Germany remains a country where the German language clearly dominates, but the latest data published by the Statistisches Bundesamt (Destatis) for the years 2024–2025 show a changing reality: more and more families use more than one language in everyday life, writes Albeu.com.
According to the latest results of the 2024 Microcensus, around 77% of the population in Germany speaks only German at home, while 17% use German together with another language. Meanwhile, 6% of residents communicate at home only in non-German languages.
These figures confirm a clear trend: Germany is increasingly becoming a multilingual society.
Turkish, Russian and Arabic dominate
Of the approximately 15 million people who use a language other than German (or alongside it) at home, the most widespread languages are:
Turkish – around 2.6% of the total population
Russian – around 2.3%
Arabic – around 1.7%
English – around 1.3%
Polish – around 1.2%
Italian – around 0.6%
These percentages reflect the historical and recent waves of migration to Germany, from Turkey, the countries of the former USSR, the Middle East and Eastern Europe.
Albanian among the most widely used languages
As Albeu.com learns, according to data processed from the 2024 microcensus, around 0.7% of the population in Germany uses Albanian at home. This translates to approximately 600 thousand people who communicate in Albanian in everyday life.
The Albanian community in Germany includes citizens originating from Kosovo, North Macedonia, Albania and other Albanian territories in the region, making Albanian one of the most present Balkan languages on German territory.
Migration and multilingualism
Destatis emphasizes that multilingualism is most pronounced among people with a migration background – that is, those who themselves or their parents have emigrated to Germany after 1950.
Within this group, only 22% speak exclusively German at home, around 55% use German together with another language and approximately 23% communicate only in a non-German language.
These figures show that language remains a key element of cultural identity for migrant communities, but also that linguistic integration continues to be a dynamic process.
At the end of 2024, Germany had around 83.6 million inhabitants, with a significant percentage of the population of foreign origin.
Although German remains the dominant and connecting language of society, official data clearly shows that the country’s social reality is multilingual. From Turkish to Arabic, from Russian to Albanian – today’s Germany speaks more languages than ever before. /albeu.com/
