Other small groups of people in Germany are Croats ( 0.2 million ) , Italians ( 0.6 million ) , Greeks ( 0.4 million ) , Russians , and Poles ( 0.3 million ) . Around the world , German has approximately 100 million native speakers and also about 80 million non-native speakers . German is the main language of about 90 million people ( 18 % ) in the EU .