The German language (both as an official language and as a minority language) is spoken in a number of countries and territories in West, Central and Eastern 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).
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 European countries with German-speaking majorities are Germany (95%, 78.3 million), Austria (89%, 7.4 million), Switzerland (65%, 4.6 million) ("D-A-CH"), Luxembourg (0.48 million) and Liechtenstein (0.03 million).
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D-A-CH or DACH is an synonym 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, DACHL or DACH+ to include Liechtenstein. Another version is DACHS (with Dachs meaning "Badger" in German) with the inclusion of the German speaking region of South Tyrol in Italy.[1]
DACH is also the name of an Interreg IIIA project, which focuses on crossborder cooperation in planning.[2]
| Official language | Majority language | Partially official |
|---|---|---|
| Austria Germany Liechtenstein Belgium |
Switzerland (besides French, Italian and Rumantsch) Luxembourg (besides French and Luxembourgish) |
Denmark - recognized minority language in the former South Jutland County South Tyrol in Italy Poland - a minority language in the Upper Silesia Czech Republic Hungary (Danube Swabians) Romania (Transylvania and Banat Swabians) |
Owing to tourism and second-home colonies some areas around the Mediterranean Sea (like the Balearic Islands) have small German-speaking communities.
German was once the lingua franca of Central, Eastern and Northern Europe and remains one of the most popular foreign languages in Europe and it is the second most popular after English.[3] Thirty-two percent of citizens of the EU-15 countries say they can converse in German (either as a mother tongue or as a second/foreign language).[4] This is assisted by the widespread availability of German TV by cable or satellite. German competence in countries where it is no official language is highest in the Netherlands, Denmark, Bosnia and Herzegovina (historical connections) and in Slovenia (historical connections). Relatively high German competence is also found in Sweden, Belgium (German community), the Czech Republic (historical connections), Slovakia (historical connections), Hungary (historical connections), Poland (much of northern, southern, and western Poland had previously been German territory) and Croatia (historical connections). German is the third most taught foreign language worldwide, including the United States;[5] it is the second most known foreign language in the EU, due to its wider use in the "new" EU countries.[6] 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.
The learning of 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 radio broadcasts produced with non-native German speakers in mind.
German-speaking people include composers (e.g. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Mahler or Schönberg), lyrical poetry and literature (e.g. Walter von der Vogelweide, Goethe, the Brothers Grimm, Schiller, Heine, Brecht or Thomas Mann as well as important works written by authors as the Nibelungenlied or Ludwigslied) and philosophy (e.g. Albertus Magnus, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Wittgenstein or Adorno).
These cultures are quite diverse as a result of the varied history of the German-speaking people. The German-speaking world has consisted of independent principalities (e.g., Liechtenstein), of larger confederations (e.g., the German Confederation and North German Confederation), of empires (e.g., the Holy Roman Empire, German Empire, and Austrian Empire), of political units (e.g., Bohemia), and of political states (e.g., Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Luxembourg).