Language | Native speakers
:–|:–
1) Turkish | 1,458,360
2) Arabic | 1,438,560
3) Serbo-Croatian | 921,850
4) Polish | 870,995
5) Romanian | 844,535
6) Italian | 646,845
7) Persian | 438,925
8) Bulgarian | 410,885
9) Greece | 362,565
10) Albanian | 352,365
11) Russian | 351,640
12) English | 268,430

Source: [Statista, Number of foreigners in Germany by country of origin](https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1221/umfrage/anzahl-der-auslaender-in-deutschland-nach-herkunftsland/)

There are 11.8 million foreigners in Germany (14% of the residents). I assumed for the purposes of compiling the data that all foreigners who have the citizenship of a certain country are native speakers of the language that is most commonly spoken in that country. Since that assumption is obviously not true, the numbers should only be seen as approximations that show general trends. For example, I assumed that all 18,530 Canadians in Germany are native English speakers even though only 75% of Canadians are native English speakers. The data includes only foreigners in Germany, not immigrants who have already naturalized as German citizens.

Only 2.3% of foreigners in Germany come from countries where English is the most common native language. This makes English the 12th most common native language of foreigners in Germany.

More details: [see this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/xursf7/english_is_the_12th_most_common_native_language/iqx1iee/)

4 comments

  1. Countries of origin of natively English-speaking foreigners in Germany:

    USA: 119,255
    UK: 84,945
    Canada: 18,530
    Irland: 18,530
    Australia: 13,290
    South Africa: 7,920
    New Zealand: 3,290
    Jamaica: 1,435
    Trinidad and Tobago: 485
    Dominica: 230
    St. Lucia: 110
    St. Kitts and Nevis: 70
    Guyana: 70
    The Bahamas: 65
    Grenada: 65
    St Vincent and the Grenadines: 60
    Belize: 50
    Antigua and Barbuda: 30
    = 268,430 total

    In order to get the number of native Arabic speakers I added up the foreigners who live in Germany and have the citizenship of Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, Sudan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Chad, UAE, Jordan, Libya, Palestine and Kuwait

    Russian: Russia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan

    Serbo-Croatian: Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro

    Persian: Iran, Afghanistan

    Albanian: Kosovo, Afghanistan

  2. Thank you very much for this statistics. I will it link it every time if someone ask “why is english is not a second language, everybody speaks it!”. We are in germany, English is amongst the immigrats in a minority.

    Turkish or Arabic would make far mor more sense as a second language for immigration officials.

  4. It’s not about people who speak English as a native/mother tongue.

    It’s about the number of people with varied mothertongues who also speak English as a second language.

    English is the most widely spoken language in the world, with almost one third of the world being able to speak it. It is also the common international language of communication in science, aviation, business etc.
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_as_a_lingua_franca

    So the number *native* English speakers is pretty irrelevant.

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