Talk:Languages of the European Union/Archive 2

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German in Slovenia

I am sure that German is neither de jure nor de facto an official language in Slovenia. Source please? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.153.35.53 (talk) 22:45, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm certain you're right - the languages of the two resident national minorities, Italian and Hungarian, are acknowledged as official, but German is not (although it is widely understood in the northern areas of the country that border on Austria, which has its own Slovenian-speaking minority in the south).84.243.236.9 (talk) 16:23, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

Croatian language

Since Croatian is an official language of EU, I think it is time you gave it another color! Pulcherrimus (talk) 00:23, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Map inaccuracies (Estonia, Latvia, Russia, Ukraine)

Even though my comment might be not exactly relevant because the article deals with EU languages, I would still like to draw your attention to gross mistakes in the map made for this article. Estonia and Latvia: approximately a third of Estonia's total population speak Russian as their first language. Yet there are no indications of this in the current map. Nearly the same situation is in Latvia with Russian speakers living not just in the east of the country, as the current map shows, but also in and around the capital Riga (central Latvia). Russia: the number of speakers of Sami dialects on the Kola peninsula (between the Barents Sea and the White Sea) is some 500. Yet the larger portion of the peninsula (the size of Hungary) is marked as Sami majority speaking. Also, there are no Karelian majority speaking areas in Karelia (along the boundary to Finland). Ukraine: for more accurate information on the Russian language in Ukraine see this map: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RussianUseEn.PNG

All this indicates that the current map for the EU languages article should be further edited by competent users. Denghu (talk) 12:40, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Switzerland now in the EU?

I'm curious as to why the map for German Comprehension has been updated to include Switzerland. Aryaman (☼) 18:14, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

How strange the map was to include a non-E.U. member state Switzerland, but the country is part of the historic German-speaking Europe that's for sure. Switzerland has three other official languages, French and Italian, and the localized Romansh language minority in the canton of Grauchaben.+ 71.102.2.206 (talk) 15:56, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
That's Graubünden. —Angr 16:23, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Yet San Marino, Vatican City and south Switerland are not included in the Italian map. German map should be corrected IMHO. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.34.1.81 (talk)

23% of Italian population can speak Spanish?

Where does this figure come from? In the EU survey the foreign languages most spoken in Italy are English (29%) and French (14%), so where is the figure for Spanish? (I'm Italian and it sounds quite odd to me that Spanish is more widespread than French here..). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.222.26.178 (talk) 20:08, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Good question. As you say, the survey listed as "source" doesn't mention Spanish in Italy at all. —Angr If you've written a quality article... 20:15, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

I think that it is true. A lot of Italians can understand Spanish. Perhaps, a lot of Italians can speak a mixture of Spanish-Italian, and of course, to understand the language. Babelia.

No I can assure you it is not true. It is true that us Italians can understand a bit of Spanish if spoken slowly, the same way we understand a bit of French if spoken slowly so communication between Spanish, French and Italian speakers is possibile to a minimum level even without having studied the language, but this data are about *true* knowledge of the language at a basic level of fluency at least, and French is much more studied in Italian schools. Anyway I saw the data have been corrected with the right ones. Easyboy82 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.222.26.174 (talk) 09:38, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Chinese migration one of the sources

http://www.migrationinformation.org/Feature/display.cfm?ID=144 --Atitarev (talk) 22:46, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

62% of Portuguese population can speak Spanish?

This is wrong, someone should correct those figures or show source. - Fernao, 20.2.2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.67.80.185 (talk) 20:30, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

A source should definitely be added, but in fact I don't find the claim particularly unlikely, keeping in mind it means they can speak Spanish as a foreign language (not their native language!). —Angr If you've written a quality article... 20:38, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

It's highly probable that a big part of the population claims to understand and even speak spanish, since the language is similar, althought spaniards don't usualy do the same claim. Although is totally untrue that spanish is widly teatched in Portugal. Until a few years ago it was not even a possible choice in highschool, only recently in some border towns it was made available. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.196.175.91 (talk • contribs) 00:44, 20 March 2008 I think that it is true. In Portugal a 62% of population can understand Spanish or more people. Other thing is speaking the language fluently, but to understand the language is very easy for Portuguese people. Babelia.

Regional and minority languages

Is not the Regional and minority languages now somewhat of a mess? The Euromosaic study is now seriously out of date, and anyway was at best seriously misleading - in many cases not covering regional or minority languages that are currently recognised by member states (the langues de France and Scots in Scotland and Ulster Scots in Northern Ireland to cite but several dozen examples). We also have Bulgarian and Romanian references, and Manx. This section now seems far adrift from fact - at the very least it should list regional and minority languages that are recognised by the member states. Man vyi (talk) 18:15, 22 February 2008 (UTC)


Seems like that. Anyway, 80% of the population in Slovenia and 70% of the population in Bulgaria can understand and speak Central South Slavic language and its dialects( CSS language or Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian language). Cheers.24.86.127.209 (talk) 07:09, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Regional and minority languages /2

This section is indeed a mess. Estonian (the official AND main language of Estonia, also one of the EU's official languages) is not listed at all, and instead of this, the article mentions that Latvian (the official language of Latvia) is spoken in Estonia. This information is absolutely incorrect and misleading, as Latvian is spoken by perhaps 0.5% of Estonian population. Janark (talk) 11:37, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

But the Euromosaic study cited does indeed include Latvian as a minority language in Estonia. In what way is it incorrect? Have you a source that provides contradictory evidence? Man vyi (talk) 14:32, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Does a Spanish map make sense?

The number for spanish are higly overrated, spanish is not a lingua franca in EU, it would make more sense to have a map of Russian. Anyway, if spanish as a map, why not portuguese? It's the 3rd european language more spoken in the world, and due to big immigrants comunities has significant expression in France, UK, Andorra (not EU, I know) and Luxembourg. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.196.175.91 (talk • contribs) 00:44, 20 March 2008

No, according to the source, the number of Spanish speakers is much smaller. E.g France the source says 13 % Spanish speakers, the article says 32. What a joke, I'll delete the map and change to correct figures. Aaker (talk) 22:17, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Irish speakers

Do 540,000 really speak Irish on a daily basis? Although this statistic appears on the website of the Irish embassy, it is a considerable exaggeration of the CSO's [1] figures (450,000 in education and 55,000 outside of education) and completely contradict those of the Wikipedia article on Irish, which states just over 85,000 Luke w (talk) 00:32, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

  • 540,000 (more precisely 538 and a half thousand) is the CSO's latest figure, as can be seen from the reference I added in the article. The current version of the Irish language article agrees with this figure as well. I have restored it. Tameamseo (talk) 16:28, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Mandarin and other Chinese speakers

Can somebody provide figures on Chinese language usage in EU, Mandarin and dialects? --Atitarev (talk) 14:11, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

They'd be almost the same as the number of Chinese immigrants. Aaker (talk) 18:27, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Language maps

Why all the bilingual areas of Ireland, the UK (Wales...) and France (Brittany, Corse, Alsace...) are shown as 100% native speakers and the Spanish bilingual areas are shown as over 50% of native speakers?

There should be some consistency between all maps.--Té y kriptonita (talk) 20:22, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Because those languages are not official and much less spoken than the regional languages of Spain. But honestly, I don't think we need the Spanish map nor having Spanish in the table since it's very little spoken outside Spain. Some idiot (excuse my language) added a map based on false figures (which s/he also added to the table) so I had to correct it. Aaker (talk) 21:23, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
I am sorry, but how can you say that Irish or Welsh are not official?! or that all these languages are less spoken than the Spanish languages? I appreciate you have amended an error but the new map is not consistent with the rest. --Té y kriptonita (talk) 20:14, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
Okey, I'll remove the Spanish map. Aaker (talk) 21:41, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

The German map is incorrectly colored compared to the information given in the box. Latvia, Lithuania, and Italy are all marked wrong on the map. Unfortunately I have neither the artistic, nor wikipedia know-how to fix the problem myself and upload a new map. Thanks ahead of time! 12.205.128.54 (talk) 20:58, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Catalan and Valencian are 2 languages.

In the subarticle of 'Regional and Minority languages' you don't mention Valencian language, but just Catalan. If Serbian and Croatian, which are basically a same language-can be mentioned separately, then that way should be Catalan and Valencian languages as well. Greetings,24.86.127.209 (talk) 05:15, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

There's more consensus (in the world generally, not just on Wikipedia) that Serbian and Croatian should be treated as two separate languages than that Catalan and Valencian should be so treated. —Angr 05:31, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Maybe this with the consensus was so then, but the things are changing and certainly won't be same in the future. Greetings.24.86.116.250 (talk) 03:05, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

According to the Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua: "La llengua pròpia i històrica dels valencians és també la que compartixen les comunitats autònomes de Catalunya i de les Illes Balears i el Principat d'Andorra, així com altres territoris de l'antiga Corona d'Aragó". My translation: "The characteristic and historic language of valencians is also the one that is shared by the autonomous communities of Catalunya and the Illes Balears and the Principality of Andorra, as well as other territories of the former Crown of Aragon". --Jcmo (talk) 10:22, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

What is the 3rd paragraph trying to say?

To me this third paragraph in the introduction does not make sense, it needs rewriting.

"It should be noted that according to statistics the plurality of EU citizens speaks German, while the absolute majority can understand English and speaks German, English, French or Italian as mother languages."

Can someone rewrite this paragraph. I'd do it myself but I'm not sure what is trying to be conveyed. --203.220.171.56 (talk) 13:42, 7 June 2008 (UTC)


Spanish removed from language skills table

I have no idea why it was included. A number of countries had zero percent indicating that Spanish is not very important in Europe. The three working languages (English, French, German) should only be included in the table unless you also want to include Russian. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.161.69.75 (talk) 10:58, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Added again, your campaign against Spanish is a bit tiresome. If you want to delete information, then gain a consensus for doing so on talk pages before going around deleting things you don't like. JdeJ (talk) 11:30, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
I would also not include Spanish in the table. It is not a working language of the EU, and - although it is a major language worldwide - it is not very commonplace in the EU (as shown by the - very - low percentages). Suggest a consensus. Fisheke (talk) 14:05, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
I'm not at all opposed to removing Spanish from the table, the thing I have a problem with is that the user went around on an anti-Spanish campaign across several articles and deleted the information withou trying to gain a consensus here first. Such behaviour only leads to needless edit-wars.JdeJ (talk) 16:35, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
In my opinion erasing valuable information from the article will not improve it. Spanish may not be the first, second or third most spoken language in the EU, but I can't see what's the harm in showing its statistics on the table when there is a reliable source. The expansion of the Spanish language in Europe seems to irritate some people but that should not be a reason to hide information in this article. --Té y kriptonita (talk) 20:57, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
I partly agree. I can see why some find it strange to include Spanish when languages such as Russian, Italian and possibly even Polish, depending on who counts, is spoken as a native language by more Europeans. I would argue, however, that the better solution is working towards including those languages, and more, as well instead of deleting Spanish. JdeJ (talk) 06:37, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

It's interesting you think I'm a troll Té y kriptonita a person more often found in Wikipedia Spanish. Porque no quiere anadir otras lenguas al articulo? Creo que todas las lenguas son importantes y por eso menecen a ser en el articulo.

Following your suggestion, and using the same source, I have added Russian and Italian to the table and done their respectives maps. --Té y kriptonita (talk) 19:59, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Good job! However, maybe we should now separate English, French and German from the rest of the languages as unlike the others they are the working languages of the European Union. I just want to make one thing clear I am not on an anti Spanish campaign. I studied Spanish for ten years and lived in Spain for two so save your accusations. I am only irritated by the fact that some people keep including Spanish with English, French and German as if the it is on par with them. Trust me it isn't. As a citizen of the EU and someone who has traveled extensively I can assure you Spanish is only useful in the Americas. In Europe it isn't even the fourth most spoken language. Please. The EU is not the USA. It is not experiencing mass migration from Mexico. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.161.69.75 (talk) 09:35, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Excellent job, Té y kriptonita, thanks! As for the complaints of the anonymous user, it is not true that English, French and German are the working languages of the European Union. Every official language of the EU is also an official working language of the union, so there's no argument for picking out those three in particular. JdeJ (talk) 14:54, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

I think he probably meant de-facto working language rather than official working language. —Angr 16:24, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
In any case, this section of the article is about the language skills of the EU citizens and should not be understood as a competition between languages. It is quite clear that French, English and German are the three most widely spoken languages. This is precisely what the table shows and there is no need to separate them to understand it.
Anonymous, if you want to include any reference about how useful is Spanish in Europe you should provide some more evidence than your own travelling experience.--Té y kriptonita (talk) 11:19, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

It's hard to find references that say that Spanish is not useful in Europe as the fact that it is not means that there are very few articles on the topic. The European Commission has three working languages: English, French, and German. The body is responsible for proposing legislation, implementing decisions, upholding the Union's treaties and the general day-to-day running of the Union.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.161.69.75 (talk) 12:09, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Té y kriptonita could you please also add a map for Polish and Portuguese if possible. Portuguese is a world language and Polish is one of the most spoken languages in the EU.

It looks more and more likely that the anonymous user is a troll. I suggest we ignore him and block him if he continues to deleting sourced material. Based on his comments, (such as the one today at 12:09) I think it's pretty clear that he is either or troll or that he has no clue what Wikipedia is about.
I agree. --Té y kriptonita (talk) 15:54, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

A Troll? Please. What's wrong with adding Portuguese and Polish? Is Wikipedia not an encyclopedia? Have you noticed that since you added the other languages I have not deleted Spanish from the table? The only problem I had with Spanish was that you kept on including it with the three working languages of the European Commission. Now that you have included Russian and Italian I have no problem with Spanish being in the list as it no longer misleads people into thinking that it is on par with English, French and German.

Té y kriptonita por que cree que soy un Troll? Porque creo que todas las lenguas son importantes y menecen mapas?

Give it a rest, will you. To begin with, I have no memory of Té y kriptonita being the designated Wikipedia-slave. The user has already added two maps, and that's great. If you want Polish and Portuguese to be in as well, go ahead and add them yourself! Nobody will stop you, I promise. I should point out, though, that following your own logic (of looking only at Europe) it's hard to argue for including Portuguese. Within Europe, Portuguese is somewhere between the 17th and 20th largest language, so you should probably think about adding larges language such as Dutch, Romanian, Greek or Hungarian alongside Polish instead. JdeJ (talk) 07:34, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

JdeJ if you read the discussion page you will see that other people also had a problem with Spanish. It has been fixed now. Get over it. I have to agree with you about Portuguese not being that important in the E.U. Ideally it would be great if every official language of the E.U. had a map. And who said Té y kriptonita was the designated facebook-slave? Your obviously on some kind of mission. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.161.69.75 (talk) 08:04, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

I sure am, on the mission to improve Wikipedia and to prevent vandalism. And your claims above are not true - instead of just adding the data for Russian and Italian that Té y kriptonita kindly has provided, you deleted Spanish at the same time. It was The Ogre who had to add it after your habitual little act of vandalism. So stop deleting content added by other users and please feel free to add any map or table you want and that you can source. JdeJ (talk) 11:02, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't move to have Spaanish removed, but perhaps question some figures: even with the new EU regulations pertaining to languages in school, I find it incredible that, eg. 8% of the UK, 4% of Ireland and 8% of Sweden can speak Spanish. What is the standard of 'having a conversation' here? Are they REALLY able to speak it, or is this the number who have learnt a 'few key phrases' and maybe had a few school lessons (so can say 'buenos días', 'cuánto vale esta manzana' or whatever)? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.185.167.243 (talk) 19:34, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Bias maps

Why aren't all the maps to the same scale? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.161.69.75 (talk) 09:43, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

To highlight differences. Aaker (talk) 09:19, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

EU official languages: One member, one language

Copied from my talk page (2007):

On 6 September 2005, you have written in the article Languages of the European Union (see here) that:

There has been a suggestion in an official briefing that the implicit principle for official languages of the European Union is that each member state can put forward at most one official language ('one member state, one language'). This has not been confirmed in documents.

Is there some source for this? --Michkalas 16:49, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I think I got that from the European Parliament post-briefing that day. I don't know whether this ever appeared in print. – Kaihsu 09:48, 7 February 2007 (UTC)}}

Perhaps one can submit a Freedom of Information request via http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/ – Kaihsu (talk) 10:12, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Here we go: http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/official_languages_of_the_europe – Kaihsu (talk) 11:36, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Here is the response: [2] .The administrative arrangement cited is at HTML, PDF. – Kaihsu (talk) 13:03, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Maltese

Anonymous IPs, presumably sockpuppets of banned user(s) who have been making this odd claim for ages, have been making repeated edits claiming that Maltese is somehow not a Semitic language. Check the article and talk histories of Maltese language for the same nonsense over there. Since you could make the argument that English, Slovenian, and Romanian, if not many others, are "mixed" languages, it's certainly undue weight at the very least to single out Maltese. And then of course there's the fact that it's incorrect. kwami (talk) 10:20, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

This contention re-surfaces on the Maltese lang talk page every once in a while. I think it's faily obvious that Maltese will not (once again) be reflected as anything other than Semitic. Kalindoscopy: un enfant espiègle (talk) 11:04, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
I have clearly indicated that it is "Semitic", and in brackets, included how other linguists classify it as other things too. There is no confusion caused. 89.242.89.191 (talk) 12:04, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
Very few linguists classify it as anything else than a purely Semitic language with many loan words. The view that Maltese is a "creoloid" or on a continuum between a "mixed language" and a "language with massive borrowing" is a tiny fringe view that warrants mention only at Maltese language, but not here. —Angr 12:14, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
You don't have the authority to classify it as fringe. It only has a small mention here, and it is neccessary considering it deals with the classification of EU languages. 89.242.89.191 (talk) 12:23, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
As a Wikipedia editor who has read the relevant sources, I certainly do have the "authority" to classify it as fringe. Even a small mention here is putting UNDUE weight on a minor opinion that is utterly irrelevant to this page anyway. —Angr 12:42, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
When was pushing 'embedded Punic substructure' dropped in favour of 'creoloid mixed language with massive borrowing'?? The fringe is fertile, and multiplies.. Kalindoscopy: un enfant espiègle (talk) 13:25, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
The apparently undefined neologism "creoloid" and the bit about Maltese being on a continuum between a "mixed language" and a "language with massive borrowing" come from the sources cited in the lead section of Maltese language. Some people will go to any lengths to distance Maltese from Arabic. —Angr 13:34, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
The fact Maltese has been independently growing for nearly 1,000 years isn't distance enough for some people. Kalindoscopy: un enfant espiègle (talk) 14:08, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
Never mind the mention of the creole theory in Maltese language, when it comes to English language we've a whole article on Middle English creole hypothesis. None of which makes such theories, interesting though they may be, relevant to this article. Man vyi (talk) 15:10, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I've semi-protected the article. Since our sockpuppet is changing IP addresses and claims that every change of wording requires a new consensus before we're allowed to delete it, there's not much point in just blocking. kwami (talk) 18:47, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes but you're forgetting that it wasn't just me who contributed to that wording. Therefore, you are reverting against consensus. Also, I have reported you via IRC to mlkau99. Enjoy 89.243.57.7 (talk) 18:51, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
Someone correcting your English and more obvious POV wording is hardly "consensus", especially when every other editor here opposes you. (You of course know this; I'm writing for whoever else may be reading this.) kwami (talk) 19:06, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
Well the fact of the matter is that you know that's not true, as does everyone on IRC who is now talking about you. Wanna join the convo? It'll be interesting XD. 89.243.57.7 (talk) 19:16, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
This is beyond petty... Kalindoscopy: un enfant espiègle (talk) 19:36, 3 September 2008 (UTC)


Welsh and Gaelic Official

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4272797.ece

Hungarian spoken only in Hungary?

That's not true, I'm a living example of this :) there are Hungarian speakers in Romania, Slovakia, and other countries which got territories from Hungary after the Trianon treaty. Of course they are minorities, but, for example in Romania, quite significant minorities... (Ernobius (talk) 21:42, 23 December 2008 (UTC))

It is whether the language is official in those countries whether it is important, then what the level of offialdom is. Hungarian is spoken in all countries which surround it. In Serbia, it has official status in Vojvodina according to the local constitution (though not on a national level). Swedish, I believe, is an official language of Finland and not just within the territories where ethnic Swedes reside. However, an important note is that the table in question presents the EU's official languages as being official in their specific countries when infact some of those countries do not have de-jure official languages, only de-facto national languages. The UK and Sweden are examples. If we change official in to used in (referring to large parts of the population) then you can certainly add Hungarian (official or not) to Slovakia, Slovenia and Romania. Evlekis (talk) 12:06, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Languages of the European Union

In the table there aren't:

-Hungarian for Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia

-Italian for Slovenia (Istria)

-Greek for Italy (Salento, Calabria)

-Dutch for France (French Flanders)--Pascar (talk) 13:38, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

How can we correct the table?--Pascar (talk) 22:51, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I repeat, how can we correct the table?--Pascar (talk) 23:28, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Just click "[edit]" and make the corrections. —Angr 05:51, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

No, in this case it is not possible. It is a table uploaded, that is in another page, but I don't know where...--Pascar (talk) 11:38, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Do you mean Template:Languages of the European Union? —Angr 11:49, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
Thank you, I solved!--Pascar (talk) 12:04, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Russian

Although rarely a native language, Russian is widely understood by many in Bulgaria, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, some in Hungary, Romania and other countries. It is the 8th most spoken language in the EU. About 7% of all EU citizens speak or understand Russian to some extent.

Fluency in Russian is uncommon and getting even more so in Poland. You get a few people being able to understand some Russian because the languages are quite similar, but that's about as much as saying Swedish is widely understood in Netherlands.

According to Education_in_Poland#Foreign_languages 6.1% of Polish children learn Russian at school, very few of them will achieve any kind of fluency. Higher proportion of older Polish people learned Russian at school, but again - fluency is very uncommon.

Now I have no idea if it applies to other listed countries, but I have my suspicions.

The table showing 26% of Polish people speaking Russian must use absurdly low criteria (self proclaimed "being able to hold conversation", which is far lower than real fluency, and I'm pretty sure people are extremely optimistic about how much they remember from school). Taw (talk) 22:06, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Russian is certainly not widely understood in Central Europe... Where is this information from? --Rudoleska (talk) 21:42, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
The Russian language is surely understood in Central Europe. From my personal experience people in Czech Republic would rather understand Russian than English. 82.208.119.2 (talk) 05:48, 1 November 2009 (UTC)Tripper

Croatia and Turkey

Croatia and Turkey are not EU members. So why are they marked on all maps?195.114.112.253 (talk) 09:24, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Switzerland is also included on one of the maps. Not entirely consistent. The reason for the inclusion of Croatia and Turkey is that the underlying data are taken from the Eurobarometer survey which also covered four then candidates. Romania and Bulgaria have joined, leaving Croatia and Turkey. Desiderata, therefore: updated data and updated maps. Man vyi (talk) 10:34, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
The addition of Switzerland is bizarre. Not only that, but the colours vary *inside* the country, whereas the other countries do not seem to have this. I would've expected this to be fixed after over a year. 82.152.197.146 (talk) 17:27, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Languages of the European Union#Romani

The linked section has a POV tag. Please add your opinions and promote discussion. :)--Thecurran (talk) 02:26, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Romani is certainly worth a mention as an unofficial language with 2 million speakers, but clearly the rest of the section is irrelevant in this article. I actually think the whole "No Official Recognition" section should be expanded to include a reference to all languages spoken in EU member states, otherwise the article is incomplete. For example Welsh is an official language of the UK and hence a language of the EU (albeit not a widely spoken one) but is not even mentioned anywhere in the article. I am sure there are many others. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.126.194.81 (talk) 00:32, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

You are right indeed, I can only talk about the status in Germany, but here there are also Sorbian, Lower German and Frisian (in addition to the already mentioned Danish) as recognized minority languages. And, I believe to remember that Romani is a recognized minority language in the state of Hesse, so this should be mentioned in the Romani-section.92.230.193.140 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 13:30, 31 March 2010 (UTC).

Change article title to: Languages in the European Union

Change the preposition 'of' to 'in': Languages in the European Union.

  • 'In' indicates that the languages mentioned in the artlce are within the limits of space of the European Union as a geographical entity. This includes all the spoken language, official and non-official, recognised and non-recognised.
  • However, 'of' indicates that the languages belong to the EU as an institution. This is not the case. The EU has 23 languages.
  • Therefore, since the article is about all the languages I suggest 'in'. Politis (talk) 11:34, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
I do not see the reasoning here. If I say Languages of Sweden or Languages in Sweden, both phrases seem to mean about the same thing, and for some reason, "of" appears to be more appropriate than "in".
 —  Paine (Ellsworth's Climax)  11:40, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Speakers table

I for one do not understand the difference between

  • "As language other than mother tongue (percentage of EU population)"
  • "Percentage of EU population speaking language".

Am I just very slow? Chipmunkdavis (talk) 13:58, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Croatian language

Croatian language has become the 24th official language of the EU.[3] --89.172.201.57 (talk) 07:08, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

WILL become, not has. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 07:15, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
Now it is! Please correct the map! Thank you! Pulcherrimus (talk) 00:23, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Informal Vote: Official Status of Welsh

Please see Talk:United_Kingdom#Informal_Vote:_Official_Status_of_Welsh where an informal vote is taking place on displaying the Welsh translation of "United Kingdom" at the top of the United Kingdom infobox. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 17:41, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

[Archive link] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Adrey (talk • contribs) 11:36, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Latin

Should we discuss also Latin, which many logos of the institutions use? – Kaihsu (talk) 08:46, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

I have started a section on Latin. – Kaihsu (talk) 15:17, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Incorrect or unsourced figures for Turkey

Can someone say where the figures for Turkey (non-mother-tongue) came from. They don't seem to agree with the cited source. Has anyone checked all the other figures? --Boson (talk) 23:36, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Table of mother tongues: French and English

No matter how this could get in the way it is shown now, but English is by no means bigger than French in terms of a mother tongue in the EU (nor Europe). Therefore you don't even need the French EU-territories overseas. 141.13.246.84 (talk) 15:40, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Could you state what, exactly, you are disagreeing with, and provide a source for your contention. The figures given in the table are from the cited source, which states

". . .German is the most widely spoken mother tongue in Europe (18%) followed by English and Italian with a 13% share. 12% of respondents indicate that they speak French as their mother tongue.

--Boson (talk) 19:59, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

The source says so because it is an estimation based on the results of a survey with some thousand people. Of course, such an estimation doesn't reflect reality to 100%. Aaker (talk) 09:27, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Monaco

Monaco is not a member of the EU and all references in this article should be removed C. 22468 (talk) 17:11, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

 Done Chipmunkdavis (talk) 23:00, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Iceland

Iceland is included in the English language map. Is it included in the source? Aaker (talk) 09:36, 29 October 2011 (UTC)


Figures for 2012

The new report about the Europeans and their languages is available here: [4] Unfortunately people's foreign language skills seem to be declining. Aaker (talk) 13:00, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Catalan 9 million speakers? How?

Please, can someone bring in non-biased pro-Catalan data? 9 million speakers is an absurd number. Inside Catalonia less than 70% of the population know Catalan and less than 33% use it as main language. Catalonia has about 5 million people. Where do the 9 million come from? Valencian is not considered Catalan any more, neither Balearian, nor south-French. Really guys, if you are POV pushing your separatism, let us please just wipe this propaganda. 90.163.209.102 (talk) 19:35, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Please don't argue with regions not being Catalan anymore. This sounds there is no Catalan-speaking country anymore. Every source says up to 12 million speakers, including Catalan as second language. I think you are the propaganda with your anti-foreign-language attitude.--77.1.137.95 (talk) 04:57, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
Every source? quote your sources. Si Trew (talk) 09:16, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Pontic Greek language missing in idioms

There are over 3 million people that speak [Pontic Greek] and no reference is made whatsoever in this article. Please, source and add someone. Thank you. 90.163.209.102 (talk) 19:38, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

It's not an official language of the European Union. It can be added as a secondary language, if there are reliable sources. Si Trew (talk) 09:25, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Esperanto

I've updated the article with references to the Grin report, at the correct page (which the article Grin Report has wrong) and a link to the actual paper rather than the site from which it can be downloaded. I corrected the figures for per capita cost from €56 to €54, which is what the report says. (These may have been adjusted in good faith for inflation since 2005; but the total figure of €25 billion is correct per that report, and the population of the EU has increased since 2005, so if anything the per capita figure shoud be revised downwards. But that's not necessary as the date of the report is given, and we should use the figures in the report verbatim.)

However I think we have to be careful with how this, repeated, para on Esperanto is represented. Esperanto is not an official language and nor does that report propose it to be: as its title suggests, it gives options for the use of languages within the EU's machinery, not for use by the public. Neither is it recognised as a minority/secondary/semi-official language by any member state.

It's the kind of story that would be picked up in the UK by Europhobe politicians as "EU wants us all to speak Esperanto", which obviously is not the point at all. I believe it was used as the interlingua for an experimental machine translation system called Eurotra; Somers (Somers, Harold; Hutchins, W. John (1993). Machine translation. London, New York: Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-362830-X.) has a chapter on it which I am trying to find a decent page ref to, since it's a long time since I read it and I don't want to give a vague ref to the whole book. But its use there was simply as an interlingua in a machine translation system to cut down the combinatorial explosion of language pairs, and actually was just a surface representation of the underlying Montague grammar used for debugging purposes; it was never proposed that Esperanto would be the target language even in that system.

In any case, that kind of information probably belongs at Machine translation or Eurotra or something along those lines. (It could well have been another system and not Eurotra, hence my need to dig it out of the book properly.)

The inclusion of Esperanto smells of POV pushing, and I doubt that was the intention, but accidentally it can look that way. I am not sure the same information needs to be said twice: that's part of why it's smelly. I'm sure Klingon language is also used by many people in the EU, but that is no reason to include it here. It's worth mentioning that there was a proposal to simplify translation in the EU bureacracy, and use of Esperanto was one (the third) option investigated; but that is all. Si Trew (talk) 09:11, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Isn't Wikipedia annoying? :) I should to expand the Eurotra article and Grin Report now. It's never ending, I only got here via a TfD. Happy editing. Si Trew (talk) 09:13, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

It gets worse: The section on Esperanto states:
<quot>Esperanto is part of the educational system in several member states. In Hungary it is officially recognized by the Ministry of Education as a foreign language;[34] and examinations in Esperanto may be used to meet the requirements of knowledge of foreign languages needed to complete university or high school. Every year, since 2002, about 2000 people have passed examinations in Esperanto and it is recognized by the state.[35]</quot>
My wife, User:Monkap, is Hungarian and actually was taught Esperanto as part of her degree. So she has special knowledge about this. We are also friends of a Hungarian teacher of Spanish and English, who has worked for the EU in Luxembourg, so between us we will able to quite definitely say that these facts, or rather what they imply, are wrong. The implication here is that in Hungary Esperanto is taught as a language; that is not true, it is taught on degree courses as a study of linguistics, essentially. (Bearing in mind that because Hungarian is not closely related to any other European language except Finnish and Estonian, and they are mutually unintelligible, it is useful for Hungarians to learn the structure of a Romance language.) The way it reads "it is taught in several states", is entirely unsourced, because the para only states that it is taught in Hungary: which it is, but for very limited ends. It is certainly not taught as a second language (generally German or English is taught for that purpose, older people may have learned Russian). It is all just POV pushing here to get Esperanto recognised. I am fine that it says there is a party in the EU parliament to say so (and source it), but it is pushing it too far to suggest that many states, or even just one (Hungary), teaches Esperanto as a second language. It doesn't go quite that far, it says it's recognised as a foreign language; but the implication is that somehow it is widely used, which it is not (in the way Basque, Catalan, Welsh, etc are officially recognised minority/secondary languages). So I have removed the whole section under WP:BOLD, and you can discuss it here if you want, but the sources for it do not say what the text implies they say.
Take the UK for example, something I know something about. There is no officially recognised language in the UK at all (neither in the US, but that is beyond the pale). English is recognised under treaty as the language the United Kingdom uses dealing with the EU; within the UK there is no officially recognised language. (For example those who cannot speak the language of the court, usually English, will be provided a translator at the public cost; that is what I mean by it has no official status in law; it is used by custom not statute. Most laws are topped and tailed in Old French for the monarch's assent, and the crest of the United Kingdom has a motto in Old French.) Ergo, Welsh and Scots Gaelic are not officially recognised languages in that sense: but neither is English; yet far more people in the UK alone speak Welsh as a first language than the whole of the EU speaks Esperanto even as a second one. But there is no subsection on Welsh, because that's beyond the remit of this article (for which you go to Welsh language, naturally). So it is just nonsense to have a section on Esperanto at all.
I would keep the first para, and cut the entire section. have taken BOLD and done this, since I doubt I will get any response here, but if I do I come well armed. Si Trew (talk) 12:47, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
The ref to Hansard: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmhansrd/vo050629/text/50629w13.htm
The UK Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs makes quite clear that the UK deals with the EU in English. It says quite explicitly it has no plans to change the recognition of languages in the UK. That is to say, the status quo of their being no officially recognised languages holds good. (i.e. what is left out on purpose is to say that English is the recognised language within the UK, as I said, there is no officially recognised language within the UK.) Si Trew (talk) 13:24, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
I've PRODded Grin Report, which is single source, primary, not notable, requiring cleanup, and already has been marked for spam links by SpamBot. It's clear to me this is just a pushpov. The only articles it refers to are this one, Esperanto, and a couple of user pages. The French article is OK, the other Interwiki links are to Spanish and (surprise!) Esperanto. The original title is not in the lede, the title has been badly translated with (I think) an intention to mislead, the article is not marked with {{translated page}}, which is a WP:COPYVIO. I can't mark it as such because I don't know which version of the French article it was translated from, if indeed it was. (They bear a remarkable similarity.)
I confirmed with my wife, Esperanto is taught on degree-level courses and is taken by some students to get a merit mark towards their degree. Several languages are offered and Esperanto just happens to be one, so you take it to get the mark, you don't take it with any idea that somehow it will come in handy when you are in a foreign country. I am sure I can find reliable sources for this if it survives the PROD; the Hungarian references basically just give the course structure and how many people took it etc. To say it is officially recognised as a foreign language by the Hungarian state is just wrong; the only officially recognised language in Hungary is Hungarian. 14:42, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
I read the paper for the Grin Report. It sets out in its preface (p. 6.) to state that English is the most widely used language, has a langauge hegemony, nets the United Kingdom some €11 billion in various ways, is the language of presidents and states for communication. It offers Esperanto as a way to break this "language imperialism" (its words). I can translate the paper if need be, but I prodded the article already. But it has English as the first option for what should be used in the EU bureacracy, (use only English), and Esperanto as the third option. I don't see any mention in the article that it was advocating using English across the EU as a matter of public policy. Si Trew (talk) 15:36, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Simon/Si, you wrote above: "The implication here is that in Hungary Esperanto is taught as a language; that is not true, it is taught on degree courses as a study of linguistics, essentially." Do you have any sources for that? With links please.

You further deleted the whole section about Esperanto with the summary "Cut section as totally irrelevant: Esperanto is not spoken within the EU as a first language by anyone. See Talk." You did not give a source here in the Talk for your assertion "Esperanto is not spoken within the EU as a first language by anyone." So the section has to be put back. See the source I gave you on your personal Talk page. --Lu Wunsch-Rolshoven (talk) 08:44, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

It seems we have to undo the deletion of the Esperanto paragraph Si Trew made, because his summary seems to be false. The page of the Statistical Office of Hungary about language knowledge shows, that for 2001 there were for "Eszperantó" 4575 people for "a nyelvet beszéli" (~ speak the language) and 4407 for "ebből: anyanyelvén kívül beszéli" (~ of those: do not speak the language as native language). So in Hungary for about 170 people Esperanto seems to be the family's or the native language... --Lu Wunsch-Rolshoven (talk) 18:53, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

I think the Esperanto section should be trimmed down to focus more specifically on EU language policy, right now it talks a lot about the language in general. Maybe something like this:

It is estimated that approximately 100,000 Europeans sometimes use Esperanto, and several million have learned it; the language has several thousand native speakers, some of them second or third generation.[46]

The European party Europe – Democracy – Esperanto seeks to establish the planned language as an official second language in the EU, with the intent of making international communication more efficient and fair. The Grin Report[47] concluded that it would allow savings to the EU of €25 billion a year (€54 for every citizen) and have other benefits. However, the EU Parliament has stated clearly that language education is the responsibility of member states.[13]

ADREY talk 11:23, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

How wise is it to put Caucasian and Altaic languages together?

Neither scientifically nor historically they are classified together. Yet the map does exactly that. Some kind of TSarist Russian propaganda joke? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.180.20.251 (talk) 16:21, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

update the number of official languages in the opening text

From 24 to 25 (the list below has 25) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.178.176.213 (talk) 14:44, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

Reviving an old point

Quite a long time back (in Wikipedia time...), a point was made here about the inclusion of Switzerland on the Knowledge of German map. As Switzerland is still not in the EU, and not showing much sign of doing anything about joining it, shouldn't this be corrected? Norway is left off the maps, and it was once in the Union, whereas Switzerland has never been a part of it. Peridon (talk) 15:58, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

A similar point could be made about the inclusion of Turkey on two of the maps, although Turkey is a more likely candidate for admission at some time in the future. Peridon (talk) 16:03, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

More references needed

Minority languages - in particular - need more reliable sources for verifiability. The entire article, in general, is in need of updating using reliable sources, hence I've added the reliable sources tag to the existing multiple issues tag. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 21:51, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

Belgium's "Knowledge of [ENGLISH] to a conversational level" doesn't match source!

I noticed that under the heading "KNOWLEDGE," for the table titled, "Knowledge of languages to a conversational level other than as a native language," it says that 52% of people in Belgium speak English well enough to hold a conversation. However, in the source, the Eurobarometer press release titled, "Europeans and their Languages" which came from their survey "Special Eurobarometer 386 (wave EB77.1)" the table says that only 38% of Belgians speak English!

That's a huge difference, and since I am doing research that involves this exact Eurobarometer survey, I really need to know which number is accurate. If the 52% number is correct, someone please tell me where that number comes from. I could not find it in the Eurobarometer source. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 170.140.206.234 (talk) 20:03, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Hi, IP 170.140.206.234. If you look at the top of the article, you'll see that it has been tagged for multiple problems. If you'd like to help out with cleaning the article up, it would be greatly appreciated as Wikipedia is a WP:VOLUNTEER service. Essentially, that means that articles may be watched for vandalism, or on 'to do' list (as it is for myself), but that doesn't mean that anyone is likely to have the time to go through references, find new references and clean up the article for a long, long time.
If you are unwilling to help, I'd suggest that you download the PDF used as the primary reference for the tables and read through it. As already noted, I can see huge variances in the data and tables alone, but am busy on multiple articles of equal (or greater, dependent on ones POV) significance. Thank you for your understanding. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 23:07, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

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Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian and Montenegrin are ONE language.

So called 'Croatian' language is only one standard of the Serbo-Croatian language, which includes Serbian, Montenegrin and Bosnian standards as well. Only Croatian CANNOT be treated as separate language; after Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia become members of EU (if EU still exists in a few years from now), then this common language for Croats, Serbs and Bosnians should be given another name that will be acceptable for all nations. The best name to replace 'Croatian' language is Shtokavian language, named after the dialect that all those 4 standards of Serbo-Croat are based on. Here's some more info about how the languages in the Slavic world correlate between themselves, and where Serbo-Croatian is always ONE and SAME language. Greets; Link by the famous linguistics professor at Fresno University, California: https://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2010/11/06/mutual-intelligibility-of-languages-in-the-slavic-family/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 154.20.112.170 (talk) 18:58, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

This is not a forum. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 00:30, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Croatian language is a sepearate language. Croatian language is an official language of Croatia, not serbo-croatian. Different standard varieties means that differences exist. Croatian language has different grammar, even different words.

Example 1:

English: Artificial fertilizers factory

Croatian: Tvornica umjetnog gnjojiva

Serbian: Fabrika umjetnog đubriva

Example 2: Air is clean on island

Croatian: Zrak je čist na otoku

Serbian: Vazduh je čist na ostrvu

Example 3: I love the rice with tomato sauce

Croatian: Volim rižu sa umakom od rajčica

Serbian: Volim pirinač sa sosom od paradajza --Zelen-oko (talk) 02:52, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

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Turkish

I understand from media reports (e.g. [5]) that there is a legal process underway to make Turkish an official language of the EU. I should point out, that to the best of my knowledge, that legal process is not yet complete (although it appears likely to succeed), but no one should be jumping the gun and adding "Turkish" to the list of official languages of the EU until it is officially made one. (It's fine to mention the process as being underway, but not fine to present it as complete when it isn't yet, and even though it is likely to succeed its success is not certain.) SJK (talk) 11:00, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

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Knowledge of the Polish language within Europe - MAP

The map is very pro-Polish-nationalist biased. While I could agree that Grodno region of Belarus has a big Polish population, Brest region is NOT. In fact Brest region is having big Ukrainian minoroty (or majority - depending on the author - see Dialects in Belorussian Language article), but not Polish at all (Polish could be third after those two, but not "majority" as in the map). Look to Poles in Belarus article, where you can see map based on official statistics!

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Languages of Romania2019.eu

It seems like the official webpage for the Romanian Presidency of the Council of the European Union has been published in three languages: English, French and Romanian. According to the official guidelines of the European Commission, the working/procedural languages for the Commission however have to be English, French and German. Is there any explanation why German is omitted as language by the Presidency? Not to be overly accurate here but especially the European Council otherwise appears to be very keen on sticking to rules and statues. (Note: the previous Presidencies by Estonia, Bulgaria and Austria all correctly used English, French and German next to the host countries' languages.) --2A02:C7D:51E3:A900:D9FC:E7FC:D07:E24D (talk) 09:24, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

The Presidency as a structure belongs to the local government, not to an EU body. Nemo 16:56, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

Polish language map

This map seems a bit odd compared to the other ones. Judging from the slightly darker-shaded pockets in Ukraine, it seems to be trying to show differences within regions of countries, which makes it the only one of the maps that does so. But then it is not doing so consistently, as if it was there should be some similarly shaded regions along the Belarusian-Lithuanian border (there was some in the first version, but it was drawn beyond the limits it should have had; certainly Brest should not have been shaded that darkly). There are also no references listed for it. Is it possible to make a new and more consistent map based on referenced data? Double sharp (talk) 15:42, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Slovenian Sign Language (SSL)?

This certainly exists, so I'm surprised to find it is not listed among the official sign languages of the EU, especially as Slovenia has been a member state since 2004 - Croatian Sign Language (CSL) is listed, and Croatia did not join the EU until 2013. Admittedly, both are closely related to the former Yugoslav Sign Language (YSL) - but if CSL is listed separately, so surely should SSL be.84.243.236.9 (talk) 16:23, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

Ridiculous lists in box at top of page

According to the info box at the top, there are five languages that have the special status of being "semi-official" in the EU. This is explained nowhere in the article. Because it's nonsense.

The infobox also tells me that there are six languages which have the special status of being "foreign" languages in the EU. Strangely, five of those six languages are official languages of the EU but are yet also somehow "foreign".

And then there's an amazing list of languages that have the special status of being "minority" languages in the EU. Apparently Vietnamese plus about thirty randomly selected dialects have this special status.

Of course, the article's text clarifies nothing. Because these are just nonsense lists where passing editors occasionally add their favourite under-represented language.

I don't like deleting stuff that people have put work into, but these lists are just arbitrary collections and don't actually tell the reader anything (because there's nothing that can be said that applies to those random selections of language and dialects). Does anyone know if this info is already gathered in an appropriate article somewhere? If so, we could clean up this infobox. Great floors (talk) 20:37, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

Indeed it's hard to make sense of those lists.
  • "Semi-official" can be removed.
  • "Foreign" seems to be a list of the top 5 languages by number of second language speakers. Eurydice regularly publishes statistics on this (although only the top 3 have detailed data).
  • "Minority" could be removed, because it has nothing to do with the EU, but I suppose it's supposed to be the sum of national recognitions as official or official regional language other than the main official language. If so, we should rely on the CLDR territory-language information which has {O} and {OR} labels.
  • "Immigrant" is very hard to find sources for, especially when it's about "smaller" populations (such as the nearly one million Romanians among immigrants in Italy). So we could rely on CLDR and draw an arbitrary threshold somewhere (to avoid listing all the languages in the world), such as at least one million speakers in CLDR data, or remove the list altogether.
Nemo 16:54, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
I tried to be conservative but ended up removing everything but the official languages. The only other list that might have some EU status is the sign language versions of the official languages - does the European Parliament provide sign language and does it have a list of available languages? I certainly haven't seen a row of 23 people doing sign language for speakers.
If I've been too harsh, please revert, but do say what the criteria for inclusion are. Otherwise there's nothing stopping the arbitrary lists being removed again. Great floors (talk) 22:54, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
It's ok to remove everything and then re-add with some new criteria. What about listing at least the {OR} languages from CLDR as suggested above? Nemo 06:10, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
I guess my thinking is, if the article was called "Languages in the European Union", then we could go to town and mention every language that has every been used by every passing tourist. Or you and I could pick some arbitrary criteria (until we lose interest and the next batch of editors pick their arbitrary criteria). But since it's "Languages of the European Union", well, the EU has 24 languages. Scottish Gaelic and Catalan have official status in certain regions of certain Member States, but neither is a language of the European Union.
"Languages of the European Union" is already a broad and interesting topic. How were these languages chosen? What languages have been added? Why? Might some be removed? (English has only been declared by the UK, so if they leave, what happens to English as an EU language?) The topic is fine without being expanded.
Now, documenting language usage in the EU is also a broad and interesting topic, so it should be documented too. But it's a different topic, so mixing it into this article means that neither topic gets decent treatment. Maybe Languages of Europe is the right place? Or a new article, Official recognition of language in EU Member States?
(Another minor issue is that THe CLDR page doesn't define {OR} (or {O}, other than "official"). I haven't thought about if this is problematic.) Great floors (talk) 10:03, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
The box represented what the article is about. This article as written is about languages in EU as a geographic area. To make it about languages of EU as an institution, we should cut about two thirds of its contents. I have no opinion about that, but it's simpler to change the preposition to "in" as you say if you think that's an important source of confusion.
CLDR follows official definitions of the official status. :) The details are in the references section of the supplemental data XML. Nemo 19:00, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
Yeh, I think the article is suffering the same problem as the infobox. Languages of Europe seems to already serve the purpose of a vague article where people can add anything they like about the topic. Maybe we should move the non-EU stuff to that article, tidy up that and this article, and then see if we need either a new article for Official language recognition in EU Member States, or give this article a section "Non-EU languages with official status in Member States". Great floors (talk) 22:46, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

wrong figure for German

In Table "Languages, by speakers as percentage of EU population[65]" for German as 1st language the source gives 16% figure instead of 18%. 137.111.13.234 (talk) 01:55, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

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