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%),
States of Austria arable terrain. The other five states, in contrast, are located in the Alps and thus are comparatively unsuitable for agriculture. Their terrain is also relatively unfavourable to heavy industry and long-distance trade. Accordingly, the population of what now is the Republic of Austria has been concentrated in the former four states since prehistoric times. Austria's most densely populated state is the city-state of Vienna, the heart of what is Austria's only metropolitan area. Lower Austria ranks only fourth with regard to population density even though it contains Vienna's suburbs; this is due to large areas of land being predominantly agricultural.