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German is also widely taught as a foreign language, especially in continental Europe (where it is the third most taught foreign language after English and French), and in the United States. Overall, German is the fourth most commonly learned second language, [ 11 ] and the third most commonly learned second language in the United States in K-12 ...
Due to the German diaspora, many other countries with sizable populations of (mostly bilingual) German L1 speakers include Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Canada, Chile, Paraguay, as well as the United States. [21] However, in none of these countries does German or a German variety have any legal status.
Other West Germanic languages include Afrikaans, an offshoot of Dutch originating from the Afrikaners of South Africa, with over 7.1 million native speakers; [6] Low German, considered a separate collection of unstandardized dialects, with roughly 4.35–7.15 million native speakers and probably 6.7–10 million people who can understand it [7 ...
Around the world, German has approximately 100 million native speakers and also about 80 million non-native speakers. [5] 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. [1]
This is a list of official languages by country and territory. It includes all languages that have official language status either statewide or in a part of the state, or that have status as a national language , regional language , or minority language .
Today German, together with French, is a common second foreign language in the western world, with English well established as a first foreign language. [5] [15] German ranks second (after English) among the best known foreign languages in the EU (on a par with French) [5] as well as in Russia. [16]
[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 language of most Germans, but notably not the Volga Germans .
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.)