BASIC
INFORMATION
Full
Name: AUSTRIA
Capital
Vienna
Largest city Vienna
Official language
German (official)
Slovenian (reg.) Croatian (reg.)
Hungarian (reg.)
Government
Republic
Area 83,871 km²
Population
8,280,703
Currency Euro (EUR)
Time
zone (UTC +1)
Internet
TLD .at
Calling
code +43
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GEOGRAPHY
& BACKGROUND
Austria
(German: Österreich, Slovenian: Avstrija,
Croatian: Austrija, Hungarian: Ausztria;
see also other languages) is a landlocked
country in central Europe. It borders Germany
and the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia
and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy
to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein
to the west. Its capital city is Vienna.
Austria
is a parliamentary representative democracy
consisting of nine federal states and is
one of six European countries that have
declared permanent neutrality and one of
the few countries that included the concept
of everlasting neutrality in their constitution.
Austria is a member of the United Nations
(since 1955) and the European Union (since
1995).
Austria's
population was estimated in July, 2006 as
8,280,703 persons. The population of the
capital, Vienna, exceeds 1.6 million (2
million with suburbs), representing about
a quarter of the country's population, and
is said to constitute a melting pot of citizens
from all over Central and Eastern Europe.
In contrast to the capital, other cities
do not exceed 1 million inhabitants: the
second largest city Graz is home of 245,000
people, followed by Linz with 188,000, Salzburg
with 150,000, and Innsbruck with 117,000.
All other cities have fewer than 100,000
inhabitants.
German-speaking
Austrians, by far the country's largest
group, form roughly 90% of Austria's population.
The Austrian federal states of Carinthia
and Styria are home to a significant (indigenous)
Slovenian minority with around 14,000 members
(Austrian census; unofficial numbers of
Slovene groups speak of about 40,000). Around
20,000 Hungarians and 30,000 Croatians live
in the east-most Bundesland, Burgenland
(formerly part of Hungary). The remaining
number of Austria's people are of non-Austrian
descent, many from surrounding countries,
especially from the former East Bloc nations.
So-called guest workers (Gastarbeiter) and
their descendants also form an important
minority group in Austria.
According
to the 2001 census, the mother tongue of
the population by prevalance, is German
(88.6%) followed by Turkish (2.3%), Serbian
(2.2%), Croatian (1.6%), Hungarian (0.5%)
and Bosnian (0.4%)[1]. The official language,
German, is spoken by almost all residents
of the country. Austria's mountainous terrain
led to the development of many distinct
German dialects. All of the dialects in
the country, however, belong to Austro-Bavarian
groups of German dialects, with the exception
of the dialect spoken in its west-most Bundesland,
Vorarlberg, which belongs to the group of
Alemannic dialects. There is also a distinct
grammatical standard for Austrian German
with a few differences to the German spoken
in Germany.
