World language trivia question

[Jessica]

We had a world language question and today's was what was the first language most widely spoken in Western Europe...is the answer German?? That's what I Put...

[Perikles]

That's what I would have put as well. There are 90-95 million German speakers in Europe:

The European countries with German-speaking majorities are Germany (95%, 78.3 million), Austria (89%, 7.4 million), Switzerland (65%, 4.6 million) ("D-A-CH"), Luxembourg (0.48 million) and Liechtenstein (0.03 million).

More people speak Russian, but that doesn't count as Western Europe.

[bobjenkins]

Originally Posted by Jessica

We had a world language question and today's was what was the first language most widely spoken in Western Europe...is the answer German?? That's what I Put...

Italian .. no sé? (porque el empírico de Roma) Pero la pregunta pide la primera lengua, podía haber estado uno más temprano, no?

[poli]

My guess is Latin. It was the lingua franca of Europe for centuries.

[Jessica]

I searched for the answer lol I got German...even if I get it right I might not get picked for the prize lol

[Perikles]

Originally Posted by poli

My guess is Latin. It was the lingua franca of Europe for centuries.

Yes, but I doubt really whether the numbers who actually spoke it were that high, considering the much smaller population of Europe plus the unanswerable question of the dates at which Vulgar Latin started to count as distinct languages.

The population of the Roman Empire under Augustus has been placed at 45 million, but I doubt whether all of these spoke Latin.

[Jessica]

is it all of Europe? the question specifically said Western Europe

[bobjenkins]

No sé , sin embargo me interesa esta pregunta porque dice "the first language most widely spoken in ...."

Me lleva a pensar en los lenguajes tempranos


PD. ¿El empírico de Roma hablaba latin o italiano? Asumí que hablaba italiano , pero ya me parece correcto latín

[Jessica]

well the answer will be given at the end of the day, I'll tell you what the answer was and if I won or not..

[Perikles]

Originally Posted by Jessica

is it all of Europe? the question specifically said Western Europe

The Roman Empire was much larger than Western Europe, including Egypt and some of Asia.

Originally Posted by bobjenkins

PD. ¿El empírico de Roma hablaba latin o italiano? Asumí que hablaba italiano , pero ya me parece correcto latín

I think Italian is generally recognised as starting with Dante, around 1200 AD. Before that, there were various dialects of Vulgar Latin.

[CrOtALiTo]

I have searched that before and I found the widely language used in the Russian.

[Perikles]

Originally Posted by CrOtALiTo

I have searched that before and I found the widely language used in the Russian.

Yes - but Russia is NOT Western Europe.

[CrOtALiTo]

I know.

At least that I found in the internet.

[poli]

Originally Posted by Perikles

Yes, but I doubt really whether the numbers who actually spoke it were that high, considering the much smaller population of Europe plus the unanswerable question of the dates at which Vulgar Latin started to count as distinct languages.

The population of the Roman Empire under Augustus has been placed at 45 million, but I doubt whether all of these spoke Latin.

I am sure you are right, but the answer depends on how the term widely
is interpreted. Certainly Latin was spoken from Hadrian's Wall to what is
now Afganistan amongst the intelligencia. That's a mighty wide range. Of course when it filtered down to the uneducated majority it eventually morphed into English, French, Provenzale, Catalan, Italian, etc

[pjt33]

Originally Posted by Jessica

We had a world language question and today's was what was the first language most widely spoken in Western Europe...is the answer German?? That's what I Put...

Seems like a flawed question to me. There are a lot of Western Europeans who are bilingual: do you count them towards two totals?

[Jessica]

The answer is.........


German! I was right! and guess what? I won

[CrOtALiTo]

You've had successful.

[Jessica]

yeah

[Perikles]

Originally Posted by poli

I am sure you are right, but the answer depends on how the term widely
is interpreted. Certainly Latin was spoken from Hadrian's Wall to what is
now Afganistan amongst the intelligencia. That's a mighty wide range. Of course when it filtered down to the uneducated majority it eventually morphed into English, French, Provenzale, Catalan, Italian, etc

pjt is of course right, the question is flawed. The question was "The first language most widely spoken" which I automatically took as number of people. You are quite right if you take it as the size of area in which a language was spoken, even though at the time there were very few speaking it.

I find these kinds of trivia questions sometimes annoying because they are often flawed.

It seems we are all right, and well done Jessica !!

[Ambarina]

Originally Posted by bobjenkins

Italian .. no sé? (porque el empírico de Roma) Pero la pregunta pide la primera lengua, podía haber estado uno más temprano, no?

Imperio Romano