If you want to live in a city with low stress, brush up on your German. Seven of the 10 least stressful cities in the world are places where the dominant spoken language is German, based on data gathered by British company Zipjet.

Germany placed four cities in the top 10, including the top municipality, Stuttgart. Other German cities to make the list were Hannover (third), Munich (fifth) and Hamburg (10th).

Other cities on the list where German is the primary language spoken are Luxembourg (second); Bern, Switzerland (fourth); and Graz, Austria (ninth).

Also making the top 10 were Bordeaux, France (sixth); Edinburgh, United Kingdom (seventh); and Sydney, Australia (eighth).

The American city with the lowest stress was Seattle, which ranked 12th. Other U.S. cities on the list were Boston (35th); San Francisco (40th); Washington, D.C. (58th); Miami (80th); Los Angeles (81st); Chicago (83rd); and New York (84th).

The most stressful city among the 150 cities on the list was Baghdad. The bottom 10 cities were in either Africa or Asia.

Zipjet, which endeavors to develop technology to reduce stress in people’s lives, looked at various factors to determine the well-being of a city’s population. It examined major stress-inducing factors, including unemployment, debt per capita, traffic, public transport, security, pollution and density. The company also weighed elements such as lack of sunshine hours, which has been linked to poor mental health.

Florian Färber, managing director of Zipjet, said:

Mental health problems are on the rise worldwide, with stress being a trigger and contributing factor toward this increase. We hope that by pinpointing how the least stressful cities are managing this issue, those cities struggling with a stressed out population can overcome it.

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