Gendering is just a minor nuisance, but other parts of the language are threatened with extinction

Every four years, the time comes when the patient must undergo a routine checkup. Is the German language doing well? It's doing well overall, according to the German Academy for Language and Literature and the Union of German Academies of Sciences and Humanities.

For the fourth time since 2013, they have presented a major report. It bears the sober title "German in Europe" and is 400 pages long. The diagnosis seems to view circulatory disorders such as genderization as "passagere," or in medical jargon, temporary. Nevertheless, the controversial topic of genderization is highly present in surveys, alongside Anglicisms and youth slang.

According to a cited study, 90 percent of the German population is satisfied or very satisfied with their language. In 80 percent of German households, German is spoken exclusively. What other languages ​​are spoken, possibly also exclusively, is not the subject of the report.

This is about the most widely spoken language in Europe after Russian. It is even the most widely spoken language in the EU. The academies particularly like to emphasize that it is also unique in its diversity: German is pluricentric, functioning as a comprehensive language group, but also as a means of differentiation.

Local differences matter. An Austrian doesn't want to be confused with a West German, and a Bavarian doesn't want to be confused with a Berliner. Linguistic worlds lie behind terms that mean the same thing. And so it matters in which contexts one uses the term "fireplace," "chimney," or "flue," "cupboard" or "box," "apricot" or "marille."

The report pays particular attention to the development of German-speaking groups in other language-speaking countries. It lists eleven European countries where German-speaking populations (still) exist. Historical and political factors have contributed to the dramatic decline in German-speaking groups, particularly in the eastern European countries. While 741,000 German-speakers lived in the Polish border regions in 1919/20, today they represent only 0.4 percent of the population. This results in a total of approximately 150,000.

In Russia alone, the relevant group more than halved between 2010 and 2021. The current number is 197,547. The reasons are complex, and German resettler policy also plays a role. In Romania, the situation is said to be "fragile" for the linguistic islands of the Transylvanian Saxons, the Banat Swabians, the Zipser, the Landler, and others.

Regional linguistic peculiarities are under threat here. After 1989, there was a strong wave of emigration. Today, only 15,943 Romanians list German as their native language. The situation is even more precarious in Germany's neighboring country, France. Although 54 percent of Alsatians say they speak German, it is considered a foreign language like any other.

As dry as the title chosen by the academies, "German in Europe," may sound, the study, compiled by twenty-two scholars and published by Narr-Francke-Attempto Verlag, provides an important and at the same time vivid cultural history of European identity. German, as spoken today in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein, will survive the test of time well.

Things look different at the margins. The academies still record even the smallest German varieties in terms of speaker numbers, which are found primarily in northern Italy. But the days of Cimbrian, Plodarian, Zahrerian, Tischelwangerian, or Fersentalerian may be numbered.