Zum gegenwärtigen Status der französischen Sprache in Deutschland – Statistiken über das Französische in Deutschland

Abstract

French enjoys a special status in Germany. Traditionally, it is a language of culture and education, the neighbours’ language as well as a well-established foreign language taught in schools. For some time now, however, the status of the French language in Germany seems to be changing. For example, the conference’s call for participation on which this collection of papers is based on notes that French is steadily declining in esteem. The aim of this article is to examine this claim based on data. For this purpose, different kinds of data are used: official statistics such as the microcensus and school statistics as well as our own data from Germany-wide representative surveys. The latter were recorded in 2008, 2017 and most recently in 2022. Amongst others the surveys used same instruments, thus, the results can be compared diachronically.

The evaluation of this diverse data focuses on two perspectives: firstly, proficiencies in French and secondly, the evaluation of French. Regarding language proficiency, the analysis examines the position of French within the linguistic repertoire of people in Germany. To this end, the data will be analysed in terms of native or first language and also learned languages. For example, most people in Germany speak an average of 1.5 foreign languages in addition to their first language(s). However, according to the data, French hardly plays a role as a first language in Germany. In contrast, French is one of the established foreign languages in schools in Germany. This also corresponds to the status accorded to French as a language one likes to be taught in schools. In both 2008 and 2017, French was the second most frequently named language to be taught in schools after English. The popularity of French is also reflected in explicit assessments of languages. Over the last few years, French has been one of the languages rated as particularly popular in Germany. This continues to be the case in recent times: in 2022, French is mentioned most frequently by respondents when asked about likeable languages. A lack of appreciation for French can therefore not be determined on the basis of the data.