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European Languages

European Languages

Europe has been divided into about fifty sovereign states politically. As of 2018, the total population of Europe is about 741 million which is about 11% of the world’s population. There are 225 indigenous languages spoken in Europe. These indigenous languages are divided into three groups- Indo-European language groups; the Germanic languages, the Romance languages, and the Slavic languages.

The Slavic languages are spoken in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. The languages include Bulgarian, Czech, Croatian, Slovak, Polish, and Slovene. In Western and Southern Europe, as well as in Romania and Moldova in Eastern Europe, Romance languages are more prevalent.

It consists of Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, French, and Spanish. In the Western and Northern Europe and parts of Central Europe, Germanic languages are spoken. This group of languages includes Danish, English, Dutch, German, and Swedish. The Baltic languages consist of Latvian and Lithuanian; the Celtic languages, including Irish; and Greek. English is the language which is communicated predominantly in many regions.

The five languages that are the most important are: French, German, Italian, English and Russian. These languages have more than 50 million native speakers in Europe. Russian language has the largest number of speakers in Europe.

Need For Localization in Europe

Europe is a lucrative market for the investors and the big companies alike. More than 741 million people from different countries have the buying power. The European Union was formed in 1999 and had a unified currency. But the language is different and varied in distinct parts of the region and countries.

Most of the European Countries are developed such as Liechtenstein, Monaco, Luxembourg, Andorra, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, United Kingdom, and Switzerland. In 2018, Europe had a $23 trillion nominal GDP, which is the one-fourth of the world. Europe has been regarded as the second wealthiest and second-largest economy in the world, below the US by about $5 trillion. More than 500 companies which are the largest in the world have opened their offices here. This makes Europe an attractive market to conduct their business.

With that logic, anyone who wants to enter the European market should consider localization and translation as an important aspect of their market. If you want to expand the market, businesses need to not just localize the website but also their products and services.

If you localize your products, then it means that there are more customers who can discover you and likely to choose your products over your competitor. As we understand the European Multilingualism, we know that this task is challenging. As the languages are more specified and targeted, it has become extremely strenuous to translate the language.