The last 4000 years, because of the series of invasions, each European language has come to be influenced by the other, with an intermix of elements and texts. The European Union has recognized 23 European languages as official languages. English has grown as a common European language, used throughout the world.

European languages have been divided into several groups and families, with many of them taking root in the Indo-European family. There are some twelve languages in this family, represented by the Germanic group of languages, including English, Dutch, Frisian, German, Danish, Faeroese, Icelandic, Swedish, and Norwegian.

A major group of languages is Finno-Ugric from the Uralic language family, with Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian being the major representatives. Other groups language families include; the North Caucasian family, South Caucasian family and the Turkic family, spoken mainly in  Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia. Basque (spoken in the Pyrenees region) has no genetic relation to any other language family.

The descendants of Latin- Catalan, Corsican, French, Italian, Ladino, Sard, Sicilian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Romansch, and Vlach represents the Italic group of language. The Celts probably arrived in Europe prior to the Germans and are represented by Irish and Scots Gaelic, Cymric (Welsh and Breton).

Russian, Byelorussian, Ukrainian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Serbian, Slovenian, Croatian, Bulgarian and  Macedonian are considered as the Slavic languages, which are spoken in the respective countries. Wendish and Sorb still survive in eastern Germany. Besides, Greek and Albanian form two groups on their own. Lithuanian and Latvian, with some very ancient Indo-European features, together form the Baltic group.