ABSTRACT
Luxembourg is the only state in which German is the national official language but neither a national language nor the native language of a significant part of the population, held to be important for the history of the country. In Germany – officially, The Federal Republic of Germany, because the former German democratic republic joined the former federal republic of Germany after reunification – German is the sole national official language. Because of the large majority of citizens with German as their native language, German is, at the same time, the national language. In Switzerland, German is a national official language as in Luxembourg, but not sole-official, as in Germany, Austria and Liechtenstein, but co-official with other national official languages. The avoidance of Standard German by German-speaking Swiss wherever possible, especially in private conversations, can be interpreted as a mild form of distancing from the German language.
