Germanic, Slavic, and Romance Languages of Europe Germanic, Slavic, and Romance

GERMANIC ROMANCE SLAVIC

Germanic Spoken in Northwest and Central Europe Example Languages English & German Largest of the three language groups Derived from the Germanic tribes (750 B.C.)

Slavic Spoken in central and eastern Europe Language- Russian Russian the most widely spoken Russian is the largest native language in Europe Cyrillic alphabet Cyrillic alphabet is derived from the Greek alphabet. Many of the letters look the same. There are only some slight differences.

Romance Spoken in south and west Europe Derived from Latin Language Languages: Spanish French Italian Derived from Latin Language Latin no longer spoken as a native language

Europe’s Language Barriers Hard to live, work and trade with people Most school children learn 1 or 2 other languages besides their own EU has 23 official languages Trying to keep alive the languages spoken by few

Review Besides differences in words, what other challenge do Europeans face in communicating with each other? What have Europeans done to try and solve the problem of so many languages? In what ways are the French and Italian languages alike? Which European language has the largest number of native speakers? What ways is Russian different from the other languages?