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This article details the geographical distribution of speakers of the German language, regardless of the legislative status within the countries where it is spoken.In addition to the Germanosphere (German: Deutscher Sprachraum) in Europe, German-speaking minorities are present in many other countries and on all six inhabited continents.
German South Africans refers to South Africans who have full or partial German heritage.. A significant number of South Africans are descended from Germans. Most of these originally settled in the Cape Colony, but were absorbed into the Afrikaner and Afrikaans population, because they had religious and ethnic similarities to the Dutch and French.
These countries (with the addition of South Tyrol of Italy) also form the Council for German Orthography and are referred to as the German Sprachraum (German language area). Since 2004, Meetings of German-speaking countries have been held annually with six participants: Germany, Austria, Belgium, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, and Switzerland: [1]
Germans also emigrated to South Africa during the 1850s and 1860s, and settled in the Eastern Cape area around Stutterheim, and in Kwazulu-Natal in the Wartburg area, where there is still a large German-speaking community. [103]
An estimated 12,000 people speak German or a German variety as a first language in South Africa, mostly originating from different waves of immigration during the 19th and 20th centuries. [48] One of the largest communities consists of the speakers of "Nataler Deutsch", [ 49 ] a variety of Low German concentrated in and around Wartburg .
The German-speaking population wished German to be reinstated as an official language and in 1932 the Treaty of Cape Town encouraged South Africa to do so. [4] It was hoped that this would throw a spanner in the works against South Africa annexing South West Africa into the Union of South Africa.
At least thirty-five languages are spoken in South Africa, twelve of which are official languages of South Africa: Ndebele, Pedi, Sotho, South African Sign Language, Swazi, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Afrikaans, Xhosa, Zulu, and English, which is the primary language used in parliamentary and state discourse, though all official languages are equal in legal status.
Approximate distribution of native speakers of German or a German variety outside Europe (according to Ethnologue 2016 unless referenced otherwise) Numbers of speakers should not be summed up per country, as they most likely overlap considerably. Table includes varieties with disputed statuses as separate language. Standard German Hunsrik ...