How many people are native German speakers?
Geographical distribution of German speakers
Mostly depending on the inclusion or exclusion of certain varieties with a disputed status as separate languages (e.g., Low German/Plautdietsch), 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.
Southern Germany
Two of the most populous states of Germany, Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria, are part of Southern Germany. They have a combined population of 23,5 million people. In the broader sense (with Rhineland-Palatinate and the Saarland), Southern Germany includes roughly 30 million people. Thus, about 40% of the German population and almost 30% of all native speakers of the German language live there.
Languages of the United States
In the early twentieth century, German was the most widely studied foreign language in the United States, and prior to World War I, more than 6% of American schoolchildren received their primary education exclusively in German, though some of these Germans came from areas outside of Germany proper. Currently, more than 49 million Americans claim German ancestry, the largest self-described ethnic group in the U.S., but less than 4% of them speak a language other than English at home, according to the 2005 American Community Survey. The Amish speak a dialect of German known as Pennsylvania German. One reason for this decline of German language was the perception during both World Wars that speaking the language of the enemy was unpatriotic; foreign language instruction was banned in places during the First World War. Unlike earlier waves, they were more concentrated in cities and integrated quickly. Another reason for the decline in German was the lack of first-generation immigrants, as immigration to the United States from Western Europe slowed following the World Wars.
Demographics of Switzerland
The non-official language with the largest group of native speakers is Serbo-Croatian with 103,000 speakers in 2000, followed by Albanian with 95,000, Portuguese with 89,500, Spanish with 77,500, English with 73,000, Macedonian 61,300, and a total of 173,000 speakers of other languages, amounting to roughly 10% of the population with a native language not among the four official languages.
Hungary
Hungarian is the official and predominant spoken language in Hungary. Hungarian is the 13th most widely spoken first language in Europe with around 13 million native speakers and it is one of 24 official and working languages of the European Union. Outside Hungary it is also spoken by communities of Hungarian people in neighbouring countries and by Hungarian diaspora communities worldwide. According to the 2011 census, 9,896,333 people (99.6%) speak Hungarian in Hungary, of whom 9,827,875 people (99%) speak it as a first language, while 68,458 people (0.7%) speak it as a second language. English (1,589,180 speakers, 16.0%), and German (1,111,997 speakers, 11.2%) are the most widely spoken foreign languages, while there are several recognized minority languages in Hungary (Armenian, Bulgarian, Croatian, German, Greek, Romanian, Romani, Rusyn, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, and Ukrainian).
Geographical distribution of Russian speakers
Germany has the highest Russian-speaking population outside the former Soviet Union with approximately 3 million people. They are split into three groups, from largest to smallest: Russian-speaking ethnic Germans ("Aussiedler"), ethnic Russians, and Jews.
Germanic languages
The main North Germanic languages are Danish, Faroese, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish, which have a combined total of about 20 million speakers.
Geographical distribution of German speakers
Costa Rica has a population of 4.8 million, and a German speaker population of 8,000 people. Many of these people are immigrants or native German speakers from Germany or Switzerland and 18th, 19th and 20th centuries massive immigration descendants. But also in the northern area of the country, there are 2,200 German Mennonites communities in Sarapiquí and San Carlos that spoke Plautdietsch and other Low German dialects.
Demographic estimates of the flight and expulsion of Germans
Former German citizens remaining in Poland after 1950 in the Oder-Neisse territories are put at 1.1 million according to 1950 Polish Census figures including "autochthons" – Polish-speaking or bilingual German citizens – in Upper Silesia, Masuria and West Prussia. This figure was confirmed by the 1950 German government demographic study of the population. Dr. Gerhard Reichling in 1995 put the total number at 1.3 million in 1950(Note: A significant proportion of Germans remaining in postwar Poland were allowed to emigrate after 1956 and benefited as a result of Brandt's Ostpolitik.)
German Americans
German Americans () are Americans who have full or partial German ancestry. With an estimated size of approximately 44 million in 2016, German Americans are the largest of the ancestry groups reported by the US Census Bureau in its American Community Survey. The group accounts for about one third of the total ethnic German population in the world.
Degersheim
Degersheim has a population (as of ) of . , about 17.2% of the population was made up of foreign nationals. Of the foreign population, (), 40 are from Germany, 147 are from Italy, 275 are from ex-Yugoslavia, 27 are from Austria, 34 are from Turkey, and 183 are from another country. Over the last 10 years the population has decreased at a rate of -1.5%. Most of the population () speaks German (89.9%), with Italian being second most common ( 2.3%) and Spanish being third ( 1.8%). Of the Swiss national languages (), 3,551 speak German, 8 people speak French, 91 people speak Italian, and 6 people speak Romansh.
Brazilian German
The German-based varieties spoken by German Brazilians together form a significant minority language in Brazil. "Brazilian German" is strongly influenced by Portuguese and to a lesser extent by Italian dialects as well as indigenous languages. German dialects are particularly strong in Brazil's South and Southeast Regions. According to Ethnologue, ca. 3 million people in Brazil speak Riograndenser Hunsrückisch, 1.5 million Standard German and 8,000 Plautdietsch.
List of Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages include some 449 (SIL estimate, 2018 edition) languages and dialects spoken by about or more than three billion and 500 million people (roughly half of the world population), including most of the major languages belonging to language branches and groups of Europe, western and southern Asia, which belong to a single language family. Therefore, Indo-European is the biggest language family in the world by number of mother tongue speakers (but not by number of languages in which is the 3rd or 5th biggest). 8 of the top 10 biggest languages by number of native speakers are Indo-European, and one language, English, is the De facto World Lingua Franca with an estimated over one billion second language speakers.
Swiss Standard German
The default spoken language in German-speaking Switzerland is the respective local dialect. Due to a rather large inter-cantonal migration rate (about 5% p.a.) within modern Switzerland for decades, many different Swiss German dialects are spoken in any one place, especially in urban areas; for example, in the city of Zurich (end of 2013): of the 272,700 Swiss (total: 400,000) living in Zurich, only 40% (28%) are from Zurich itself with 51% (36%) from the entire canton of Zurich.
German language
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. 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 overall speakers. German is also the second most widely taught foreign language in the EU after English at primary school level (but third after English and French at lower secondary level), the fourth most widely taught non-English language in the US (after Spanish, French and American Sign Language), and the second most commonly used scientific language as well as the second most widely used language on websites after English. The German-speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of annual publication of new books, with one tenth of all books (including e-books) in the world being published in the German language. In the United Kingdom, German and French are the most-sought after foreign languages for businesses (with 49% and 50% of businesses identifying these two languages as the most useful, respectively).
German language in the United States
Alsatian, (), is a Low Alemannic German dialect spoken by Old Order Amish in Allen County, Indiana and their daughter settlements. These Amish immigrated to the US in the mid 1800. There are fewer speakers of Alsatian in Indiana than of Bernese German, even though there are several thousand speakers. There are also speakers of Bernese German and Pennsylvania German living in the community. Most speakers of Alsatian also speak or at least understand Pennsylvania German. Speakers of Alsatian in Indiana are thus exposed to five languages or dialects: Alsatian, Bernese German, Pennsylvania German, Standard German and English.
German Brazilians
The Brazilian Census of 1940 revealed that German was the second most spoken language in Brazil, with 644,458 speakers. In a total population of nearly 1 million German Brazilians at that time, over half still spoke German as their mother tongue. The vast majority of the German speakers were Brazilian-born, with a minority born in Germany or in another German-speaking country. The other main languages spoken were Italian with 458,054, Japanese with 192,698 and Spanish with 74,381.
Languages of Germany
The official language of Germany is Standard German, with over 95 percent of the country speaking Standard German or German dialects as their first language. This figure includes speakers of Northern Low Saxon, a recognized minority or regional language that is not considered separately from Standard German in statistics. Recognized minority languages have official status as well, usually in their respective regions.
Languages of Europe
The Germanic languages make up the predominant language family in northwestern Europe.
An estimated 210 million Europeans are native speakers of Germanic languages, the largest groups being German (c. 95 million), English (c. 70 million) and Dutch (c. 24 million), Swedish (c. 10 million), Danish (c. 6 million) and Norwegian (c. 5 million).
German language
Like French and Spanish, German has become a classic second foreign language in the western world, as English (Spanish in the US) is well established as the first foreign language. German ranks second (after English) among the best known foreign languages in the EU (on a 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, 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, not counting countries where it is an official language, German as a foreign language is most popular in Eastern and Northern Europe, namely the Czech Republic, Croatia, Denmark, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Sweden and Poland. German was once and, to some extent, is still, a lingua franca in those parts of Europe.
Hutterite German
As of 2003, there are about 34,000 speakers in the world, 85% of them living in 333 communities in Canada and the remaining 15% in 123 communities in the USA. Canadian adults are generally literate in Early New High German (also called "Biblical German", the predecessor to Standard German used by Martin Luther) that they employ as the written form for Scriptures while Standard German is used in the USA for religious activities. Children learn English at school; Canadian Hutterites have a functional knowledge of English. Hutterite is for the most part an unwritten language, though in August 2006 Hutterite author Linda Maendel released a children's story titled "Lindas glücklicher Tag" (Linda's Happy Day) in which all the dialogue is written in the dialect. Maendel is also working on a series of biblical stories with Wycliff Bible translators.
White Africans of European ancestry
German is spoken by 32% of Namibia's white population (making up 2% of the Namibian population). There is also a now nearly extinct German dialect in Namibia known as Namibian Black German (or in German as "Küchendeutsch" or "Kitchen German"), and used to be spoken by black domestic servants to German colonists. However, the government has tried to lower the use of German and Afrikaans due to its colonial roots, and instead try and enforce English, the sole official language, and Bantu languages. There is also known to be a German dialect, spoken in the south-east of South Africa, known as (German from Natal).
Swedes
The native language of nearly all Swedes is Swedish () a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is, to a considerable extent, mutually intelligible with Norwegian and to a lesser extent with Danish (see especially "Classification"). Along with the other North Germanic languages, Swedish is a descendant of Old Norse, the common language of the Germanic peoples living in Scandinavia during the Viking Era. It is the largest of the North Germanic languages by numbers of speakers.
Geographical distribution of German speakers
Between 1843 and 1910, more than 5 million Germans emigrated overseas, mostly to the United States. German remained an important language in churches, schools, newspapers, and even the administration of the United States Brewers' Association through the early 20th century, but was severely repressed during World War I. Over the course of the 20th century, many of the descendants of 18th century and 19th century immigrants ceased speaking German at home, but small populations of speakers are still found in Pennsylvania (Amish, Hutterites, Dunkards and some Mennonites historically spoke Hutterite German and a West Central German variety of German known as Pennsylvania German or Pennsylvania Dutch), Kansas (Mennonites and Volga Germans), North Dakota (Hutterite Germans, Mennonites, Russian Germans, Volga Germans, and Baltic Germans), South Dakota, Montana, Texas (Texas German), Wisconsin, Indiana, Oregon, Oklahoma, and Ohio (72,570). A significant group of German Pietists in Iowa formed the Amana Colonies and continue to practice speaking their heritage language. Early twentieth century immigration was often to St. Louis, Chicago, New York, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati.
German Americans
About 1.5 million Americans speak German at home, according to the 2000 census. From 1860–1917, German was widely spoken in German neighborhoods; see German in the United States. There is a false belief, called the Muhlenberg legend, that German was almost the official language of the U.S. There was never any such proposal. The U.S. has no official language, but use of German was strongly discouraged during World War I and fell out of daily use in many places.
German language
German migration to New Zealand in the 19th century was less pronounced than migration from Britain, Ireland, and perhaps even Scandinavia. Despite this there were significant pockets of German-speaking communities which lasted until the first decades of the 20th century. German-speakers settled principally in Puhoi, Nelson, and Gore. At the last census (2013), 36,642 people in New Zealand spoke German, making it the third most spoken European language after English and French and overall the ninth most spoken language.
Pakistanis in Germany
According to "Statistisches Bundesamt Deutschland" 1,116 Pakistanis were naturalized as German citizens in the year 2006. Almost a third of all Pakistanis in Germany live in Hesse. There are approximately 1900 Pakistanis living in the northern city-state of Hamburg, about 1500 in Frankfurt am Main and almost 1400 in Berlin and its suburbs. In 2009, the German government estimated the number of people of Pakistani descent residing in Germany at 76,173.
Hamburg
Hamburg residents with a foreign citizenship as of 31 December 2016 is as follows
Like elsewhere in Germany, Standard German is spoken in Hamburg, but as typical for northern Germany, the original language of Hamburg is Low German, usually referred to as "Hamborger Platt" (German "Hamburger Platt") or "Hamborgsch". Since large-scale standardization of the German language beginning in earnest in the 18th century, various Low German-colored dialects have developed (contact-varieties of German on Low Saxon substrates). Originally, there was a range of such Missingsch varieties, the best-known being the low-prestige ones of the working classes and the somewhat more bourgeois "Hanseatendeutsch" (Hanseatic German), although the term is used in appreciation. All of these are now moribund due to the influences of Standard German used by education and media. However, the former importance of Low German is indicated by several songs, such as the famous sea shanty Hamborger Veermaster, written in the 19th century when Low German was used more frequently. Many toponyms and street names reflect Low Saxon vocabulary, partially even in Low Saxon spelling, which is not standardised, and to some part in forms adapted to Standard German.
Low German
It has been estimated that Low German has approximately 6.7 million native speakers – 5 million in Germany, primarily Northern Germany, and 1.7 million in the Netherlands.
Brazilian German
German speakers from Germany, Switzerland and Austria make up the largest group of immigrants after Portuguese and Italian speakers. They tended to preserve their language longer than the speakers of Italian, which is closer to Portuguese. Consequently, German was the second most common family language in Brazil at the 1940 census. However, even in areas that are still dominated by German speakers, most are bilingual. Today, German is increasingly cultivated as a cultural heritage, and several municipalities have recently given co-official status with Brazilian Portuguese to one Brazilian variant or another of it.
Belgium
The total number of native Dutch speakers is estimated to be about 6.23 million, concentrated in the northern Flanders region, while native French speakers number 3.32 million in Wallonia and an estimated 870,000 (or 85%) in the officially bilingual Brussels-Capital Region. The German-speaking Community is made up of 73,000 people in the east of the Walloon Region; around 10,000 German and 60,000 Belgian nationals are speakers of German. Roughly 23,000 more German speakers live in municipalities near the official Community.
Oklahoma
German has 13,444 speakers representing about 0.4% of the state's population, and Vietnamese is spoken by 11,330 people, or about 0.4% of the population, many of whom live in the Asia District of Oklahoma City. Other languages include French with 8,258 speakers (0.3%), Chinese with 6,413 (0.2%), Korean with 3,948 (0.1%), Arabic with 3,265 (0.1%), other Asian languages with 3,134 (0.1%), Tagalog with 2,888 (0.1%), Japanese with 2,546 (0.1%), and African languages with 2,546 (0.1%). In addition to Cherokee, more than 25 Native American languages are spoken in Oklahoma, second only to California (though, it should be noted only Cherokee exhibits language vitality at present).
Americans in Germany
Americans in Germany or American Germans (German: Amerikanische Deutsche 
or Amerikodeutsche) refers to the American population in Germany and their German-born descendants. According to Destatis, 107,755 American citizens lived in Germany in 2013, and about 324,000 people with American ancestry.
German language
Although expulsions and (forced) assimilation after the two World Wars greatly diminished them, minority communities of mostly bilingual German native speakers exist in areas both adjacent to and detached from the Sprachraum.
Geographical distribution of German speakers
Australia has an estimated population of around 75,600 German speakers. Australians of German ancestry constitute the fourth largest ethnic group in Australia, numbering around 811,540. German immigrants played a significant role in settling the states of South Australia and Queensland. Barossa German, a dialect of German, was once common in and around the German-settled Barossa Valley in South Australia. However, the German language was actively suppressed by Australian governments during World War I and World War II, resulting in a sharp decline in the use of German in Australia. German Australians are today overwhelmingly English speaking, with the German language as a home language in heavy decline.
Danish language
Danish (; "dansk" , "dansk sprog" ) is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in Denmark and in the region of Southern Schleswig in northern Germany, where it has minority language status. Also, minor Danish-speaking communities are found in Norway, Sweden, Spain, the United States, Canada, Brazil, and Argentina. Due to immigration and language shift in urban areas, around 15–20% of the population of Greenland speak Danish as their first language.
German Nebraskan
German Nebraskans are residents of the state of Nebraska who are of German ancestry. As of the 2000 U.S. Census, there are 738,894 German Americans living in Nebraska, making up 42.7% of the population, the third largest percentage of any state.
Geographical distribution of German speakers
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.
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, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. In the eighteenth century only isolated or small groups of German emigrants left for Latin America. However this pattern was reversed at the start of the last century as a tidal wave of German emigration began. German emigration to the Americas totalled 200,000 people during the eighteenth century. During the 1880s, during the wave of mass emigration, this figure was reached annually. The "Handbuch des Deutschtums im Ausland" ("The Germans Abroad Handbook") 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.
Chinese people in Germany
The German Chinese community has seen a rapid growth in recent years. In 2016, there were 136,460 nationals of the People's Republic of China living in Germany, a 35% increase over 2013. The number of Taiwanese citizens living in the country stood at 5,885 (as of 2013). In addition, there is a large number of Chinese people who naturalized as German citizens or who are natively born in the country. Between 2004 and 2007 alone, 4,213 PRC nationals naturalised as German citizens. In addition to that, the Chinese community in Germany also consists of tens of thousands of ethnic Chinese from countries such as Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.
Swabia
Swabians ("Schwaben", singular "Schwabe") are the natives of Swabia and speakers of Swabian German. Their number was estimated at close to 0.8 million by SIL Ethnologue as of 2006, compared to a total population of 7.5 million in the regions of Tübingen, Stuttgart and Bavarian Swabia.
Geographical distribution of German speakers
There are about 500,000 German speakers and around 320,000 Volga-Germans alone, of which 200,000 hold German citizenship. This makes Argentina one of the countries with the largest number of German speakers and is second only in Latin America to Brazil. In the 1930s there were about 700,000 people of German descent.
Regional concentrations can be found in the provinces of Entre Ríos and Buenos Aires (with around 500,000 to 600,000) as well as Misiones and in the general area of the Chaco and the Pampas.
German Australians
In 2001, the German language was spoken at home by 76,400 persons in Australia. German is the eighth most widely spoken language in the country after English, Chinese, Italian, Greek, Arabic, Vietnamese, Spanish, and Tagalog.
Geographical distribution of German speakers
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 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 (1948-1994). 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.
German language
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. One of the largest communities consists of the speakers of "", a variety of Low German, concentrated in and around Wartburg. The small town of Kroondal in the North-West Province also has a mostly German-speaking population. 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. The community is strong enough that several German International schools are supported such as the Deutsche Schule Pretoria.
Gaiserwald
Gaiserwald has a population (as of ) of . , about 12.1% of the population was made up of foreign nationals. Of the foreign population, (), 148 are from Germany, 113 are from Italy, 284 are from ex-Yugoslavia, 57 are from Austria, 90 are from Turkey, and 170 are from another country. Over the last 10 years the population has grown at a rate of 9.4%. Most of the population () speaks German (93.4%), with Serbo-Croatian being second most common ( 1.4%) and Albanian being third ( 0.9%). Of the Swiss national languages (), 7,003 speak German, 28 people speak French, 61 people speak Italian, and 10 people speak Romansh.
Chinese people in Germany
Chinese people in Germany form one of the smaller and less-studied groups of overseas Chinese in Europe, consisting mainly of Chinese expatriates living in Germany and German citizens of Chinese descent. The German Chinese community is growing rapidly and, as of 2016, was estimated to be around 212,000 by the Federal Institute for Population Research. In comparison to that, the Taiwanese OCAC had estimated there were 110,000 people of Chinese descent living in Germany in 2008.
English language
English is the third most-spoken native language in the world, after Standard Chinese and Spanish. It is the most widely learned second language and is either the official language or one of the official languages in almost 60 sovereign states. There are more people who have learned it as a second language than there are native speakers. English is the most commonly spoken language in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand, and it is widely spoken in some areas of the Caribbean, Africa and South Asia. It is a co-official language of the United Nations, the European Union and many other world and regional international organisations. It is the most widely spoken Germanic language, accounting for at least 70% of speakers of this Indo-European branch. English has a vast vocabulary, though counting how many words any language has is impossible. English speakers are called "Anglophones".
Geographical distribution of German speakers
Namibia used to be a colony of the German Empire from 1884 to 1919. Mostly originating from German settlers who immigrated 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 a wide variety of spheres, especially business and tourism, as well as churches (most notably the German-speaking Evangelical Lutheran Church in Namibia (GELK)), schools (e.g. the Deutsche Höhere Privatschule Windhoek), literature (German-Namibian authors include ), radio (the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation produces radio programs in German), and music (e.g. artist EES). The Allgemeine Zeitung is also one of the three biggest newspapers in Namibia and the only German-language daily in Africa.
Census in Germany
According to the census of 1900, among the total population of 56,367,178 there were 51,883,131 with German language as their first and only language, plus 252,918 bilingual Germans. The largest minority was the Polish, with 3,086,489 (not including 142,049 Masurians and 100,213 Cassubians). The census results also listed the districts with a minority larger than 5%, including many districts in which German speakers were a minority.
Rebstein
Rebstein has a population (as of ) of . , about 28.2% of the population was made up of foreign nationals. Of the foreign population, (), 106 are from Germany, 48 are from Italy, 523 are from ex-Yugoslavia, 108 are from Austria, 85 are from Turkey, and 210 are from another country. Over the last 10 years the population has grown at a rate of 7.5%. Most of the population () speaks German (85.5%), with Albanian being second most common ( 6.0%) and Italian being third ( 1.7%). Of the Swiss national languages (), 3,466 speak German, 7 people speak French, 70 people speak Italian, and 5 people speak Romansh.
Germanic languages
Yiddish, once a native language of some 11 to 13 million people, remains in use by some 1.5 million speakers in Jewish communities around the world, mainly in North America, Europe, Israel, and other regions with Jewish populations.
German New Zealanders
In 2013, the German language was spoken at home by 36,642 persons in New Zealand. German is the ninth most widely spoken language in the country after English, Māori, Samoan, Hindi, Mandarin Chinese, French, Cantonese, and Chinese (not further defined).
Iowa
After English, Spanish is the second-most-common language spoken in Iowa, with 120,000 people in Iowa of Hispanic or Latino origin and 47,000 people born in Latin America. The third-most-common language is German, spoken by 17,000 people in Iowa; two notable German dialects used in Iowa include Amana German spoken around the Amana Colonies, and Pennsylvania German, spoken among the Amish in Iowa. The Babel Proclamation of 1918 banned the speaking of German in public. Around Pella, residents of Dutch descent once spoke the Pella Dutch dialect.
Portage—Lisgar
Portage—Lisgar is the riding with the highest percentage of native German speakers (23.6% of the population) in all of Canada. Only Inuktitut (Nunavut: 66.8%) and Panjabi (Punjabi) (Newton—North Delta, in British Columbia: 33.4%) exceed this concentration of native speakers of a non-official language in a single riding.
Low German
Through the works of advocates like Groth, both proponents and opponents of Low German in formal education saw the language’s innate value as the cultural and historical language of northern Germany. Nevertheless, the opponents claimed that it should simply remain a spoken and informal language to be used on the street and in the home, but not in formal schooling. According to them, it simply did not match the nationally unifying power of High German. As a result, while Low German literature was deemed worthy of being taught in school, High German was chosen as the language of scholarly instruction. With High German the language of education and Low German the language of the home and daily life, a stable diglossia developed in Northern Germany. Various Low German dialects are understood by 10 million people, but many fewer are native speakers. Total users in all countries are 301,000.
German diaspora
Germans also emigrated to South Africa during the 1850s and 1860s, and settled in the Eastern Cape area around Stutterheim, and in Kwazulu-Natal in the Wartburg area, where there is still a large German-speaking community.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 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. German is slowly disappearing elsewhere, but a number of communities still have a large number of speakers and some even have German language schools.
Modern Hebrew
Modern Hebrew is spoken by about nine million people, counting native, fluent, and non-fluent speakers. Most speakers are citizens of Israel: about five million are Israelis who speak Modern Hebrew as their native language, 1.5 million are immigrants to Israel, 1.5 million are Arab citizens of Israel, whose first language is usually Arabic, and half a million are expatriate Israelis or diaspora Jews living outside Israel.
Walser German
The total number of speakers in the world estimated at 22,000 speakers (as of 2004), of whom about 10,000 are in Switzerland.
Because the dialect group is quite spread out, there is rarely any contact between the dialects. Therefore, the dialects that compose Walser German are very different from each other as well. 
Specific Walser dialects can be traced to eastern or western dialects of the Upper Valais. Conservative Walser dialects are more similar to the respective groups of Wallis dialects than to neighboring Walser dialects.Because the dialects of Walser German are different from each other, it is difficult to make generalizations about the language that applies to all the dialects. This section will be about the Walser German dialect of Formazza, or Pomattertitsch. Pomattertitsch is part of the Highest Alemannic German (höchstalemannisch) dialect group, which is made up of dialects that share similar features. The Highest Alemannic German group contains German dialects of Valais; Walser German dialects in Italy and Ticino; and eastern Walser German dialects in Grisons, Vorarlberg, and Liechtenstein. The first feature that is shared by this group is the palatalization of Middle High German (MHG) "-s-" to "-sch-". This is actually really typical of Walser German dialects in general. For Pomattertitsch, however, this doesn't apply to every word that contains -"s"-: "su" 'son"', sunna" 'sun', and "si" 'to be'. The second feature is a change from "-nk-" to "-ch-" or "-h-:" German "denken" to Pomattertitsch "teche" 'think', German "trinken" to Pomattertitsch "triche" 'drink'. The final feature is the lack of diphthongs where they are present in German words: German "bauen" to Pomattertitsch "büwe" 'build', German "schneien" to Pomattertitsch "schnie" 'snow'.
List of diglossic regions
Standard German was almost entirely restricted as a written language until the early 20th century, when Northern pronunciation was accepted as Standard, and the language spread. In fact, in cities such as Hanover and Berlin, the dialect started disappearing with the exception of a small minority of Low German speakers that only make up 5 million people. Austria also experienced the same situation, where less than 1,500,000 speakers of the dialect still remain. In most of Germany (except southern German Bundesländer Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, where Bavarian and Swabish are commonly spoken), people generally use Standard German, while most people in Austria generally use Austrian Standard German rather than their local dialect in both informal and formal situations. This is the case of "language loss", where speakers of German generally started using Standard rather than dialect. This is due to children mastering the Standard language at school and common media use of the Standard language. In Switzerland, most people, including children, generally use the dialect instead. See the Switzerland section for more information.
Itzgründisch dialect
On 31 December 2010, in the dialect zone of Itzgründisch, 41,076 speakers were living in the town of Coburg while 84,129 were residing in the district of Coburg, with 40,745 more in the district of Hildburghausen; 22,791 in the district of Lichtenfels; and (minus the estimated number of non-Itzgründisch-speakers) about 50,000 inhabitants in the district of Sonneberg. In the town of Lichtenfels, which lies on the south bank of the Main River, where its dialect has historically been mixed with the dialects of Bamberg and the Itz Valley, 20,555 residents were counted. While respective variants of Itzgründisch are spoken in the rural villages throughout the area, the proportion of non-Itzgründisch-speaking residents is much greater in the cities. A conservative estimate puts the number of the native speakers of Itzgründisch at about 225,000 speakers.
Pennsylvania German language
Pennsylvania German, which is now in its fourth century on North American soil, had more than 250,000 speakers in 2012. It has shifted its center to the West with approximately 160,000 speakers in Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa and other Midwest states. There is even a small but growing number of Pennsylvania German speakers in Upper Barton Creek and Springfield in Belize among Old Order Mennonites of the Noah Hoover group. The dialect is used vigorously by the horse and buggy Old Order Mennonites in the northern part of the Regional Municipality of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada.
German language
The Dortmund-based , which was founded in 1997, supports the German language and is the largest language association of citizens in the world. The VDS has more than thirty-five thousand members in over seventy countries. Its founder, statistics professor Dr. Walter Krämer, has remained chairperson of the association from its beginnings.
Germans in the United Kingdom
The Office for National Statistics estimates that in 2013, there were 297,000 people living in the UK who had been born in Germany, but that 189,000 of these were British nationals. The total number of German nationals resident in the UK, regardless of ethnic origin or birthplace, is estimated at 126,000 in 2013.
Pennsylvania German language
While speakers without an Anabaptist background in general do not pass the dialect to their children today, the Old Order Amish and horse-and-buggy Old Order Mennonites do so in the current generation and there are no signs that this practice will end in the future. There are only two car driving Anabaptist groups who have preserved the dialect: The Old Beachy Amish and the Kauffman Amish Mennonites, also called Sleeping Preacher Churches. Even though Amish and Old Order Mennonites were originally a minority group within the Pennsylvania German-speaking population, today they form the vast majority. According to sociologist John A. Hostetler, less than 10 percent of the original Pennsylvania German population was Amish or Mennonite.
There have been efforts to advance the use of the dialect. Kutztown University offers a complete minor program in Pennsylvania German Studies. The program includes two full semesters of the Pennsylvania German dialect. In the 2007–2008 school year, the classes were being taught by Professor Edward Quinter. In 2008–2009, Professor Robert Lusch served as the instructor.
Germanic languages
German is an official language of Austria, Belgium, Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Switzerland and has regional status in Italy, Poland, Namibia and Denmark. German also continues to be spoken as a minority language by immigrant communities in North America, South America, Central America, Mexico and Australia. A German dialect, Pennsylvania Dutch, is still present amongst Anabaptist populations in Pennsylvania in the United States.
Geographical distribution of German speakers
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 - until the ban on emigration came into effect in 1941 - 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. 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 now lived in the Americas. This change was aided by Jewish emigration groups such as the Hilfsverein deutschsprechender Juden (later to become Asociación Filantrópica Israelita) 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 then modernisation after assimilation into society which confronts all immigrant groups.
Demographics of Berlin
Growth accelerated in the 19th century with the industrialisation after the Napoleonic Wars and the Prussian Reforms. Only about 40% of Berliners in the last quarter of the 19th century were natives of the city. Nevertheless, Berlin's population remained ethnically and even regionally very homogeneous: In 1895, over 98% of inhabitants spoke German as their native language. Among the rest were 12,000 Polish speakers, 700 Russophones and about 2,000 other Slavs. In 1900, most of the 1.9 million Berliners originated from the eastern provinces of Prussia. A fifth hailed from the surrounding province of Brandenburg, 9% from the provinces of West and East Prussia, 7% from Silesia, 6% from Pomerania, 5% from Posen, 4% from Saxony. Only about 3 to 4% had come to the city from other German regions and only about 1,5% from abroad, mostly from Austria-Hungary and the Russian Empire.
German Australians
The 2011 Census counted 108,000 Australian residents who were born in Germany. However, 898,700 persons identified themselves as having German ancestry, either alone or in combination with another ancestry. This number does not include people of German ancestry who selected their ancestry as simply "Australian". The 2001 census recorded 103,010 German-born in Australia, although this excludes persons of German ethnicity and culture born elsewhere, such as the Netherlands (1,030), Hungary (660) and Romania (440).
Hispanophone
Hispanophones are estimated at between 480 and 577 (including 2nd language speakers) million globally, making Spanish the second most spoken language in terms of native speakers. Around 360 million live in Hispanic America and 45 million in Spain (70 million in Europe). There are a large number of Spanish speakers in the United States, comprising more than 34 million. There are also smaller Hispanophone groups in Canada, northern Morocco, Equatorial Guinea, Western Sahara, the Philippines and Brazil as well as in many other places around the world, particularly European Union where is one of 24 official languages and Australia.
German Sign Language
German Sign Language or Deutsche Gebärdensprache (DGS) is the sign language of the deaf community in Germany and in the German-speaking community of Belgium. It is unclear how many use German Sign Language as their main language; Gallaudet University estimated 50,000 as of 1986.
The language has evolved through use in deaf communities over hundreds of years.
Demographics of Switzerland
The four national languages of Switzerland are German, French, Italian and Romansh.
Native speakers number about 64% (4.6 million) for German (mostly Swiss German dialects), 20% (1.5 million) for French (mostly Swiss French, but including some Franco-Provençal dialects), 7% (0.5 million, mostly Swiss Italian, but including Insubric dialects) for Italian and less than 0.5% (35,000) for Romansh.
Sudetenland
According to the February 1921 census, 3,123,000 native German speakers lived in Czechoslovakia—23.4% of the total population. The controversies between the Czechs and the German-speaking minority lingered on throughout the 1920s, and intensified in the 1930s.
White Africans of European ancestry
Today there are roughly 20,000–50,000 ethnic Germans in Namibia (32% of the white population, and 2% of the nation's population), and they greatly outnumber those of English and many Black ethnic origins. Their precise numbers are unclear because many Namibians of German ancestry no longer speak German, and sometimes would rather be classified as Afrikaners.
Germany
The Federal Statistical Office classifies the citizens by immigrant background. Regarding the immigrant background, 22.5% of the country's residents, or more than 18.6 million people, were of immigrant or partially immigrant descent in 2016 (including persons descending or partially descending from ethnic German repatriates). In 2015, 36% of children under 5 were of immigrant or partially immigrant descent.
North Schleswig Germans
Approximately 15,000 people in Denmark belong to an autochthonous ethnic German minority traditionally referred to as "hjemmetyskere" meaning "domestic Germans" in Danish, and as "Nordschleswiger" in German. This minority of Germans hold Danish citizenship and self-identify as ethnic Germans. They generally speak German or Low German alongside South Jutlandic dialect of Danish as their home languages. Furthermore, there are also several thousand German immigrants residing in Denmark with no historical connection to this group.
Swedish language
Swedish ( ) is a North Germanic language spoken natively by 9.6 million people, predominantly in Sweden (as the sole official language), and in parts of Finland, where it has equal legal standing with Finnish. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and to some extent with Danish, although the degree of mutual intelligibility is largely dependent on the dialect and accent of the speaker. Both Norwegian and Danish are generally easier for Swedish speakers to read than to listen to because of difference in accent and tone when speaking. Swedish is a descendant of Old Norse, the common language of the Germanic peoples living in Scandinavia during the Viking Era. It has the most speakers of the North Germanic languages.
Nazism in Brazil
By the mid-1930s, there were more than one million Germans and descendants in Brazil, most in Rio Grande do Sul (600,000) and Santa Catarina (220,000). In 1940, Germans and descendants made up 22.34% of the population of Santa Catarina and 19.3% in Rio Grande do Sul. The German community in the country preserved its culture and language, understood as a manifestation of Germanism, which was possible through the existence of societies, a German-language press, and especially schools. The 1940 census showed that 640,000 people used German as their primary home language in Brazil. Based on the high proportion of members of the German community who used German at home (more than 70%), it was concluded that there was a low level of cultural assimilation of this community.
Geographical distribution of German speakers
Among them are small groups (such as those in Namibia) and many very large groups (such as the almost 1 million non-evacuated Germans in Russia and Kazakhstan or the near 500,000 Germans in Brazil (see Riograndenser Hunsrückisch German)), groups that have been greatly "folklorised" and almost completely linguistically assimilated (such as most people of German descent in the US, Canada, Australia, Argentina and Brazil), and others, such as the true linguistic minorities (like the still German-speaking minorities in the US, Argentina and Brazil, in western Siberia or in Romania and Hungary); other groups, which are classified as religio-cultural groups rather than ethnic minorities, (such as the Eastern-Low German speaking Mennonites in Paraguay, Mexico, Belize or in the Altay region of Siberia) and the groups who maintain their status thanks to strong identification with their ethnicity and their religious sentiment (such as the groups in Upper Silesia, Poland or in South Jutland in Denmark).
German diaspora
In Denmark, the part of Schleswig that is now South Jutland County (or Northern Schleswig) is inhabited by about 12,000–20,000 ethnic Germans They speak mainly Standard German and South Jutlandic. A few speak Schleswigsch, a Northern Low Saxon dialect.
Demographics of Germany
In 2009, 3.0 million of the persons of immigrant background had Turkish roots, 2.9 million had their roots in the successor states of the Soviet Union (including a large number of Russian-speaking ethnic Germans), 1.5 million had their roots in the successor states of Yugoslavia including 200.000 Albanians and 1.5 million had Polish roots.
Liechtensteiners
Liechtensteiners are a Germanic ethnic group native to Liechtenstein. There were approximately 34,000 Germanic Liechtensteiners worldwide at the turn of the 21st century.
German language in Namibia
German is especially widely used in central and southern Namibia and was until 1990 one of three official languages in what was then South West Africa, alongside Afrikaans and English. German is the main or mother tongue of about 30,000 Namibians, a number composed roughly equally of German Namibians as well as older black speakers of Namibian Black German and Namibians who as children grew up in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). The German Namibian newspaper "Allgemeine Zeitung" on its website refers to 22,000 native speakers and of several hundred thousand who know German as a second (third etc.) language. German benefits from its similarity to Afrikaans and has a prominent position in the tourism and business sectors. Many Namibian natural features, place and street names have German names. However, Germanic linguist Ulrich Ammon sees the future of German in Namibia as threatened.
Alemannic German
Alemannic dialects are spoken by approximately ten million people in several countries:
German language in the United States
Amana German, West Central German dialect, is still spoken by several hundred people in seven villages in the Amana Colonies in Iowa, which were founded by Inspirationalists of German origin. Amana is derived from Hessian dialects.
List of German Texans
Texans of German birth or descent have, since the mid-19th century, made up one of the largest ethnic groups in the state. By 1850, they numbered 5% of the total population—a conservative count. The 1990 census listed more than 17% of the population, nearly three million individuals, claiming German heritage.
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania, and Southern Africa.
Russians in Germany
German population data records 1,213,000 Russian migrants residing in Germany—this includes current and former citizens of the Russian Federation as well as former citizens of the Soviet Union. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs reports that about 3,500,000 speakers of Russian live in Germany, split largely into three ethnic groups:Immigration to Germany surged in the late 1980s and early 1990s. According to the Global Commission on International Migration research, "In the 1990s ethnic Germans and Jews comprised the largest components of emigration, and the most attractive destinations were Germany, Israel and the United States." Between 1992 and 2000 Germany purportedly received 550,000 emigrants from Russia, 60% of the total amount emigrating to the three main destinations.
Languages of Europe
Roughly 215 million Europeans (primarily in Southern and Western Europe) are native speakers of Romance languages, the largest groups including
French (c. 69 million),
Italian (c. 65 million),
Spanish (Castilian) (c. 40 million), 
Romanian (c. 23 million),
Portuguese (c. 10 million),
Sicilian (c. 5 million, also subsumed under Italian),
Catalan (c. 4 million),
Galician (c. 2 million),
Sardinian (c. 1 million),
Occitan (c. 500,000),
besides numerous smaller communities.
Germans of Hungary
German Hungarians (, ) are the German-speaking minority of Hungary sometimes called the Danube Swabians (German: "Donauschwaben"), (Hungarian: "Dunai svábok") in Germany, many of whom call themselves "Shwoveh". There are 131,951 Germanic speakers in Hungary (according to the 2011 census). Danube Swabian is a collective term for a number of German ethnic groups who lived in the former Kingdom of Hungary (today's Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, and several former Yugoslav republics). Hungarian Germans refers to the descendants of Germans who immigrated to the Carpathian Basin and surrounding regions, and who are now minorities in those areas. Many Hungarian Germans were expelled from the region between 1946 and 1948, and many now live in Germany or Austria, but also in Australia, Brazil, the United States and Canada. However, many are still dispersed within the country of Hungary.
Demographics of Germany
According to a 2004 survey, two-thirds of Germany's citizens have at least basic knowledge of English. About 20% consider themselves to be competent speakers of French, followed by speakers of Russian (7%), Italian (6.1%), and Spanish (5.6%). The relatively high number of Russian speakers is a result of massive immigration from the former Soviet Union to Germany for almost 10 consecutive years, plus its having been learned in school by many older former East Germans.
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 German-speaking area () in Europe, German-speaking minorities are present in many countries and on all six inhabited continents.
Russians in Germany
Other Russian speakers in Germany fall into a few different categories. The German "Statistisches Bundesamt" (Federal Statistical Office) reported the following figures for Russian speakers from the year 2000: legal aliens (365,415), political asylees (20,000), students (7,431), family members of German citizens (10,000-15,000), special workers in fields of science and culture (5,000-10,000), and diplomatic corps (5,000). The largest percentage comes from the "legal alien" category. The vast majority of the legal aliens, who are mainly ethnic Russians (with smaller numbers of Belarusians, Ukrainians, and other groups) are family members of returnees ("Aussiedler" and Soviet Jews), but who have yet to receive German citizenship.
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language spoken by around 23 million people as a first language and 5 million people as a second language, constituting the majority of people in the Netherlands (where it is the sole official language) and Belgium (as one of three official languages). It is the third most widely spoken Germanic language, after its close relatives English and German.
German Brazilians
The use of the German language is in decline in Brazil, however, there are 3,000,000 Brazilians who speak German and important German-speaking communities in Brazil even almost 200 years after the beginning of immigration. According to Born and Dickgiesser (1989, p. 55) the number of Brazilians of German descent in 1986 was 3.6 million. For Rio Grande do Sul, based on data from Birsa (Bilingualism in Rio Grande do Sul), for 1970, Altenhofen (1996, p. 56) estimated at 1,386,945 the number of speakers of a variety of German. As of 1996, he estimated that it had dropped to between 700,000 and 900,000 speakers. Damke (1997, p. 59), as of 1996, estimated more than 2 million speakers of any variety of the German language in Brazil.
Demographics of Germany
In 2000 there were also around 300,000–500,000 Afro-Germans (those who have German citizenship) and 150,000+ African nationals. Most of them live in Berlin and Hamburg. Numerous persons from Tunisia and Morocco live in Germany. While they are considered members of a minority group, for the most part, they do not considers themselves "Afro-Germans," nor are most of them perceived as such by the German people. However, Germany does not keep any statistics regarding ethnicity or race. Hence, the exact number of Germans of African descent is unknown.
German Australians
German Australians () are Australian citizens of ethnic German ancestry. The German community constitute one of the largest ethnic groups in Australia, numbering 898,700 or 4.5 percent of respondents in the 2011 Census. It is the fifth most identified European ancestry in Australia behind English, Irish, Scottish and Italian.
Toytown Germany
Of the approximately 230,000 native English-speaking expatriates living in Germany [Source missing], the Toytown Germany statistics indicate that over 20% of these are regular readers of the website.
Germany
German dialects, traditional local varieties traced back to the Germanic tribes, are distinguished from varieties of standard German by their lexicon, phonology, and syntax. It is one of 24 official and working languages of the European Union, and one of the three working languages of the European Commission. German is the most widely spoken first language in the European Union, with around 100 million native speakers.
Austria
The next largest population of linguistic and ethnic groups are the 124,392 who speak German as their mother tongue even though they hail from outside of Austria (mainly immigrants from Germany, some from Switzerland, South Tyrol in Italy, Romania, or the former Soviet Union); 123,417 English; 24,446 Albanian; 17,899 Polish; 14,699 Hungarian; 12,216 Romanian; 10,000 Malayali; 7,982 Arabic; 6,891 Slovak; 6,707 Czech; 5,916 Persian; 5,677 Italian; 5,466 Russian; 5,213 French; 4,938 Chinese; 4,264 Spanish; 3,503 Bulgarian. The numbers for other languages fall off sharply below 3,000.
Silesians
Although the German language is still spoken in Silesia, as it has a sizable minority of speakers in the Opole Voivodship in Poland, the vast majority of native speakers were expelled during or after 1945. Therefore, the number of German speakers in the region was radically and significantly decreased after World War II, even though the Germans had settled there for centuries. The Silesian German dialect is a distinct variety of East Central German, with some West Slavic influence likely caused by centuries of contact between Germans and Slavs in the region; the dialect is related to contemporary Saxon in some ways. The Silesian German dialect is often misleading referred to as Lower Silesian in the German language. The usage of this dialect appears to be decreasing, as most Silesian Germans prefer either Standard German or even Polish.
French language
French is estimated to have about 76 million native speakers and about 235 million daily, fluent speakers, and another 77 to 110 million secondary speakers who speak it as a second language to varying degrees of proficiency, mainly in Africa. According to the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), approximately 300 million people worldwide are "able to speak the language", without specifying the criteria for this estimation or whom it encompasses. According to a demographic projection led by the Université Laval and the Réseau Démographie de l'Agence universitaire de la francophonie, the total number of French speakers will reach approximately 500 million in 2025 and 650 million by 2050. OIF estimates 700 million by 2050, 80% of whom will be in Africa.