German language
The German language is a West Germanic language and one of the world's major languages. German is closely related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. Around the world, German is spoken by ~100 million native speakers and also ~80 million non-native speakers, and Standard German is widely taught in schools and universities in Europe. Worldwide, German accounts for the most written translations into and from a language.
German is spoken primarily in the Federal Republic of Germany (95 %), Republic of Austria (89 %) and Switzerland (64 %) together with Liechtenstein, Luxembourg constituting the countries where German is the majority language.
Other European German-speaking communities are found in Italy (primarily in Alto Adige/Südtirol (69 %), but also in smaller villages scattered on border areas), in the East Cantons of Belgium, and in some border villages of the former South Jutland County (in German, Nordschleswig, in Danish, Sønderjylland) of Denmark.
Some German-speaking communities still survive in parts of Romania (22,907), Czechia (24,632), Hungary (30,824), and above all Russia (195,256) and Kazakhstan (226,092), although forced expulsions after World War II and massive emigration to Germany from the 1980s onward have reduced these communities. The German community in Russia in particular has faced a halving in the 10 years between 2011 and 2021, but such a trend has not been replicated in other countries like Kazakhstan, Czechia and Hungary where the population has kept more or less stable.
German is also spoken by German-speaking foreign populations and some of their descendants in Portugal, Spain, Italy, Morocco, Egypt, Israel, Cyprus, Turkey, Greece, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Scandinavia, Siberia in Russia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and the former Yugoslavia (Bosnia, Serbia, North Macedonia, Croatia and Slovenia).
In Luxembourg and the surrounding areas, big parts of the native population speak German dialects, and some people also master standard German (especially in Luxembourg), although in the French regions of Alsace and Lorraine French has replaced the local German dialects as the official language, even though it has not been fully replaced on the street.
In Italy there remain ancient communities of German speakers from post-Roman empire collapse Middle Age settlers, some of whom speak varieties of the Bavarian language unique to Italy: Bersntolerisch (Mòcheno) is spoken in several municipalities on the border between the province of Trento and the region of Veneto; Zimbar (Cimbro) is spoken by a minuscule population, mostly in the municipality of Lusérn (Luserna), and is said to be the closest living language to the Germanic Lombard language of the Middle Ages. In addition to Bersntolerisch and Zimbar, varieties similar to Central Bavarian are spoken by a few communities on the Veneto-Friuli border, and finally Walscher German is spoken on the Swiss border. The most widely spoken Germanic language in Italy (not counting English) is the South Tyrolese dialect of Bavarian, with over 2/3 of the population of South Tyrol (>300,000) speaking it.
The fastest-growing German-speaking population is said to be that of the Russian Mennonites of Frisian, Prussian and Flemish ancestry in Bolivia, which experienced a doubling in the past 10 years (2013-2023), presumably due to their high birth rates.
