Ranked: Countries With The Most Native German Speakers
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Roughly 110 million people in 42 countries speak German as their primary language.
This graphic ranks the top 10 countries by number of native German speakers. Figures were sourced from WorldData.info, which were last updated in July 2024.
German Brazilians
Germany, Austria, and Switzerland occupy the top positions in our ranking, concentrating 81% of German speakers. In these countries, German is also the official language. Russia ranks fourth with 2.1 million speakers, followed by the United States with 2 million.
Surprisingly, Brazil has the sixth largest number of native German speakers in the world. This is due to a wave of German immigration between 1824 and 1972, which saw roughly 260,000 Germans settle in the country. German Brazilians had the highest birth rate among immigrant groups and largely settled in Southern Brazil.
| Country | Region | Total |
|---|---|---|
| 🇩🇪 Germany | Western Europe | 76,119,000 |
| 🇦🇹 Austria | Western Europe | 8,091,000 |
| 🇨🇭 Switzerland | Western Europe | 5,531,000 |
| 🇷🇺 Russia | Eastern Europe | 2,157,000 |
| 🇺🇸 U.S. | North America | 2,009,000 |
| 🇧🇷 Brazil | South America | 1,082,000 |
| 🇰🇿 Kazakhstan | Central Asia | 617,000 |
| 🇨🇦 Canada | North America | 521,000 |
| 🇵🇱 Poland | Eastern Europe | 477,000 |
| 🇮🇹 Italy | Southern Europe | 294,000 |
Due to numerous German emigration movements since the Middle Ages, variants of the German language that are rare or no longer found in Germany are still preserved. For example, Pomeranian, a dialect of Low German, is now spoken almost exclusively in Brazil.
Additionally, German is the primary language for roughly 20,000 people in Namibia due to the country’s German colonial history. In Papua New Guinea, a variant known as “Unserdeutsch” evolved, consisting of German vocabulary and grammatical structures from other languages, such as Creole.
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To learn more about global languages, check out this graphic that shows the top countries by native Chinese speakers.
