Europeans are the focus of European ethnology, the field of anthropology related to the various ethnic groups that reside in the states of Europe. Groups may be defined by common genetic ancestry, common language, or both. The total number of national minority populations in Europe is estimated at 105 million people, or 14% of 770 million Europeans. The Russians are the most populous among Europeans, with a population of roughly 120 million. There are no universally accepted and precise definitions of the terms "ethnic group" and "nationality". In the context of European ethnography in particular, the terms ethnic group, people, nationality and ethno-linguistic group are used as mostly synonymous, although preference may vary in usage with respect to the situation specific to the individual countries of Europe.
Overview
About 20–25 million residents (3%) are members of diasporas of non-European origin. The population of the European Union, with some 450 million residents, accounts for two thirds of the current European population.
Both Spain and the United Kingdom are special cases, in that the designation of nationality, Spanish and British, may controversially take ethnic aspects, subsuming various regional ethnic groups (see nationalisms and regionalisms of Spain and native populations of the United Kingdom). Switzerland is a similar case, but the linguistic subgroups of the Swiss are discussed in terms of both ethnicity and language affiliations.
Linguistic classifications
Of the total population of Europe of some 740 million (as of 2010), close to 90% (or some 650 million) fall within three large branches of Indo-European languages, these being:
Germanic, including Danish, Dutch, English, Faroese, Frisian, German, Icelandic, Limburgish, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Norwegian, Scots, Swedish, and Yiddish. Afrikaans, a daughter language of Dutch, is spoken by some South African and Namibian migrant populations. Romance, including Aromanian, Arpitan, Catalan, Corsican, French and other Langues d'oïl, Friulian, Galician, Istro-Romanian, Italian, Ligurian, Ladino, Megleno-Romanian, Occitan, Portuguese, Romanian, Romansh, Sardinian, Spanish and Venetian. Slavic, including Belarusian, Bulgarian, Czech, Kashubian, Macedonian, Polish, Russian, Rusyn, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, Slovenian, Sorbian and Ukrainian.
Three stand-alone Indo-European languages do not fall within larger sub-groups and are not closely related to those larger language families: Greek (about 12 million) Albanian (about 9 million) Armenian (about 3.5 million)
In addition, there are also smaller sub-groups within the Indo-European languages of Europe, including:
Baltic, including Latvian, Lithuanian, Samogitian and Latgalian. Celtic, including Breton, Cornish, Irish, Manx, Welsh, and Scottish Gaelic. Iranic, mainly Ossetian in the Caucasus. Indo-Aryan is represented by the Romani language spoken by Roma people of eastern Europe, and is at root related to the Indo-Aryan languages of the Indian subcontinent.
Besides the Indo-European languages, there are other language families on the European continent which are considered unrelated to Indo-European:
Uralic languages, including Estonian, Finnish, Hungarian, Komi, Livonian, Mari, Mordvin, Sámi, Samoyedic, and Udmurt. Turkic languages, including Azeri, Bashkir, Chuvash, Gagauz, Kazakh, Nogai, Tatar, and Turkish. Semitic languages, including: Assyrian Neo-Aramaic (spoken in parts of eastern Turkey and the Caucasus by Assyrian Christians), Hebrew (spoken by some Jewish populations), and Maltese. Arabic is spoken by some migrant communities from the Middle East and North Africa. Kartvelian languages (also known as South Caucasian languages), including Georgian, Zan (Mingrelian and Laz), and Svan. Northwest Caucasian languages, including Abkhaz, Abaza, Circassian (Adyghe and Kabardian), and Ubykh. Northeast Caucasian languages, including Avar, Chechen, Dargin, Ingush, Lak, and Lezgian. Language isolates: Basque, spoken in the Basque regions of Spain and France, is an isolate language, the only one in Europe, and is believed to be unrelated to any other language, living or extinct. Mongolic languages exist in the form of Kalmyk, spoken in the South region of Russia.