Decline
The percentage of the population of Namibia formed by Germans has declined recently, spurring speculation that the overall number of German Namibians is decreasing. But the decline in the percentage of German Namibians is mainly due to their low birth rates (still above replacement rate) and the fact that other Namibian ethnic groups have higher birth rates and bigger families. Unlike other southern African white groups, emigration to Europe, Australia or North America is not common. German Namibians tend to emigrate instead to South Africa.
According to the 2001 Census, only 1.1% of all Namibian households use German as a home language (3,654 households), which is much less than that for Afrikaans (39,481 or 11.4%) or English (6,522 or 1.9%).
Read more about this topic: German Namibians
Famous quotes containing the word decline:
“I heard a Californian student in Heidelberg say, in one of his calmest moods, that he would rather decline two drinks than one German adjective.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Considered physiologically, everything ugly weakens and saddens man. It reminds him of decay, danger, impotence; it actually reduces his strength. The effect of ugliness can be measured with a dynamometer. Whenever anyone feels depressed, he senses the proximity of something “ugly.” His feeling of power, his will to power, his courage, his pride—they decline with ugliness, they rise with beauty.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“We have our little theory on all human and divine things. Poetry, the workings of genius itself, which, in all times, with one or another meaning, has been called Inspiration, and held to be mysterious and inscrutable, is no longer without its scientific exposition. The building of the lofty rhyme is like any other masonry or bricklaying: we have theories of its rise, height, decline and fall—which latter, it would seem, is now near, among all people.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)