In Germany, German is overwhelmingly the language used at home. According to data from the German Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) based on the 2024 Microcensus, 77 % of people in private households spoke only German at home. Sixty‑seven million adults-about 77 %-use German as their sole home language.
A further 17 % of the population is multilingual and uses German in addition to at least one other language. Among these multilingual households, nearly a quarter (26 %) use German as the dominant language at home, while almost three‑quarters (74 %) rely mainly on another language. The remaining 6 % of people do not speak German at home at all; they use one or more other languages exclusively.
In total, 15.5 million people communicate mainly or exclusively in a language other than German at home. Turkish is the most common non‑German lingua‑franca, accounting for 14 % of homes. Russian (12 %) and Arabic (9 %) also appear relatively frequently in German households.
Most people with a migration background still use German at home, often together with other languages. Of the 21.4 million people who either were born in Germany with at least one foreign‑born parent or were born abroad and migrated after 1950, 22 % speak only German at home. About 55 % use at least one other language in addition to German. Among the multilingual group, 22 % of migration‑background households predominantly use German, whereas 78 % predominantly use a language other than German. Almost a quarter (23 %) of people with a migration background do not speak German at home at all.
