Hungarian, also called Magyar, is the official language of Hungary and the language most widely spoken across the country. In addition to being the most spoken language in Hungary, Magyar is also Europe’s 13th most widely spoken language. 99.6% of the population of Hungary speak Hungarian, with 99% of these speakers who speak it as their first language. Around 13 million speakers in Hungary speak Hungarian as their native tongue. Hungarian belongs to the Uralic language family and is one of the most spoken Uralic languages and the only one from this group that is spoken in Central Europe. The fact that no other language from this language group is spoken in Central Europe is the reason why Hungarian is largely unrelated to most of the languages spoken in the neighboring countries.
The minority languages of Hungary include German, Slovak, Serbian, Slovene, Croatian, Romanian and Romani. German is spoken by the ethnic Germans residing in Hungary, most of which live in and around the Mecsek Mountains. Slovak is spoken by the Slovak minority community in Hungary, a community living mainly near Békéscsaba and in the North Hungarian Mountains. Serbian is mainly spoken in the southern parts of the country by the Serbian minority population. Slovene is spoken by the Slovene minority groups which are commonly found along the border between Hungary and Slovenia. The Croatian speaking population is mainly concentrated in Southern Hungary, while Romanian is spoken by the ethnic Romanians of Hungary in and around the Gyula region.
Foreign languages which can be heard in Hungary include English and German as the most spoken foreign languages in Hungary. 16% of the Hungarian people – around 1,589,180 of them – speak English as a foreign language, while German is spoken by 1,111,997 speakers, which comprises about 11.2% of the population of Hungary.