German Brazilians (German: Deutschbrasilianer, Hunsrik: Deitschbrasiliooner, ) refers to Brazilians of full or partial German ancestry. German Brazilians live mostly in the country's South Region, with a smaller but still significant percentage living in Southeast Region. Between 1824 and 1972, about 260,000 Germans settled in Brazil, the fifth largest nationality to immigrate after the Portuguese, the Italians, the Spanish, and the Japanese. By 1940, the German diaspora in Brazil totaled about a million. The rapid increase in numbers was due to a relatively high birth rate, the highest in Brazil amongst immigrant groups although still lower than that of the local population. The majority settled in the Brazilian states of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, Paraná, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Less than 5% of Germans settled in Minas Gerais, Pernambuco, and Espírito Santo. According to a 1999 survey by IBGE researcher Simon Schwartzman, in a representative sample of the Brazilian population 3.6% said they had some degree of German ancestry, a percentage that in a population of about 200 million amount to 7.2 million descendants. In 2004, Deutsche Welle cited the number of 5 million Brazilians of German descent. According to a 2016 survey published by Institute of Applied Economic Research, in a universe of 46,801,772 names of Brazilians analyzed, 1,525,890 or 3.3% of them had the only or the last surname of German origin, a proportion that represents about 6.7 million individuals if applied to the entire population in that year. German dialects together make up the second most spoken first language in Brazil after Portuguese. A few Brazilian municipalities have Brazilian Hunsrückisch and Germanic East Pomeranian as co-official with Portuguese, they are located in Southern Brazil and Espírito Santo. It's estimated that between 2 to 3 million people can speak Brazilian Hunsrückisch. Overview The 19th century was marked by an intense emigration of Europeans to different parts of the world, which led to a process of Europeanisation of these areas. Between 1816 and 1850, 5 million people left Europe; between 1850 and 1880 another 22 million people emigrated. Between 1846 and 1932, 60 million Europeans emigrated. Many Germans left the German states after the failed revolutions of 1848. Between 1878 and 1892, another 7 million Germans left Germany; after the 1870s Germany was one of the countries from which the largest numbers of people emigrated, the vast majority to the United States. From 1820 to