1951: (Non-Imperial) Regionally Official German Apr 18, 2020

If one were to be asked to think of a European ethnic group who settled in Soviet Kazakhstan, it would be reasonable to think of Russians, but also nearly a million Germans lived there by 1989. Cases like this with Kasachstandeutsche as they are called, along with similar situations Eastern Europe, Siberia, and in South America (especially in the states of Espírito Santo and Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil)—all of which Germans fled to during or after the Second World War—have led to certain regions which were never formally part of the German Empire adopting German as an official, regional language. In the last two or three decades especially however, the German speech and overall populations have declined.

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