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German-Speaking World

German (Deutsch, [ˈdɔʏtʃ]) is a West Germanic language, thus related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. It is one of the world's major languages and the most widely spoken first language in the European Union.

Around the world, German is spoken by approximately 105 million native speakers and also by about 80 million non-native speakers. Standard German is widely taught in schools, universities and Goethe Institutes worldwide.

German is spoken primarily in Germany (first language for more than 95% of the population), Austria (89%) and Switzerland (65%).

Other European German-speaking communities are found in Northern Italy (in the Province of Bolzano-Bozen and in some municipalities in other provinces), in the East Cantons of Belgium, in the French Alsace region which often was traded between Germany and France in history and in some border villages of the former South Jutland County (in German, Nordschleswig, in Danish, Sønderjylland) of Denmark. The majority of the small population of Liechtenstein also speaks German.

Outside of Europe and the former Soviet Union, the largest German-speaking communities are to be found in the United States, Canada, Brazil and in Argentina. Read more.

German Learning Resources

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Podcasts for German Learners

Podcasts are a great way to learn languages because you can take the audio with you and learn anywhere, any time, as often as required or desired. Click on any podcast below to view our German podcast review articles.

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Popular German Podcast

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News in German

News feeds from around the German-speaking world provide language exposure and practice joined with current events, culture, politics, science, sports and more.

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German Internet TV

Watching people speak German is a good way to gain exposure to the language in a non-study environment. This is great for folks who aren't living where the language is spoken and especially those already proficient in listening comprehension. If you don't understand anything, it's cool to "veg out" for a while, but it's not the most productive thing you can do to learn. Try to find something with subtitles, and you're on the way. ;)

If you do get into Internet TV, try Miro, a free and open source media player with multimedia RSS capability that supports Linux, Mac and Windows. "Because open media matters."

Below you'll find resources with literally thousands of Internet TV stations in a wide variety of languages. Amongst them you'll find plenty in German. Enjoy!

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The folks at Busuu continue to be hard at work pushing the limits blending self-instruction via web with social language learning online.

Recently, they have teamed up with PONS, a leading European language publisher based in Germany, to offer amazingly comprehensive grammar guides online.

View this announcement on the Busuu blog or read it below!

Today is a very important day in the history of busuu.com – we are pleased to announce a new partnership with PONS, one of Europe´s leading language learning publishers!

PONS, based in Stuttgart and belonging to Germany´s second largest publishing house Klett Group, develops for already more than 30 years language learning material and dictionaries. PONS offers more than 500 dictionaries and language material for various skill levels from beginners to professional users – and that in over 35 languages from Arabic to Turkish.

As a first step within this partnership, we will offer exhaustive PONS Grammar Guides fully integrated into our existing learning material. The PONS Grammar Guides provide you with detailed grammar explanations and are directly linked to our existing grammar units. From now on, by clicking on the new PONS button within the grammar units you will receive detailed explanations about this corresponding grammar topic.

Additionally, you can directly access the PONS Grammar Guides directly via the new PONS tab you will find in your language area.

The new PONS Grammar Guides are currently available for German and Spanish native speakers learning English, French, Italian, Spanish and German. In the near future we are planning to launch the guides as well for all other native speakers of our fast growing community.

The Grammar Guides are just the first step of this strategic partnership. we are planning to co-develop business courses and courses for advanced speakers together with PONS which will be launched in the near future.

We from busuu.com are very proud to partner up with such a renowned brand within the language learning industry. The expertise of PONS will further enhance the language learning experience of our users and we are looking forward to exciting new features and material to be offered very soon on our website!

PS: Take advantage now of our 10% off introductory discount by using the promotion code: JAN2010 when upgrading your account - only valid until end of January 2010!

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