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.
Neither the 1987 West German census nor the 2011 census inquired about language. Since the 2017 microcensus, a survey with a sampling fraction of 1% of the persons and households in Germany that supplies basic socio-demographic data and facilitates the ongoing monitoring of the labour market, a question asking, "Which language is being spoken predominantly in your household?" was added, nearly eighty years since the 1939 Census asked for the mother tongue of the population.

Minority languages

Recognised minority languages:
Immigrant languages spoken by sizable communities of first and second-generation :
Most Germans learn English as their first foreign language at school. Sometimes French or Latin are taught first, but usually English is, with French and Latin as common second or third foreign languages. Russian, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Dutch, classical Greek, and other languages are also offered in schools, often depending on the school's geographic location.
During the existence of the German Democratic Republic, the most common second language taught there was Russian, while English and French were the preferred second languages taught in schools in the Federal Republic of Germany.
However, German schoolchildren's English is not as good as the level found in Scandinavian countries.
There exist several bilingual kindergartens and even schools in Germany, offering education in German and English, French, Spanish, Japanese, Turkish, and other languages.