can't find in Europe, such as Basque or Greenland.

Even though there are more than 200 languages, Europe is not the region with the most concentrated languages in the world. Think about it, there are about 900 languages in Papua New Guinea alone. Nevertheless, the number of European languages (excluding those brought by recent immigrants) is still considerable. The number of residents in various languages fluctuates-the number of people who speak German is about 80 million, while the number of residents who speak some languages is only 100 (such as some Baltic-Finnish languages).

What if we add dialects?

If we expand the discussion to dialects, the problem will be complicated. The number of dialects in each language is different, but the average is about 10. Therefore, there are about 2000 dialects in Europe. Compared with the 23 official languages of the European Union, this figure is quite impressive.

How to distinguish between languages and dialects?

On this issue, there is no unified view between linguists and scientists. Basically, it can be said that dialect is a language in a small area, and its difference from the languages in neighboring areas is more reflected in vocabulary and pronunciation than grammar. It is a part of "dialect continuity" or "whole language". We can say that the homonymy of dialects lies in that they all embody "language", and this language has its own uniqueness. In this sense, language is just a dialect. Of course, this is not the case in real life. Because compared with dialects, a country's language is supported by the state and even used to establish a sense of identity at the language level of national residents (the result is still in doubt). The distinction between language and dialect is basically not a linguistic problem, but a problem to be discussed in sociology and historical politics.

Which countries in Europe have the most languages and dialects?

The most dialects are France and Italy, followed by Germany and Britain. Russia has the largest number of languages, including more than 200 languages in parts of Asia. In western Europe, the countries with the most languages are Britain, France, Switzerland, Italy and (because of a large number of immigrants) Germany.

What language do people speak in Germany?

There are 15 "ancient languages" in Germany. The "old language" refers to the languages that existed before the immigration tide in 1960s, including Danish, eastern and northern Frisian, Satfrisian, standard German, Luxemburg, Lower German, Polish, Balkan, Sint and Flach Roma, Upper Sorbian and Lower Sorbian, Yiddish and so-called slang, a secret language of Nande. In addition, there are about 1 1 main dialects (almost extinct) such as Bavarian dialect, Arreman dialect, Cologne dialect, Limburg dialect, falk dialect, Franken dialect, Saxony dialect, Schwaben dialect and Silesia dialect. If you count the languages brought by immigrants, there are about 50 languages, among which Turkish (265,438+million), Croatian (600,000), Italian (500,000), Kurdish (500,000), Russian (460,000), Greek (300,000) and Spanish (12) have the largest population.

To be exact, the top four countries with the most dialects are:

1. France

2. Italy

3. Germany

4. Britain, Britain