Most of the white population speaks either German or Afrikaans. Even today,  years after the end of the German colonial era, German plays a role as a commercial language. Afrikaans is spoken by 60% of the white community, German by 32%, English by 7% and Portuguese by 4–5%. Geographical proximity to Portuguese-speaking Angola explains the relatively high number of Portuguese speakers; in 2011 these were estimated to be 100,000, or 4–5% of the total population.