German language in Namibia

Namibia is a multilingual country in which German is recognised as a national language. While English has been the sole official language of the country since 1990, in many areas of the country, German enjoys official status at a community level.^[1] A national variety of German is also known as Namdeutsch.

German is especially widely used in central and southern Namibia and was until 1990 one of three official languages in what was then South West Africa, alongside Afrikaans and English, two other Germanic languages in Namibia. German is the mother tongue of German Namibians as well as older black speakers of Namibian Black German and Black Namibians who as children grew up in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) during the last decades of the Cold War. The German Namibian newspaper Allgemeine Zeitung on its website refers to 22,000 native speakers and of several hundred thousand who know German as a second or third language. German benefits from its similarity to Afrikaans and has a prominent position in the tourism and business sectors. Many Namibian natural features, place and street names have German names. However, Germanic linguist Ulrich Ammon sees the future of German in Namibia as threatened.^[2]