Less Famous Languages of Europe

Today we’re talking about the Uralic and Celtic language famiiies, which are respectively spoken in the easternmost and westernmost parts of Europe. These are well-known, but not nearly as famous as Germanic and Romance languages. So, let’s get started.

First off, before we talk about families, I’m going to get a few oddballs out of the way. Georgian and other languages spoken in Georgia belong to the Kartvelian language family, which is a tiny, but primary language family related to no other. Then, there’s Armenian, Albanian, and Greek. These belong to separate branches of the Indo-European family tree and are the last of their branches.

Now, we’ll start with the Uralic language family tree. This family is mainly spoken in Hungary, Estonia, and Finland. Finnish, Sami, Estonian, and Hungarian are the most well-known Uralic languages. Uralic languages are not Indo-European, unlike the rest of the languages that we’ve talked about except for Basque, and Uralic speakers have part of their ancestral land in North-Central Asia.

Celtic languages are close to the Italic languages (Italic meaning Latin and the Romance languages) and originated in Central Europe. They were once widespread, with tribes all over Europe and even a branch in central Turkey in the Anatolian Peninsula. Today, they are restricted to the UK, France, and Ireland. The Celtic languages include Irish, Scottish (not to be confused with Scots), Welsh, Manx, Cornish, and Breton. Breton is where ‘Britain’ comes from, as it originated there, but now it is only spoken in the province of Brittany in France. Manx is spoken in the Isle of Man in between Ireland and England; Irish is spoken in Ireland, Scottish in Scotland, Welsh in Wales, and Cornish in Cornwall in the southwest of the UK. That’s it for today.