8 things you did not know about the German language
How many people actually speak German? What is the importance of the German language in international science? And which words occur most frequently in German? Interesting facts about the German language.
1. German in the world: There are about 130 million people who speak German as their first or second language. This makes the German language one of the world’s most spoken languages.
2. German in the EU: In the EU, German is the most widely spoken mother tongue – even ahead of English. German is the official language in Germany, Austria and Liechtenstein; it is also one of the official languages in Switzerland, Belgium and Luxembourg.
3. German as a foreign language: German is also one of the most popular languages in the world. Around 15.4 million people learn German worldwide, and most learners are in European Union countries. In Europe, German ranks second after English among widely spoken languages.
4. German as a minority language: There are more than 7.5 million people in 42 countries who speak German as their first language. In the USA, there are 45 million people who have German ancestry, including 1.4 million native speakers of German. There are also large numbers of Germans living in Russia, Romania and Namibia.
5. German and science: German is the second most important language for science. It contributes a lot to research and development in Germany. With this, it ranks third in the world.
6. German and the genders: German has three genders. Male, female, and neutral. For example, the word for girl is “das Mädchen” even though it means a female person.
7. German and its articles: Incidentally, the most frequently used German words are the definite articles “der, die das”, followed by “in” and “und”.
8. German and the additional consonant: The Latin alphabet is used in German. But there is one letter that only exists in German: the “ß”. This additional letter does not exist in other languages.