GERMAN

Facts

Around the world, German is spoken by approximately 105 million native speakers and also by about 80 million non-native speakers. German is the most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union, of which it is an official and working language, and is generally considered as a global language. German is an official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and in some border areas of Belgium and Italy. German-speaking communities still survive in Eastern Europe, particularly in Russia and Kazakhstan. 200 years of emigration have also generated large German-speaking communities in North and Latin America, particularly USA, Canada, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. 6.9% of the global Internet population is reputed to be German and approx. 7.7% of all websites are written in German, making it second only to English in the European language group.

Features

German is written using the Latin alphabet. In addition to the 26 standard letters, German has three vowels with Umlaut, namely ä, ö and ü, as well as the Eszett or scharfes s (sharp s), ß