German As A Foreign Language
German was once the lingua franca of Central, Eastern and Northern Europe and remains one of the most popular foreign languages in Europe, second only to English. It is one of the official languages of the European Union, and one of the three working languages of the European Commission, along with English and French. Thirty-two percent of citizens of the EU-15 countries say they can converse in German (either as a mother tongue or as a second/foreign language). This is assisted by the widespread availability of German TV via cable and satellite. German competence in countries where it is not an official language is highest in the Netherlands, Denmark, Bosnia and Herzegovina (historical connections) and Slovenia (historical connections). Relatively high German competence is also found in Sweden, Belgium (German community), the Czech Republic (historical connections), Slovakia (historical connections), Hungary (historical connections), Poland (much of northern, southern, and western Poland had previously been German territory) and Croatia (historical connections).
The learning of German as a foreign language is promoted by the Goethe Institute, which works to promote German language and culture worldwide. In association with the Goethe Institute, the German foreign broadcasting service, Deutsche Welle offers a range of online German courses and radio broadcasts produced with non-native German speakers in mind.
Read more about this topic: German-speaking Countries
Famous quotes containing the words german, foreign and/or language:
“She had exactly the German way: whatever was in her mind to be delivered, whether a mere remark, or a sermon, or a cyclopedia, or the history of a war, she would get it into a single sentence or die. Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of the Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“There seeps from heavily jowled or hawk-like foreign faces
The guttural sorrow of the refugees.”
—Louis MacNeice (1907–1963)
“The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book—a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)