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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.
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]
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]
The colloquial speech is a compromise between Standard German and the dialect. [13] Northern Germany (the Low German area) is characterized by a loss of dialects: standard German is the vernacular, with very few regional features even in informal situations. [12] In Central Germany (the Middle German area) there is a tendency towards dialect ...
[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 .
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 ...
One of the major languages of the world, German is the first language of almost 100 million people worldwide and the most widely spoken native language in the European Union. [1] Together with French , German is the second most commonly spoken foreign language in the EU after English, making it the second biggest language in the EU in terms of ...