Fact is that over 6 million students in the US currently choose German to fulfill their foreign language requirements. That is only a very small part of the overall 100 + million people in the world who currently learn German as their second language. Unknown to most is the fact, that the German language is spoken by more people in Europe than any other language. 110 + million Europeans speak German as their native tongue. This includes citizens of Austria, Germany, Luxembourg, and parts of Switzerland, as well as many people living close to the border with Germany in surrounding countries, including the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Poland.

Did you know that the German language is an “official” language at the Vatican where the Swiss Guards use the German language as their language of choice?

Some of Europe’s most important novels also have German roots and were written and first published in the German language. That includes Goethe’s “Faust” or Lessing’s “Nathan the Wise” or more modern novels like Hermann Hesse’s “Steppenwolf”, novels of Kafka or Max Fritsch’s books “Homo Faber” and “Andorra”.

More books in the German language in the fields of medicine, chemistry, physics and math have been issued in the 19th and 20th century than in any other language.

There are also more US subsidiaries from German speaking parent companies in the Carolinas than those from any other nation in the world and over 400 US subsidiaries of parent companies from German speaking countries have invested in excess of 6 billion dollars and employ over 40,000 staff.

In South Carolina, German companies represent the single largest investment in the state, in comparison with other nations and thanks to the manufacturing plant of BMW in Greer, SC the number of companies from German speaking countries locating their US headquarters in the Carolinas is still growing. Just like in North Carolina

Is now not the time for your children to study the German language?