German is an official language in six countries: Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Belgium. It is the sole official language in Germany, Austria and Liechtenstein, and one of several in Switzerland, Luxembourg and Belgium. Roughly 95 to 100 million people speak it as a first language, making it the most widely spoken native language in the European Union.
The six countries where German is official
The six divide cleanly into two groups: those where German is the only official language, and those where it shares that status.
- Germany — about 84 million people; German is the sole official language nationally, though Danish, Sorbian, Romani and North and Saterland Frisian have regional recognition.
- Austria — about 9 million; German is sole official, with Slovene, Croatian and Hungarian recognised in specific districts.
- Liechtenstein — about 40,000; German is the sole official language, and the everyday spoken language is an Alemannic dialect closely related to Swiss German.
- Switzerland — about 8.8 million; German is one of four national languages alongside French, Italian and Romansh, and is the most widely spoken, used by roughly 62% of residents.
- Luxembourg — about 660,000; German shares official status with French and Luxembourgish.
- Belgium — about 11.7 million overall, but the German-speaking Community numbers only around 78,000 people in the east of the country.
The combined population of the six is roughly 115 million, though that figure overstates the number of German speakers, since large parts of Switzerland, Luxembourg and Belgium speak other languages as their first.
Two further territories are usually included in any complete account without being sovereign states. South Tyrol, an autonomous province of Italy, has a German-speaking majority of roughly 70% and grants German equal status with Italian. The German-speaking Community of Belgium, though inside a larger state, has its own parliament and government with real legislative powers over education and culture.
Three standard varieties, not one language with accents
A common misconception is that Germany's German is "correct" and the others are regional deviations. Linguists treat German as a pluricentric language: it has multiple equally legitimate standard forms, each codified in its own country.
The differences are recorded in official reference works, not merely in speech. Austrian Standard German has its own dictionary, the Österreichisches Wörterbuch, published under the education ministry. Swiss Standard German has its own conventions, most visibly the complete abandonment of the letter ß — Swiss publications write Strasse where German ones write Straße.
Vocabulary diverges in everyday areas, particularly food and administration:
- January — Januar in Germany, Jänner in Austria
- Potatoes — Kartoffeln in Germany, Erdäpfel in Austria
- Apricots — Aprikosen in Germany, Marillen in Austria
- Bicycle — Fahrrad in Germany, Velo in Switzerland
- Pavement — Bürgersteig in Germany, Trottoir in Switzerland
Austria negotiated protection for 23 food terms when it joined the European Union in 1995, so that its vocabulary would carry legal standing in EU documents — an unusually explicit assertion that these are national standards rather than dialect.
The Swiss situation is genuinely different
Switzerland deserves separate treatment because what happens there is not a strong accent but something closer to a stable two-system arrangement.
Swiss German (Schwiizerdütsch) is a group of Alemannic dialects that most speakers of Standard German cannot follow without effort, and German television routinely subtitles Swiss speakers. It is not a low-prestige register: it is used by everyone, in all social classes, in parliament, on radio, in business meetings and at home.
Standard German — often called Schriftdeutsch, written German — is used for newspapers, books, formal writing and school instruction. The result is a diglossia in which the spoken and written languages differ systematically, and Swiss children effectively learn the written standard as a near-second language at school. This is why Swiss German is rarely written outside informal messaging: there is no single agreed orthography for it.
Within Switzerland the language boundary is sharp. The Röstigraben, named after a potato dish, marks the line between the German-speaking majority and the French-speaking west, and it corresponds to measurable differences in voting behaviour on referendums. Our Switzerland country guide covers how the four-language system is administered.
Where German is spoken but not official
Beyond the six, substantial German-speaking populations exist with varying degrees of legal recognition.
Within Europe, German is a recognised minority language in Denmark's North Schleswig, in parts of Poland's Opole region, in Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Czechia. Romania's Transylvanian Saxon community, present since the twelfth century, has shrunk dramatically since 1989 but retains German-language schools and has produced national political figures.
Overseas, the largest communities descend from nineteenth-century emigration. Southern Brazil has significant populations speaking Hunsrik and Pomeranian, and several municipalities in Rio Grande do Sul and Espírito Santo have granted them co-official status. Argentina, Paraguay and Chile have comparable communities. In North America, Pennsylvania Dutch — a descendant of Palatine German — remains a living first language among Amish and Old Order Mennonite communities numbering in the hundreds of thousands.
Namibia is a distinct case. German was official during the colonial period and again until 1990, when independence made English the sole official language. German is still spoken by a small community and is recognised as a national language, and German street names and buildings remain visible in Windhoek and Swakopmund.
German measured against Europe's other large languages
Comparing German with French, Spanish and English clarifies what kind of language it actually is in global terms.
By native speakers within Europe, German leads: roughly 95 to 100 million against about 60 to 70 million for French and 45 million for English within the EU. It is the most requested language for translation in EU institutions after English and French.
By global reach, it ranks far lower. Spanish is official in around 20 countries and French in roughly 29, because both were carried worldwide by long colonial empires. Germany's colonial period lasted barely three decades and ended in 1919, so German never established itself as an administrative language across Africa or Asia the way its neighbours did. Six countries against twenty-nine is the clearest single measure of that difference.
Where German retains disproportionate weight is economic and academic. The German-speaking countries together represent one of the largest economic blocs in Europe, and German remains a working language in engineering, chemistry, philosophy, musicology and classical studies, where a substantial body of primary literature exists only in German. It is also among the most commonly learned second languages in central and eastern Europe, particularly in countries with close trade ties to Germany and Austria.
Luxembourg and Belgium: German as a working third language
The two smallest official uses of German are the least understood, and both are more functional than symbolic.
Luxembourg operates a genuine three-language system with a clear division of labour. Luxembourgish is the national language and the ordinary spoken language of Luxembourgers. French dominates legislation, the courts and much commercial life. German is the language most children first learn to read and write in, and it carries a large share of the domestic press — the country's main daily newspapers publish substantially in German. A Luxembourger will routinely use all three in a single day without treating any as foreign.
Belgium's German-speaking Community is one of the country's three official language communities, alongside the Flemish and French ones, despite representing well under one per cent of the national population. Its territory — nine municipalities around Eupen and Sankt Vith — was transferred from Germany to Belgium under the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. It has its own parliament and government with authority over education, culture and, increasingly, health and social policy. It is often cited as one of the most extensively protected small language minorities anywhere in Europe, and the arrangement is a direct product of Belgium's federalisation, which handed each community real powers rather than symbolic recognition.
What holds the German-speaking area together
The term Deutscher Sprachraum describes the contiguous area where German is the majority language, and it is remarkable for crossing so many borders without significant interruption. It runs from the Danish frontier south through Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein and eastern Switzerland into South Tyrol, taking in eastern Belgium and much of Luxembourg on its western edge.
The institution that maintains coherence across it is orthographic. The Council for German Orthography, which includes representatives from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, South Tyrol and Belgium's German-speaking Community, governs spelling reform jointly. The contentious 1996 reform and its revisions were negotiated between states rather than imposed by the largest one.
Media and education reinforce it. Broadcasters are watched across borders, publishers distribute across the whole area, and universities recognise one another's qualifications with unusually little friction — a shared written standard removes a barrier that otherwise divides neighbouring countries. If you want to see how this pattern compares elsewhere, our guides to English-speaking countries and to the world's most spoken languages set German's position in wider context.
