historical language families (e.g. Indo-European languages, Uralic languages), a more modern way is to look at grammatical features from a synchronic point of view. A certain number of common structural features would then characterize a sprachbund. For Europe, the most prominent sprachbund that we can determine is referred to as SAE (= Standard Average European) or Charlemagne sprachbund. Haspelmath (2001) illustrates that German, Dutch, French, Occitan and Northern Italian are the most central members of this sprachbund. Important features are (cf., e.g., Haspelmath 2001, Heine/Kuteva 2006): the distinction between an indefinite and a definite article the formation of relative clauses, which are positioned after the (pro)noun concerned and are introduced by a variable relative pronoun a past tense construction with "to have" a passive voice construction that shows the object of the action in the syntactic position of the subject and that uses the past participle in connection with an auxiliary a specific suffix for the comparative Vocabulary (Sources and further information for this section: Haarmann 1975, Haarmann 1993, Paczolay 1997, Panzer 2000, Görlach 2002) Latin, French and English not only served or still serve as linguae francae (cf. below), but also influenced the vernacular/national languages due to their high prestige. Due to this prestige, there are not only "necessity loans", but also "luxury loans" and pseudo-loans. Many loans from these three languages (esp. Neo-Latin with its Greek elements) can be considered internationalisms, although occasionally the meanings vary from one language to another, which might even lead to misunderstandings. Examples: Lat. forma: e.g. Fr. forme, It. Sp. Cat. Cz. Slovak. Serbo-Croat. Slovene Maltese Hung. Pol. Latv. Lith. forma, Dan. Swed. E. Du. vorm (shape) and form (aerobic endurance), Romansh furma, G. Form, Ir. foirm Fr. restaurant, e.g. E. Du. Norw. Cat. Romansh restaurant, G. Restaurant, Swed. restaurang, Pg. restaurante, Sp. restaurante, It. ristorante, Cz. restaurace, Slovak reštaurácia, Slovene restavracija, Latv. restorâns, Lith. restoranas, Estn. restoran, Pol. restauracja, Serbian restoran, Maltese ristorant/restorant E. manager, e.g. Du. Norw. Swed. Icel. Fr. Sp. Cat. It. Romansh manager, G. Manager, Finn. manageri, Pol. menadżer, Serbo-Croat. menadžer, Lith. menedžeris, Hung. menedzser, Maltese maniġer Three minor source languages for European borrowings are Arabic (esp. in mathematics and science, foreign plants and fruits), Italian (esp. in arts, esp. from the 15th to the 17th centuries), and German (esp. in arts, education, mining, trading from the 12th to the 20th centuries with varying importance). As far as the