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HAVE GERMAN WILL TRAVEL DEUTSCH

Wo spricht man Deutsch? / Where is German spoken as main language?

Deutschland I 6sterreich / Schweiz /

Countries with the most German speakers , and Liechtenstein

Three EU countries have German as their sole nationwide : the small of Liechtenstein, where 35,000 people speak German; Austria, with around 7.5 million German speakers; and of course Germany, with about 10 times as many people who use the language - not all of the nearly 83 million German citizens speak German though.

In Switzerland, German is one of four official languages. About two thirds of the population - s million people - speak German. German emigrants like Hermann Hesse and Erich Maria Remarque, both famous authors, were enamored with Switzerland's Italian-speaking . In exile and until his death, Remarque often lived in this villa on Maggiore

Luxembourg

In , too, German is one of the country's official languages, alongside Luxembourgish and French. About 470,000 inhabitants of the Grand Duchy speak German as their mother tongue. Luxembourgish has only been the since 1984 and is spoken mainly on radio and . However, most writing is done in German.

France

The spread of a language reflects history: In , German is a . The country's 1.2 million German speakers live in the German-French that includes , Champagne-Ardenne and Lorraine. They speak Franconian and Alemannic . Old inscriptions recall the times of German administration.

Italy

German is the official minority language in in South , which belonged to Austria until 1919. Even today, more than 60% oftbe population in the autonomous province of Bolzano-Soutb Tyrol, which has about 520,000 inhabitants, speak German as their mother tongue. Throughout the province, signs are bilingual, in German and Italian.