Geographical distribution of German speakers
This article details the geographical distribution of speakers of the German language, regardless of the legislative status within the countries where it is spoken. In addition to the Germanosphere in Europe, German-speaking minorities are present in many other countries and on all six inhabited continents.
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, it is estimated that approximately 90–95 million people speak German as a first language, 10–25 million as a second language, and 75–100 million as a foreign language. This would imply approximately 175–220 million German speakers worldwide.
Europe
German-speaking Europe
The German language is spoken in a number of countries and territories in Europe, where it is used both as an official language and as a minority language in various countries. To cover this language area, they are often referred to as the German-speaking countries, the German-speaking area, or equivalently German-speaking Europe.German is the main language of approximately 95 to 100 million people in Europe, or 13.3% of all Europeans. This makes it the second most spoken native language in Europe, behind only Russian, and ahead of French and English.
The European countries with German-speaking majorities are Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, also known as the "D-A-CH" countries, an acronym for Deutschland, Austria, and Confoederatio Helvetica.
Since 2004, there has been an annual informal meeting of the heads of state of German-speaking countries including the Presidents of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland and the Hereditary Prince of Liechtenstein. Since 2014, the King of Belgium and the Grand Duke of Luxembourg have taken part.
D-A-CH or DACH is an acronym used to represent the dominant states of the German language Sprachraum. It is based on the international vehicle registration codes for:
- Germany
- Austria
- Switzerland
The term is sometimes extended to D-A-CH-Li, DACHL, or DACH+ to include Liechtenstein. Another version is DACHS with the inclusion of the German-speaking region of South Tyrol in Italy.
DACH is also the name of an Interreg IIIA project, which focuses on crossborder cooperation in planning.
Rest of Europe
In the early modern period, German varieties were a lingua franca of Central, Eastern, and Northern Europe.German is a recognised minority language in Czechia, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, Russia, and Slovakia.
Today German, together with French, is a common second foreign language in the western world, with English well established as a first foreign language. German ranks second among the best known foreign languages in the European Union as well as in Russia. In terms of student numbers across all levels of education, German ranks third in the EU as well as in the United States. In 2015, approximately 15.4 million people were in the process of learning German across all levels of education worldwide. This number has remained relatively stable since 2005 and roughly 75–100 million people able to communicate in German as a foreign language can be inferred, assuming an average course duration of three years and other estimated parameters. According to a 2012 survey, ca. 47 million people within the EU claimed to have sufficient German skills to have a conversation. Within the EU, and not counting countries where it is a official language, German as a foreign language is most widely taught in Central and Northern Europe, namely Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Sweden.
German as a foreign language is promoted by the Goethe Institute, which works to promote German language and culture worldwide. In association with the Goethe Institute, the German foreign broadcasting service, Deutsche Welle, offers a range of online German courses and worldwide television as well as radio broadcasts produced with non-native German speakers in mind.
Africa
Namibia
Namibia was a colony of the German Empire from 1884 to 1915. Mostly originating from Germans who settled there during this time, 25,000 to 30,000 people still speak German as a native tongue today. German, along with English and Afrikaans used to be a co-official language of Namibia from 1984 until its independence from South Africa in 1990. At this point, the Namibian government perceived Afrikaans and German as symbols for Apartheid and colonialism, and decided for English to be the sole official language, claiming that it was a "neutral" language as virtually no English native speakers existed in Namibia at that time. German, Afrikaans and several indigenous languages became "national languages" by law, identifying them as cultural heritages of the nation and ensuring the state to acknowledge and support their presence in the country. Today, German is used in myriad spheres, especially business and tourism, as well as churches, schools, literature, radio, and music. The Allgemeine Zeitung is also one of the three biggest newspapers in Namibia and the only German-language daily in Africa.South Africa
Mostly originating from different waves of immigration during the 19th and 20th centuries, an estimated 12,000 people speak German or a German variety as a first language in South Africa. Germans settled quite extensively in South Africa, with many Calvinists immigrating from Northern Europe. Later on, more Germans settled in the KwaZulu-Natal region and elsewhere. Here, one of the largest communities are the speakers of "Nataler Deutsch", a variety of Low German, who are concentrated in and around Wartburg and to a lesser extent around Winterton. German is slowly disappearing elsewhere, but a number of communities still have a large number of speakers and some even have German language schools, such as the Hermannsburg German School. Furthermore, German was often a language taught as a foreign language in White South African schools during the Apartheid years. Today, the South African constitution identifies German as a "commonly used" language and the Pan South African Language Board is obligated to promote and ensure respect for it.Americas
Latin America
Nowadays, at least one million German speakers live in Latin America. There are German-speaking minorities in almost every Latin American country, including Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela.Initially, in the eighteenth century, only isolated or small groups of German emigrants left for Latin America; however, at the start of the nineteenth, this pattern was reversed as a tidal wave of German emigration totaling some 200,000 people began. These included groups such as land-hungry peasants, political refugees known as Forty-Eighters, and religious minorities such as Russian Mennonites fleeing religious persecution at home. During the 1880s, during the wave of mass emigration, this figure was reached annually.
The Handbuch des Deutschtums im Ausland from 1906 puts a figure of 11 million people in North and South America with a knowledge of the German language, of which 9 million were in the US. Although the US was the focal point for emigration in the 19th century, emigration to Latin America was also significant for differing economic and political reasons.
The majority of German emigrants to Latin America went especially to Brazil, but also to Argentina, Mexico, Uruguay, Chile, Paraguay, Guatemala, and Costa Rica. The three countries with the biggest ethnic German populations in Latin America to this day are Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico.
Starting in 1818, when King D. João VI brought the first German and Swiss immigrants to Brazil, German immigration continued a constant flow with an average of 25 to 30 thousand immigrants per decade entering the country since 1818. It peaked in the years following World War I, to around 90 thousand, and again in the 1940s to around 50,000. In the 1880s and 1890s, German emigration to Latin America grew and in some years was the destination of up to 30% of German emigrants.
During the Nazi period which lasted from 1933 to 1945, some 100,000 Jews from Central Europe, the vast majority of which were German-speaking, moved to South America, with 90% of these moving to the Cono Sur or Southern Cone. This ended when the ban on emigration came into effect in 1941, which was roughly also the beginning of the holocaust. From the start of the 20th century until 1946, 80% of Jews lived in Europe; but by the end of World War II this was reduced to 25%. However, after the war over 50% of Jews lived in the Americas. This change was aided by Jewish emigration groups such as the Hilfsverein deutschsprechender Juden which was based in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
The majority of German minorities in Latin America – as well as elsewhere around the world – experienced a decline in the use of the German language, with the exception of Brazil, where the dialect Riograndenser Hunsrückisch is being taught in schools and in some media, totaling over 200 thousand speakers spread over the Brazilian southern states.
The main cause of this decrease is the integration of communities, often originally sheltered, into the dominant society, and as well as the invariable pull of societal assimilation which confronts all immigrant groups.
German migration to colonial Mexico is less accounted for due to the geopolitical isolation following independence from Spain, as well as the deterrents of Mexico's ensuing civil wars. Despite these obstacles and lack of documentation, however, over 200,000 Prussian/German nationals have been registered entering the country between 1860 and 1960.
The first wave of Germans immigrated from northern Prussia under the reign of Princess Carlota during the 2nd French Mexican empire. Of special interest is the settlement Villa Carlota: that was the name under which two German farming settlements, in the villages of Santa Elena and Pustunich in Yucatán, were founded during the Second Mexican Empire. Villa Carlota attracted a total of 443 German-speaking immigrant families, most of them were farmers and artisans who emigrated with their families: the majority came from Prussia and many among them were Protestants.
The second wave was during Porfirio Díaz's open settlement policy in the Yucatán Peninsula that favored and attracted many Europeans. Most German-speaking or self identifying German-Mexicans today are descended from these two events as well as around 20,000 ethnic Germans from Russia and around 100,000 Mennonites from Canada.
Specific reasons for language change from German to the national language usually derive from the desire of many Germans to belong to their new communities after the end of World War II. This is a common feature among the German minorities in Latin America and those in Central and Eastern Europe: the majority of countries where German minorities lived had fought against the Germans during the war. With this change in situation, the members of the German minorities, previously communities of status and prestige, were turned into undesirable minorities.
For many German minorities, World War II thus represented the breaking point in the development of their language. In some South American countries the war period and immediately afterwards was a time of massive assimilation to the local culture.
Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Paraguay show some clear demographic differences that affect the minority situation of the German language: Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina are massive countries and offer large amounts of land for immigrants to settle. The population density of the Southern Cone countries is relatively low, but there are major differences in the areas settled by Germans: Buenos Aires Province, which was settled by Germans, has a far higher population density than that of the Chaco in northern Paraguay.
While Argentina and Chile have a far greater proportion of city dwellers ; in contrast, Brazil and Paraguay are 82% and 47% urbanized, respectively. Most of the German immigrants that arrived in Brazil and Mexico went on to live in small inland communities. The original 58 German communities of the early 19th century Brazil, grew today to over 250 towns where Germans are a majority, and German-speaking is encouraged.