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Mostly depending on the inclusion or exclusion of certain varieties with a disputed status as separate languages or which were later acknowledged as separate languages (e.g., Low German/Plautdietsch [1]), it is estimated that approximately 90–95 million people speak German as a first language, [2] [3] [4] 10–25 million as a second language ...
An estimated 12,000 people speak German or a German variety as a first language in South Africa, mostly originating from different waves of immigration during the 19th and 20th centuries. [48] One of the largest communities consists of the speakers of "Nataler Deutsch", [ 49 ] a variety of Low German concentrated in and around Wartburg .
The following is a list of the countries and territories where German is an official language (also known as the Germanosphere). It includes countries that have German as (one of) their nationwide official language (s), as well as dependent territories with German as a co-official language.
The German language is the key marker of German ethnic identity. [7] [17] German and Low German are West Germanic languages closely related to Dutch, Frisian languages (in particular North Frisian and Saterland Frisian), Luxembourgish, and English. [7] Modern Standard German is based on High German and Central German, and is the first or second ...
The German diaspora (German: Deutschstämmige, pronounced [ˈdɔɪ̯t͡ʃˌʃtɛmɪɡə] ⓘ) consists of German people and their descendants who live outside of Germany. The term is used in particular to refer to the aspects of migration of German speakers from Central Europe to different countries around the world. This definition describes ...
German is the main language of about 90 million people (18%) in the EU. 67% of German citizens claim to be able to communicate in at least one foreign language, 27% in at least two languages other than their first.
Five languages have more than 50 million native speakers in Europe: Russian, German, French, Italian, and English. Russian is the most-spoken native language in Europe, [4] and English has the largest number of speakers in total, including some 200 million speakers of English as a second or foreign language. (See English language in Europe.)
This is a list of countries by number of languages according to the 22nd edition of Ethnologue (2019). [ 1 ] Papua New Guinea has the largest number of languages in the world.