{"id":6341,"date":"2026-05-10T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-10T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mapasmilhaud.com\/?p=6341"},"modified":"2026-05-10T12:59:05","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T10:59:05","slug":"the-languages-of-europe-s-vi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mapasmilhaud.com\/en\/mapas-historicos\/las-lenguas-de-europa-s-vi\/","title":{"rendered":"The languages of Europe (6th century)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"The<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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This map, published by Languages Eureka<\/a> in 2021, shows the linguistic distribution of Europe around the year 600.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, Latin lost its administrative apparatus and began to fragment into varieties that would eventually give rise to the Romance languages (in green on the map), predecessors of several of today's languages, such as Western Romance (French, Spanish, Catalan or Portuguese), Eastern Romance (Romanian) or Italo-Dalmatian (Italian, Neapolitan or Sicilian). In North Africa, African Romance was still spoken, but it would only remain for a couple of centuries before disappearing in favour of Arabic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Germanic languages (in grey and black) were clustered in present-day Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands, as well as in England, where Anglo-Saxon had already established itself as the predecessor of English. There were also small pockets further afield, such as Gothic in part of Spain, Longobard in part of northern Italy and Burgundian in part of France. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond these two major groups today, Greek (in pink) was still spoken in much of the Balkans, southern Italy, the Anatolian peninsula and northeast Africa. Uralic languages (in yellow) were still spoken in northern Europe and much of Russia, with Sami occupying much of the Nordic countries and Magyar still a long way from Hungary. Slavic (in purple) was already widespread in much of Eastern Europe, though possibly Avaric was also spoken in the northernmost part of the Balkans. Basque was by this time the only surviving pre-Indo-European language in Western Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In interpreting this map, it is important to understand that the actual boundaries of the languages were very blurred, and within each of the groups shown on the map there were likely to be many variations and diversity, resulting from the lack of normative literature and institutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To find out more, you can read this article on Europe's linguistic divisions<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sources<\/h3>\n\n\n\n