DTU Campus Village
A mix of languages is present at Campus Village. While some students with common nationalities talk to each other in their native languages, many students make an effort to learn another language. Many international students hope to learn English by studying in Denmark, as most Danes speak English since a young age. Some Campus Village residents manage to learn phrases from an additional foreign language like French or Portuguese through living with native speakers of those languages. Some students attend a class at night to learn Danish.
Geographical distribution of German speakers
Today, German, together with French, is a common second foreign language in the western world, as English is well established as a first foreign language. German ranks second (after English) among the best known foreign languages in the EU (on par with French) as well as in Russia. In terms of student numbers across all levels of education, German ranks third in the EU (after English and French) as well as in the United States (after Spanish and French). In 2015, approximately 15.4 million people were in the process of learning German across all levels of education worldwide. As this number remained relatively stable since 2005 (± 1 million), roughly 75–100 million people able to communicate in German as 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 (i.e., up to two thirds of the 75-100 million worldwide) claimed to have sufficient German skills to have a conversation. Within the EU, and not counting countries where it is a (co-)official language, German as a foreign language is most widely taught in Central and Northern Europe, namely the Czech Republic, Croatia, Denmark, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden and Poland.