1. European Cultures and Languages

2. The people of Europe are all considered European though their national cultures are all different
Europe is a continent of diverse languages
Often people from one country can understand the language of people from another country Why?
Many people of Europe are bilingual
The languages of Europe belong to the
Indo- European Language Family

3. Indo-European Languages 3 Branches
Germanic – German and English
English is spoken in more parts of the world than any other language
Spoken in northwest and central Europe
Uses the Roman Alphabet
Romance – French and Italian
Based on Latin, the language of the ancient Romans
Spoken in the southern and western Europe
Slavic – Russian
Russian is an example of a Slavic Language
Uses the Cyrillic Alphabet
Spoken in central and eastern Europe

4. Roman Alphabet Germanic and Romance Language

5. Cyrillic Alphabet Slavic Language

6. European Languages

7. Why would having so many languages be a problem?
Difficult to live, work, and trade with people who could not communicate with each other

8. What are Europeans doing to help solve the language problems?
Europeans are trying to solve the problem by having school children learn one or more languages beside their own
The European Union has made 23 “official” languages so people will be able to understand the laws and decisions made by the government
There are special laws to protect languages, too!
Europeans want to keep alive the languages spoken only by a few people and at the same time to build a united Europe