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Revision as of 15:05, 2 March 2008 edit84.154.101.180 (talk) →German speaking minorities: former text might give the impression that NE-Prussians would have stayed there by today, which is wrong, their Germans of nowadays come from Russia← Previous edit Revision as of 04:43, 15 March 2008 edit undoOstap R (talk | contribs)Autopatrolled5,021 edits oh dearNext edit →
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Revision as of 04:43, 15 March 2008

German language skills of European Union citizens (plus Switzerland).

The German language (both as an official language and as a minority language) is spoken in a number of countries and territories in Central Europe (Deutscher Sprachraum). To cover this speech area they are often referred to as the German speaking countries, the German speaking area, or equivalently German-speaking Europe (the few overseas territories which speak German are not commonly included in the concept). Together with English-speaking Europe, the Nordic countries and the Dutch-speaking area, German-speaking Europe forms Germanic Europe.

German is the main language of about 90–95 million people in Europe (as of 2004), or 13.3% of all Europeans, being the second most spoken native language in Europe after Russian, above French (66.5 million speakers in 2004) and English (64.2 million speakers in 2004). The countries with German-speaking majorities are Germany (95%, 78.3 million), Austria (89%, 7.4 million) and Switzerland (64%, 4.6 million) ("D-A-CH"), Luxembourg (0.48 million) and Liechtenstein (0.03 million).

D-A-CH

D-A-CH
Location of D-A-CH
Official languagesGerman
Membership

 Austria
 Germany
 Switzerland

Website
http://d-a-ch.org/

D-A-CH or DACH is an acronym used to represent the dominant states of the German language Sprachraum. It is based on the official automobile license plate abbreviations for:

"Dach" is also the German word for "roof", and is used in linguistics in the term Dachsprache, which standard German arguably is in relation to some outlying dialects of German, especially in Switzerland and Austria.

The term is sometimes extended to D-A-CH-Li or DACHL to include Liechtenstein.

DACH is also the name of an Interreg IIIA project, which focuses on crossborder cooperation in planning.

Official status

German speaking minorities

Main articles: German as a minority language and German diaspora
File:Historisches deutsches Sprachgebiet.PNG
Historical distribution of the German language, situation around 1910.

Owing to tourism and second-home colonies some areas around the Mediterranean Sea (like the Balearic Islands) have small German-speaking communities.

German as a foreign language

German was once the lingua franca of Central, Eastern and Northern Europe and remains one of the most popular foreign languages in Europe. 32% of citizens of the EU-15 countries say they can converse in German (either as a mother tongue or as a second/foreign language). This is assisted by the widespread availability of German TV by cable or satellite.

German is the third most taught foreign language worldwide, including the United States; it is the second most known foreign language in the EU. It is one of the official languages of the European Union, and one of the three working languages of the European Commission, along with English and French.

See also

References

  1. After Spanish and French
  2. After English; "Europeans and Language" (PDF). European Commission. 2005. Retrieved 2007-12-08.

External links

Template:Germanic Europe

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