Austria well as those with significant German speaking minorities: Italy, Belgium and Denmark. Many local dialects are spoken in Austria, and though their base is Austrian German, their corresponding speakers have certain degrees of difficulty when trying to understand each other. The common spoken language of Austria is not the Standard German taught in schools, however, but the Austro-Bavarian language: a group of Upper German dialects not particularly intelligible with Standard German. German languages or dialects are thus spoken natively by 88.6% of the population, which includes the 2.5% German citizens who reside in Austria, followed by Turkish (2.28%), Serbian (2.21%),
Official language a hurricane, pandemic, or...another terrorist attack". Professor of politics Alan Patten argues that disengagement (officially ignoring the issue) works well in religious issues but that it is not possible with language issues because it must offer public services in some language. Even if it makes a conscious effort not to establish an official language, a "de facto" official language, or the "national language", will nevertheless emerge. Indeed, two-thirds of Americans believe that English is the United States' official language. Sometimes an official language definition can be motivated more by national identity than by linguistic concerns. When Yugoslavia dissolved in 1991,