Geoscience Reference
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of countries, while
Table 3
indicates which foreign languages appear in the
legends of the corresponding maps.
All NMOs acknowledge at least one mother-tongue language by its inclu-
sion as a legend explanation. Belgium, with substantial proportions of both
Dutch and French speakers, includes both languages; Switzerland includes
German on the map but prints leaflets with explanations in other lan-
guages; Ireland includes both Irish Gaelic and English; and even the 6 per-
cent of the Finnish population who speak Swedish as their mother tongue
are catered for. The absence of the Russian language on the state maps of
Latvia is therefore noticeable, given that for 27 percent of the Latvian
population, it is their mother tongue.
A recent European Commission (2006, p.7) survey of 28,634 citizens of
the EU 25 plus Romania, Croatia, Bulgaria, and Turkey, found that German
is the mother tongue of the highest number of speakers (18 percent),
followed by English and Italian (both at 13 percent) and French (12 per-
cent). In terms of foreign languages, i.e., not the mother tongue, the same
survey discovered that English is the most widely spoken (based on the
percentage of respondents stating possession of sufficient skills to hold a
conversation in the foreign language), followed by French, German, Spanish,
and Russian (
ibid
., p.12).
