Germany language
The Federal Republic of Germany is a country in Europe, whose capital is Berlin. It has a population of 83 million inhabitants (17th) and an area of 357,386 km 2 (62nd). Its human development index is very high (5th) and its official currency is the euro. And what language is spoken in Germany?
What language do they speak in Germany?
Germany has one official language, German.
In addition, the government recognizes some minority languages, which are Danish (24,900 speakers), Low German, Upper Sorbian (13,300), Lower Sorbian (6,670), Romani (80,000), and Frisian languages (10,000). These languages are officially protected by the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, an agreement signed by European countries.
Germany is one of the countries with the highest immigration in the world, creating a very large linguistic diversity. The most common immigrant languages are Turkish (1,340,000 speakers), Levantine Arabic (670,000), Italian (643,000), Romanian (640,000), Croatian (368,000), Greek (365,000), Bulgarian (310,000), Russian (249,000) Serbian (226,000), Northern Kurdish (218,000), Gheg Albanian (209,000), Hungarian (207,000), Spanish (207,000), Portuguese (189,000), Bosnian (181,000), Dutch (155,000), French (149,000), Ukrainian (138,000), Chinese (136,000), and Persian (103,000).
Germans are great polyglots, as 67% speak at least 1 foreign language and 27% speak at least 2. The most learned foreign languages are English (56%), French (14%), Russian (6%), Spanish (4%) and Italian (3%). Due to high immigration, up to 10% of the population has learned German.
The German language
German (Deutsch) is spoken by 98% of the German population ( 10.3% of them, as a second language). It is written with the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, and including with some modifications in the vowels ä, ö, ü (umlaut) and with the “strong s” (ß), which should not be confused with a “b”. It has a lexical similarity with English of 60% and 29% with French.
The Frisian languages
The Frisian languages (Frasch) are a minority Germanic language protected by the German government, spoken by 10,000 people. The most common dialect in Germany is North Frisian, spoken in the North Frisian region of the same name. The rest of the languages hardly have speakers. Furthermore, there is hardly any mutual intelligibility between these languages. The English language has more similarities with the Frisian languages than with German.
TheBavarian language
Bavarian or Austro-Bavarian (Österreichisch -Boarisch) is spoken by about 6 million inhabitants. It is used in the southeastern region of Germany: Bavaria. It is a variant of High German. Linguists debate whether it is a German dialect or a separate language. The reality is that Bavarian becomes barely understandable to standard German speakers (both native speakers and second language speakers). This is because it has different grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. Being unofficial (neither in Germany nor in Austria), Bavarian is neither regulated nor standardized.
Share which languages are spoken in Germany.
