Attractive Language

German is the most widely spoken first language in the European Union European Union In 1957, Germany was one of the six founding members of today’s EU, along with France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. The EU is currently made up of 27 states; the euro is the official currency in 20 of them. For Germany, European integration forms the basis for peace, security and… Read more › and ranks twelfth in the world’s most widely spoken languages. Around 130 million people around the world - above all in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Belgium, Liechtenstein and South Tyrol in Italy - speak German as their first language or regularly use it as a second language. Along with English, Dutch and Swedish, German is one of the 15 or so Germanic languages, a branch of the Indo-Germanic family of languages.

German is learnt by more than 15.4 million people worldwide. Though most German learners are still to be found in Europe, the importance of German is also growing in Africa and Asia in particular. The African continent has seen a nearly 50 percent rise in German learners since 2015. One reason is that it is becoming increasingly important for skilled workers to have language qualifications. The Skilled Immigration Immigration As early as the 19th century Germany attracted a large number of immigrants and since the 1950s has emerged as the European country with the largest immigrant population. In 1950, there were about 500,000 foreigners in Germany, accounting for a mere one percent or so of the population. This has… Read more › Act that came into force in 2020 makes it easier for qualified professionals from non-EU countries to come to Germany and is reinforcing this trend.

Germany supports language teaching institutions at home and abroad, provides scholarships and offers degree courses for internationally mobile students. The Federal Foreign Office promotes the qualification of German teachers via targeted programmes, run by intermediary organisations, such as “Dhoch3” (German Academic Exchange Service, DAAD DAAD The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) is an organization run jointly by the German institutes of higher education. Its purpose is to promote relations between higher education institutes in Germany and abroad, especially through exchange schemes between students and academics. As a rule its… Read more › ) and “Deutsch Lehren Lernen” (Goethe-Institut). A major role in teaching German is played by the 135 German schools abroad and more than 2,000 schools offering enhanced German teaching that are part of the Federal Foreign Office’s PASCH scheme (Schools: Partners for the Future). In 2023, around 270,000 people took part in the courses run by the Goethe-Institut, which provides German language courses and tests in almost 100 countries. Egypt saw the number of people registering for language courses rise sharply by around 50 percent. Demand for digital language learning has also increased. The Goethe-Institut’s online learning platform recorded around 9.1 million hits in 2023, for example, while the Deutsche Welle Akademie reached one million registered users of its “DW Learn German” platform in October 2023.

There has been a gradual decline in the importance of German as the international language of science. Researchers who do not speak German only rarely publish in German. By contrast, German-speaking aca­demics actively publish in English, particularly in the natural sciences. German has a long and significant heritage as an academic language in the humanities and social sciences.