Eastern
Europe, notwithstanding its turbulent history, has become a symbol of economic
growth and prosperity in recent times.

Although
what nations make up the region remains a subject for debate among the
international community, the region, asides from its booming population,
continue to play a strategic role in global affairs. And hence must be a prime
consideration for brands with global expansion in their workbooks.

In
this language of the month post, we would be delving deeper into the languages
spoken in Eastern Europe and the need to cater to the diversity of this
demographic.

The nations in Eastern
Europe

Historians
and other stakeholders are often at sixes and sevens about the nations that
constitute Eastern Europe. And the response you get on this issue depends on a
range of factors like context and even politics.

But
according to the United Nations, Eastern Europe is made up of 10 sovereign
nations (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Russian
Federation, Slovakia, Republics of Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine), which is
quite similar to the nations that make up the former Eastern bloc (only with
the exclusion of the Democratic Republic of Germany)

Other
sources, however, harp on the inclusion of countries from other parts of Europe,
asides from the nations mentioned earlier.

What languages are
spoken in Eastern Europe?

There
are a number of languages prevalent in Eastern Europe, most of which have
Slavic origins. But these languages almost vary from nation to nation even though
there may be slight similarities amongst them. The most spoken languages in
Eastern Europe are;

Russian: Russian is the language with
the highest number of speakers in Eastern Europe and the seventh most spoken
language worldwide with its over 260 million speakers.

Russian
is an East Slavic language that has undergone several modifications with time.
In the past, Russian adopted the standardized Old Church Slavonic format, but
as time went by was also influenced by Turkish, French, Dutch, and German.

Russian
is a strategic language in Eastern Europe and the continent, with four nations
adopting it as an official language. And although the vast amount of its
speakers are domiciled in Russia, it is common to find other Russian speakers
across Europe.

Ukrainian: Is an East-Slavic
language that shares similar origins with Russian and Belorussian but has
undergone significant transformations with time.

While
Ukrainian speakers can understand Russian, the language lacks most of the
elements of Old Church Slavonic present in the Russian language. Instead,
Ukrainian in recent times developed attributes of Polish which was once the
official language of the region.

Ukrainian
alphabets also bear striking similarities to other East Slavic alphabets who
all take the Cyrillic form common in Eastern Europe. The language has 33
letters with 20 consonants, ten vowels, two soft vowels, and a soft sign.

Polish: is yet another
prominent Slavic language with Indo-European roots in Eastern Europe, and it
has over 50 million native speakers globally.

Christianity
and subsequently Roman catholicism paved the way for the impact of Latin in
Polish in earlier times. More recently, other languages like German have left a
notable mark on the language due to political Influences.

Polish
has 32 alphabets and seven diagraphs and is common to find very long words and
hard-to-pronounce words due to its unique lexicon.

You can read more
interesting facts about Polish here

Hungarian: is an agglutinative
language and one of the few languages in Eastern Europe that does not have
Indo-European origins. Instead, it comes from the Euralic family.

Due
to the alliance between the Hungarians of past times with Turkish tribes and
the Ottoman empire, the language has its foundations built on Turkish with
other influences from Latin, German, Slovak, and Bulgarian.

And while the bulk of Hungarian speakers are native to Hungary, it is quite common to find Hungarian spoken in other parts of Eastern Europe due to a treaty signed after the first world war.

Bulgarian: Bulgarian is another
Slavic language from the Indo-European family primarily spoken by the people of
Bulgaria. The language is closely related to Macedonian, and its wordings use
Cyrillic alphabets, which bear a striking resemblance to Russian characters to
anyone who is not very familiar with both languages.

Bulgarian
has 30 alphabets (24 consonants and six vowels) and is also one of those
languages with long words and tongue twisters.

Belarusian: Is an old West Slavic
language whose origins date back to several hundred years ago. Belarusian is
quite similar to both Russian and Ukrainian, so much that Belarusian alongside
Russian are the official languages of Belarus. There are over 8 million
speakers of Belarusian spread across the world.

Slovak: With just over 8
million speakers, Slovak is one of the lesser spoken languages in Eastern
Europe and is a lot similar to Czech due to political proximity in the past.

It
belongs to the West Slavic group and has unique lexicons characterized by its
excessive presence of consonants. Slovak language has the largest number of
alphabets (46) amongst all the European languages and also contains a lot of
diacritics making them difficult to pronounce by the average person.

Czech: The language formerly
known as Bohemian bears its roots from the Indo-European family. And it is
associated with the people of the Czech Republic and Slovakia as both nations
were once one sovereign state.

Along
with most other Eastern European languages, Latin also had an impact on Czech
in earlier times, but more recently, Czech had absorbed elements of Polish,
German, and even Russian into its vocabulary.

Romanian: Romanian is a Romance
language similar to Italian, Spanish, French, etc., but has undergone some
significant Slavic influence over time. Romanian has over 30 million speakers
across Europe, and asides from being the official language of Romania also
doubles as the official language of Moldova. (In fact, the language is also
termed as Moldovan in some regions)

Moldovan: is basically another
name for Romanian prominently recognised amongst people from Moldova.

Conclusion

One
thing that you may have noticed from this post is that despite the bulk of
languages spoken in Eastern Europe having similar origins, they also have
significant and subtle differences.

Therefore,
brands must acknowledge and understand these differences when entering this
region, otherwise, it may have dire effects.

For
that reason, global brands should engage the services of professional language service providers who deliver the best in translation and
localization in order to fulfill their business goals.