where is german an official language?
Canada German Democratic Republic Luxembourg Switzerland Liechtenstein Germany West Germany Belgium Vatican City Second Polish Republic
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 Recognized native minority languages in Germany are Danish , Low German , Sorbian , Romany , and Frisian ; they are officially protected by the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages . The most used immigrant languages are Turkish , Kurdish , Polish , the Balkan languages , and Russian . Germans are typically multilingual : 67 % of German citizens claim to be able to communicate in at least one foreign language and 27 % in at least two . 

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 German is the official and predominant spoken language in Germany . It is one of 24 official and working languages of the European Union , and one of the three working languages of the European Commission . German is the most widely spoken first language in the European Union , with around 100 million native speakers . 

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 The federal government is obliged to communicate in the official languages , and in the federal parliament simultaneous translation is provided from and into German , French and Italian . 

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 In 2014 , about seven million of Germany 's 81 million residents did not have German citizenship . Ninety @-@ six percent of these people lived in western Germany and mostly in urban areas . 

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 The languages have not undergone the deliberate highlighting of minor linguistic differences in the name of nationalism as has occurred in the Bosnian , Serbian and Croatian standards of Serbo @-@ Croatian . However , most Slavic languages ( including Czech ) have been distanced in this way from Russian influences because of widespread public resentment against the former Soviet Union ( which occupied Czechoslovakia in 1968 ) . Czech and Slovak form a dialect continuum , with great similarity between neighboring Czech and Slovak dialects . ( See " Dialects " below . ) 
