With 82 million inhabitants, Germany is the most populous country in the European Union.
As of December 2004, about seven million foreign citizens were registered in Germany, and 19% of the country's residents were of foreign or partially foreign descent. The largest group (2.7 million) is from Turkey, and a majority of the rest are from European states such as Italy, Serbia, Greece, Poland, and Croatia.
Languages
The official language of Germany is Standard German, with over 95% of the country speaking Standard German or German dialects as their first language. Turkish is spoken by about 2 million persons (ethnic Turks) in Germany alone, followed by smaller numbers whom use Arabic from the Middle East and North Africa; Greek; Italian; Serbo-Croatian of former Yugoslavia and Spanish from South America are examples.
Most Germans also learn English as first foreign language in schools.
German National Institutions for Language
Institut für Deutsche Sprache
Ludwig M. Eichinger, Direktor
Gerhard Stickel
Postfach 10 1621, D-69016 Mannheim, Germany
+49-621-1581126
eichinger@ids-mannheim.de
stickel@ids-mannheim.de
Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung
Peter Eisenberg
Alexandraweg 23, 64287 Darmstadt,
Germany
+49-30-84313380
p.eisenberg@web.de
