In almost 80 percent of private households in Germany, only German is spoken within their own four walls. Another 15 percent are so-called multilingual people who use at least one other language at home, as the Federal Statistical Office announced on Tuesday on International Mother Language Day.
While for almost a third of them German is the predominantly spoken language at home, a good two-thirds communicated mainly using another language. The remaining five percent therefore do not speak German in the household, but only one or more other languages.
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 are not yet shown,” emphasized the statistical office.
According to the information, German is also used by many people with a migration background to communicate in their own households: almost a third (32 percent) of the approximately 22.6 million people with a migration background spoke German exclusively at home. In addition to German, half used at least one other language to communicate with members of the household. The statisticians found that another 18 percent of people with a migration background – i.e. around four million people – exclusively spoke one or more languages other than German at home.
The Microcensus is a sample survey in which around 1 percent of the population in Germany is surveyed every year. All information is based on self-declaration by the respondents
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