This chapter discusses the present situation and future prospects of the German language, with emphasis on the international standing of the language. Measuring (in whatever loose or more rigorous sense) the international standing of languages in comparison to other languages is a hazardous task even for any point of time for which reasonably reliable data are available, since it is easy to question the validity of any data for the ideas that they supposedly represent. Uncertainty increases in the case of prediction, the more so the further into the future that such predictions are made (see Chapter 6 of this volume). There are, however, numerous data available with respect to the international standing of languages, even data that enable some sort of prediction; see, for example, Truchot 1990; Ammon 1991; 1998; Crystal 1997; Graddol 1997).

What do we mean by the ‘international standing of a language’?

We may mean a host of different things when we use this phrase: we may be referring to countries around the world where we find substantial groups of speakers of the language, native or non-native, to the countries in which the language has some sort of official status or official function, where it is learned as a school subject or serves as a medium of instruction, and so on. The terms in the previous sentence can all be interpreted in various ways, or designate a range of possible meanings.