Germans of Romania in the context of "Transylvanian Saxon dialect"

German (Deutsch, pronounced [dɔʏtʃ] ) is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family, mainly spoken in Western and Central Europe. It is the majority and official (or co-official) language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein. It is also an official language of Luxembourg, Belgium and the Italian autonomous province of South Tyrol, as well as a recognized national language in Namibia. There are also notable German-speaking communities in other parts of Europe, including: Poland (Upper Silesia), the Czech Republic (North Bohemia), Denmark (North Schleswig), Slovakia (Krahule), Romania, Hungary (Sopron), and France (Alsace). Overseas, sizeable communities of German-speakers are found in the Americas.

German is one of the major languages of the world, with nearly 80 million native speakers and over 130 million total speakers as of 2024. It is the most spoken native language within the European Union. German is the second-most widely spoken Germanic language, after English, both as a first and as a second language. German is also widely taught as a foreign language, especially in continental Europe (where it is the third most taught foreign language after English and French) and in the United States (where it is the third most commonly learned second language in K-12 education and among the most studied foreign languages in higher education after Spanish and French). Overall, German is the fourth most commonly learned second language globally. The language has been influential in the fields of philosophy, theology, science, and technology. It is the second most commonly used language in science and the third most widely used language on websites. The German-speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of annual publication of new books, with one-tenth of all books (including e-books) in the world being published in German.

The Banat Swabians are an ethnic German population in the former Kingdom of Hungary in Central-Southeast Europe, part of the Danube Swabians and Germans of Romania. They emigrated in the 18th century to what was then the Austrian Empire's Banat of Temeswar province, a province which had been left sparsely populated by the wars with the Ottoman Empire. At the end of World War I in 1918, the Swabian minority worked together with the Hungarians and Jews to establish an independent multi-ethnic Banat Republic; however, the province was divided by the Treaty of Versailles of 1919, and the Treaty of Trianon of 1920. The greater part was annexed by Romania, a smaller part by the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (since 1929 Yugoslavia) and a small region around Szeged remained part of Hungary.

Following World War II most Banat Swabians were expelled to the West by the Soviet Union and its subsidiaries, and after 1990 and the fall of the Soviet Union and its republics many of those remaining left for economic and emotional reasons.

The Romanian diaspora is the ethnically Romanian population outside Romania and Moldova. The concept does not usually include the ethnic Romanians who live as natives in nearby states, chiefly those Romanians who live in Ukraine, Hungary, Serbia, and Bulgaria. Therefore, the number of all Romanians abroad is estimated at 4–12 million people, depending on one's definition of the term "Romanian" as well as the inclusion respectively exclusion of ethnic Romanians living in nearby countries where they are indigenous. The definition of "who is a Romanian?" may range from rigorous conservative estimates based on self-identification and official statistics to estimates that include people of Romanian ancestry born in their respective countries as well as people born to various ethnic-minorities from Romania. As of 2015/16, over 97% of Romanian emigrants resided in OECD countries; and about 90% of Romanian emigrants in OECD countries lived in Europe, with the most common country of residence being Italy. The vast majority of Romanian emigrants are based in just ten countries, with the most common countries being Italy, Germany, Spain, United Kingdom, United States, Hungary, France and Canada.

Over one million Romanians live in Italy. Large Romanian populations exist in Spain, the UK and Germany, with the latter including many Germans of Romania.

Romanian Catholics, like Catholics elsewhere, are members of the Catholic Church under the spiritual leadership of the Pope in Rome. The administration for the local Latin Church is centered in Bucharest, and comprises two archdioceses and four other dioceses. It is the second largest Romanian denomination after the Romanian Orthodox Church, and one of the 18 state-recognized religions. The 2022 census indicated that there were 741,504 Romanian citizens adhering to the Latin Church (3.89% of the population). Of these, the largest groups were Hungarians (54.7% or 405,212, including Székely and Csángó), Romanians (38.2% or 283,092), Germans (1.7% or 12,495) and Slovaks (0.9% or 6,853).

Most Romanian Latin Catholics inhabit the region of Transylvania and Bacău County in Moldavia. Smaller Latin Catholic communities exist among Banat Bulgarians, Italian-Romanians, Polish-Romanians, Croat-Romanians and Krashovani, Czech-Romanians and the local Romani people.

Țara Bârsei (German: Burzenland listen; Hungarian: Barcaság) is a historic and ethnographic area in Brașov County, southeastern Transylvania, Romania with a mixed population of Romanians, Germans, and Hungarians.

The Dobrujan Germans (German: Dobrudschadeutsche) were an ethnic German group, within the larger category of Black Sea Germans, for over one hundred years. German-speaking colonists entered the approximately 23,000 km area of Dobruja around 1840 and mostly left during the relocation of 1940. Dobruja is a historical region on the west coast of the Black Sea. They are part of the Romanian Germans and Bulgarian Germans.