Europe's Mosaic of Languages
Haarmann, Harald
Central Europe
Balkan Peninsula
Southern Europe
Northern Europe
Eastern Europe
Western Europe
Social Matters, Society
Media, Communication
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Europe is a continent of great linguistic and cultural differences, and Europeans have always been conscious of linguistic diversity. The distribution of languages is extremely uneven. In the regions where the number of indigenous languages is relatively small (western Europe), we encounter the largest number of immigrant languages. In eastern Europe, on the other hand, the number of indigenous languages is considerably larger, but the number of immigrant languages is considerably smaller than in western Europe. The concentration of languages is largest at the periphery in the Caucasus region. In this region, more than 50 languages are spoken, which belong to a half-dozen language families. From the perspective of historical linguistics, the history of Europe is the history of its Indo-Europeanization. The area of distribution of languages of other language families has contracted continuously as increasing numbers of speakers of these languages have been assimilated over a long period of time.
IEG(http://www.ieg-mainz.de)
Lisa Landes
Irene Dingel on behalf of Helga Mitterbauer
Niall Williams
2011-10-05
Text
text/html
/en/threads/crossroads/mosaic-of-languages/harald-haarmann-europes-mosaic-of-languages
urn:nbn:de:0159-2011081855
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/756592703
EGO(http://www.ieg-ego.eu)
en
1450-2011
Central Europe
Balkan Peninsula
Southern Europe
Northern Europe
Eastern Europe
Western Europe
CC by-nc-nd Harald Haarmann