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The vast majority of people in this country speak German (symbol image)
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Michael Gstettenbauer / IMAGO
The vast majority of people in Germany only speak German within their own four walls: 80 percent.
This was announced by the Federal Statistical Office on Tuesday on International Mother Language Day.
Another 15 percent are so-called multilingual people who use at least one other language at home.
According to the information, German is also used by many people of non-German origin to communicate in their own households: "Almost a third of the approximately 22.6 million people with a migration background spoke only German at home," said the statisticians.
Half of these people use at least one other language for communication in addition to German.
Almost a fifth of people with a migration background only speak one or more languages other than German at home.
Among the people who mainly use another language for communication at home, Turkish is the most common at 15 percent.
This is followed by Russian (13 percent), Arabic (10 percent), Polish (7 percent) and English (6 percent).
"Since these are the results of the 2021 microcensus, possible effects of population development in Germany as a result of the Russian attack on Ukraine have not yet been shown," emphasized the statistical office.
The microcensus is a sample survey in which around one percent of the population is surveyed each year.
All information is based on self-declaration by the respondents.
The statisticians speak of a "migration background" when a person or at least one parent was not born with German citizenship.
The data do not show how well respondents speak a language, or which languages they may know in addition to the main languages spoken in the household.
fok/Reuters
