At home, the majority of Germans predominantly speak German, with a staggering 77 percent of the population speaking only German at home, according to the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) on Tuesday, based on the results of the Micro Census.
Another 17 percent of the population are multilingual and use at least one other language besides German in their daily lives. Of these multilingual individuals, a quarter (26 percent) predominantly use German at home, while nearly three-quarters (74 percent) primarily communicate in another language. The remaining six percent of the population do not speak German at home and instead primarily use one or more other languages.
Among the 15.6 million people who primarily or exclusively communicate in a language other than German at home, Turkish (14 percent) was the most frequently spoken language, followed by Russian (12 percent) and Arabic (9 percent).
Even people with a migration background often communicate at home primarily in German, often in combination with one or more other languages. Of the 21.2 million people with a migration background, 22 percent only speak German. Half of them (54 percent) use German in conjunction with at least one other language.
Of these multilingual individuals, a fifth (21 percent) predominantly speak German, while nearly four-fifths (79 percent) primarily communicate in another language. A quarter (24 percent) of people with a migration background do not speak German at home. According to the authorities, a person has a migration background if either they themselves or both parents immigrated to Germany after 1950.