Arabic Language Teacher
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Germany isn’t the only country where the German language is spoken, in many surveys, it’s shown that German is one of the world’s top most commonly spoken languages. Together with other languages like English, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, and more.
It is estimated that around 90 million people in the world are native German speakers, to add to this there are about 10 to 25 million people who speak German as a second language and 75 to 100 million as a foreign language.
So where exactly in the world is German spoken? Let's take a closer look.
The German Language Spoken in Europe
There are officially 6 German-speaking countries in Europe, including Germany with more than 80 million speakers, other countries that officially speak German are:
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Austria - Over 8 million
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Switzerland - 5.2 million (Swiss German), and about 290.000 speak Standard German
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Belgium - about 2.5 million
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Luxembourg - estimated around 390.000 speakers
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Liechtenstein - 35,000 speakers
Other countries where German is recognized as a minority language include:
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France (Alsatian)
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Italy (Trentino-Alto and Adige/Südtirol)
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Czechia (also known as The Czech Republic)
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Hungary
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Denmark
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Poland (Silesia)
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Russia
Romania
Slovakia
Vatican City
Nearly 16% of the European Union's population speaks German and more than 7.5 million people in 42 countries in the world belong to a German-speaking minority.
How Many People Speak German Outside of Europe?
Outside of Europe alone, there are many other countries where German is spoken, Some countries where you might expect German to be spoken.
Africa
In the late 19th century, where The German Empire (1871 - 1918) managed to colonize 4 parts of Africa. These were Namibia (once called German Southwest) Cameroon, Togo, and Tanzania (also called German East Africa).
Although in the loss of WWI in 1918 Germany lost those colonies, there are still a lot of German speakers in Africa and most of them reside in Namibia with roughly 39,000 people who speak German.
North America
German is a popular language in North America and there are around 1.4 million German Speakers. The German language was popular in the 18th and 19th centuries due to the large number of Germans who migrated to the country.
There are still many German settlers all over The United States and Canada as well and their culture is still common in certain communities, for example, Texas where there is a German dialect called Texas German.
Canada alone has nearly 400,000 German speakers who immigrated to the country in the 20th century.
South America
There are about 2.2 million German speakers in South America, with countries like Uruguay, Paraguay, Ecuador, Chile, and Argentina all having over 30,000 German speakers. Brazil, on the other hand, has a huge population of over 1.1 million speakers.
Other Notable Places
There are many more minorities of the German language around the world today, from the former Soviet Union to Israel to even Australia and Thailand.
What is interesting about Australia is, there are about 75,500 German speakers, as well as those Australians with German ancestry. There is even a dialect of German called Barossa German which is named after the German-settled Barossa Valley in South Australia.
The same has happened in New Zealand with over 12,800 German immigrants and an estimated 200,000 New Zealanders that have German ancestry.
Conclusion
As you see the German language is very common and spoken not only in German and parts of Europe but in the whole world. If you are traveling to Europe think about learning German, during your travels.
If you aren’t traveling to Europe, learning German can help you to understand those who come from Germany or those who speak German.
