The CIA World Factbook states that .7% of Namibians speak other European languages (other than English and Afrikaans); 6.5% and 6% of the population are of mixed European and African ancestry and European ancestry, respectively. This is out of a population of 2,630,000.
Wikipedia says 81 % of the people speak german tho
("A 2009 survey pointed out that French was the language spoken by most inhabitants (99%), followed by Luxembourgish (82%), German (81%) and English (72%)")
Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg all speak a (sometimes bizarre) form of German, but all write in regular German. Why Switzerland is on the list but not the other two, I can't understand. It's official but not really purely spoken in all 3.
Because more than half of the Swiss are native German speakers, the vast majority of people in Luxembourg speak French as a first language and German only as a second or third
"Why Switzerland is on the list but not the other two"--> Switzerland has a population of more than 8 million. Liechtenstein has a population of less than 40,000.
Yeah, but what he is saying is that most of the people who were native speakers (i.e. Germans) were forced out of Poland's present day boundaries after the war. Besides, Germans were native in parts of Poland for a very long time (just look at how Prussia intersects with modern day Poland, for example).
My grandma was born in Silesia during WWII with German as her first language. Her mother admonished her to speak Polish after the war had ended, or else the Russians would come and apply a lock to her mouth. When she moved to Germany much later as an adult, she had to learn German like a second language, even though it was technically her first. The German which my old relatives spoke was rather old-fashioned because it was isolated from the main community of speakers. It was quite adorable and I liked to hear it.
There were so many Germans in pre-war boundaries of modern Poland, that, despite the fact that most of them either fled or were forcefully resettled, those few who stayed were still in significant enough numbers to make this quiz. The Opole Voivodenship for some reason was the area where a lot of Germans were allowed to stay. According to the 2002 census, 10% of the entire Voivodenship was of German ethinicity. I guess there were many people of mixed descent around 1945 in there as it was a mixed Polish-German area, so it was harder for the authorities to determine who was Polish and who was German, unlike in areas that had a clear German majority and they could just resettle everyone.
Hi, your source is using a very limited list of countries. It's highly likely higher numbers of German native speakers are present in Brazil and Argentina 12 million and 3.5 million of German descent). Or closer to Germany, there are reportedly 350.000-400.000 Germans in each the Netherlands and Russia. Hard to believe less than 70.000 would have German as their native language. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germans
I am skeptical that no South American country makes the list, considering both German immigration and also the Mennonite populations. I have heard about entire Brazilian communities that use the German language, and 70,000 isn't too high a benchmark to beat, although language data from some of those countries can be incomplete.
I guessed that one as well. The qualifier is probably "native language". It may be that not that many have German as a native language, most probably being second-language speakers after Portuguese.
I'm surprised that only 85% of people in Germany are native-speakers. I know there is some immigration, and some second-generation immigrants grow up bilingual, but surely bilinguals, even if they retain a distinctive accent, should be counted as native-speakers nonetheless. Anyway, I'm surprised - just enough to leave a comment, but not quite enought to go check out the source on my own ;-).
Just from my personal experience. In my in-laws neighborhood which is in a smallish village that's part of a slightly larger city 50 km northeast of Frankfurt I'd say a good 10 percent is Turkish and speak Turkish as their native tongue. Go to one of the public pools even in the tiny villages up in the hills and a good 10 to 15% are speaking something other than German. Lots of Polish and Russian. This isn't even taking into account the large ethnic neighborhoods that are in all of the major cities. Anywhere there is prosperity and an aging population their are going to be young immigrants looking for menial work.
In France, there are not as many people speaking German as their mother tongue, you must confuse with Alsatian which is a Germanic language, but another language
But in this case Switzerland can't be counted too, because they don't speak "regular" German but also a Germanic/Alemannic dialect. But people who speak Alsacien or Swiss German can understand and speak "regular" German, so they should be counted.
"Regular German" is Standard German. The rest you mentioned are German dialects. And yes, the dialects are very diverse. Speakers of different dialects may not understand each other. Kind of like Dutch, Arabic and langues d'oïl dialects (which French belongs to).
Got the lot, but was a bit surprised about the inclusion of Poland (my last guess), though l probably shouldn't be due to historical and geographic (geopolitical) reasons. Surprise exclusions include Brazil (it has large communities of German descent in Rio and the Southern states), UK and predictably Liechtenstein due to its size, though it has German as its official language.
("A 2009 survey pointed out that French was the language spoken by most inhabitants (99%), followed by Luxembourgish (82%), German (81%) and English (72%)")
Scoring
You scored 10/12 = 83%
This beats or equals 45.9% of test takers
The average score is 10
Your high score is 10
:(
oh yeah,i forgot how small it is