[3] This figure includes speakers of Northern Low Saxon, a recognized minority or regional language that is not considered separately from Standard German in statistics.

[16] While German Federal Government, unwilling to intrude on state rights, maintain position that no specific nationwide law on minority languages is needed, the Committee of Experts on the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages believes that federal law may lead to positive harmonization.

[19] However, German schoolchildren generally do not speak English as proficiently as their Scandinavian counterparts[20] and, in some cases, French or Latin are taught first.

[citation needed] According to a 2020 analysis conducted by Pew Research Center using 2017 data from Eurostat, the most popular non-English foreign languages learned in German primary and secondary schools were French (15%), Spanish (5%) and Russian (1%), with others garnering less than 1% each.

[21] Several bilingual kindergartens and schools exist in Germany offering education in German and English, French, Spanish, Japanese, Turkish, and other languages.