ABSTRACT
Hamburg is the second largest German city, situated in the north of the country with 1.7 million inhabitants. It traditionally considers itself a liberal, hospitable, broad-minded town, and the official city motto reads, ‘Hamburg —gateway to the world’. Because of its port, and its tradition of worldwide trade, Hamburg has always been a multilingual, pluricultural place, and the first part of this chapter presents some impressions of the kind of linguistic and cultural diversity that is to be found in Hamburg today.
