Month: September 2018

Greenland

Map of Greenland

While Greenland is technically closer to Canada than it is to Europe. It is an autonomous constituent country within the kingdom of Denmark. With a low population of about fifty seven thousand people, it is one the least populated territories on earth. The capital is Nuuk and most of the population is made up Inuit who began migrating from the North American continent about seven hundred years ago. Greenland was settled by the Norse a about a thousand years ago but most of the Norse either died out or interbred with the Inuit population.

Greenland has also the largest permanent ice sheet outside of Antarctica. Most of the map of Greenland you see above is just ice sheet.

Map of Official Languages of Europe

Map of the Languages of Europe

You can click on the map above to get a visual relationship of the languages and the countries they are attached to. We recognise that the term “official language” can be somewhat debated. So what we have put together here is a map of the most spoken/official language of the countries of Europe.

Fr clarity we have added a table of the official national languages and also the spoken languages in a country. There are times we have to make decisions about language naming convetions mostly due to room on the map. The Balkan nations are packed together and leave little room for names. So in Bosnia-Herzegovina we have shortened the language name to Sebo-Croatian, which technically is not accurate.

We realise there are some inconsistencies in the map. An example is that we have listed Corsican as a language of Corsica but not included it in the table. We will be updating the table in the next few months to more accurately represent situations like these.

Country Official and national Languages Other spoken Languages
Albania Albanian (Shqip, Tosk (Toskë) is the official dialect) Shqip-Gheg dialect (Gegë), Greek, Italian
Andorra Catalan French, Castilian, Portuguese
Austria German, Slovene (official in Carinthia), Croatian and Hungarian
(official in Burgenland)
Belarus Belarusian, Russian
Belgium Dutch 60%, French 40%, German less than 1%
Bosnia & Herzegovina Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian
Bulgaria Bulgarian Turkish
Croatia Croatian (hrvatski)
Cyprus Greek, Turkish, English
Czech Republic Czech (cestina)
Denmark Danish (dansk) Standard German
Estonia Estonian (eesti keel) Russian, Ukrainian, Finnish
Faroe Islands Faroese, Danish
Finland Finnish (suomi) 93.4%, Swedish 5.9% small Sami- and Russian-speaking minorities
France French (français)
Germany German (Deutsch)
Gibraltar English Llanito (a mixture of Spanish and English), Spanish
Greece Greek (elliniká, the Koine-Demotic version) Turkish (Northern Greece)
Greenland Greenlandic Inuktitut (Kalaallisut), Danish
Hungary Hungarian (magyar) German, Romanian
Iceland Icelandic English, Nordic languages, German widely spoken.
Ireland Irish (Gaeilge), English (generally used),
Italy Italian (italiano)
Latvia Latvian (latviesu valoda) Lithuanian, Russian
Liechtenstein German
Lithuania Lithuanian (lietuviu kalba) Polish, Russian
Luxembourg Luxembourgish (LÎtzebuergesch, the everyday spoken
language), French (administrative language), German (administrative language)
Macedonia, Rep. of Macedonian 68%, Albanian 25%
Malta Maltese (Malti) English
Moldova Moldovan (virtually the same as the Romanian language), Russian, Gagauz (a Turkish dialect)
Monaco French Monegasque, English, Italian,
Montenegro Serbo-Croatian (Ijekavian dialect – official)
Netherlands Dutch (Nederlands, official language), Frisian (official language)
Norway Norwegian (nynorsk and bokmal) small Sami- and Finnish-speaking minorities
Poland Polish (polski)
Portugal Portuguese (português)
Romania Romanian (romana) Hungarian, German
Russian Federation Russian
San Marino Italian
Serbia Serbian 95%, Albanian 5%
Slovakia Slovak (slovensky jazyk) Hungarian
Slovenia Slovenian (slovenski jezik)
Spain Spanish (español – the Castilian version) 74%, Catalan
17%, Galician 7%, Basque 2%		 note: Castilian is the official language nationwide; the other languages
are official regionally.
Sweden Swedish (svenska) small Sami- and Finnish-speaking minorities.
Switzerland German 63.7%, French 19.2%, Italian 7.6%, Romansch 0.6%
Turkey Turkish (türkçe) Kurdish, Arabic, Armenian, Greek
Ukraine Ukrainian
United Kingdom English Welsh (about 26% of the population of Wales),
Scottish form of Gaelic (about 60,000 in Scotland)
Vatican City State Latin, Italian French and various other languages.

Map of Europe Pre World War One

Europe Map before World War 1

Here we have a map of Europe before the break out of WW1. As you can see there are some Countries that have remained relatively the same. Norway, Sweden, Portugal, Spain, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands and Italy to name a few.

What is different is that there a number of Empires also on the map. These Empires do seem to encroach on existing countries. A few examples are The Austro-Hungarian empire has at this stage swallowed Croatia, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. The German empire has been pushed into parts of what is considered modern Denmark and also controls large parts of Poland. The Russian empire controls all of Finland, Parts of Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Moldova, Georgia, Latvia and Estonia. The Otton Empire, by this stage has been pushed back into Turkey and is actually an Ally of the German empire in the First World War.

The other thing we can say that stands out on this map which you won’t find on a modern map is that, what is now the Republic of Ireland is part of the United Kingdom.