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German is the second-most widely spoken Germanic and West Germanic language after English, both as a first and a second language. Today, German is one of the major languages of the world. It is the most spoken native language within the European Union.
- German Is Easy to Learn. Let’s start off by debunking the myth that German is especially hard. Despite all the jokes that are being made about it being an impossible language, if you are an English speaker, you are actually already quite advantaged.
- It’s the Language of Inventors, Innovators and Engineers. It is said that Germany is the country of poets and thinkers — Das Land der Dichter und Denker.
- German Is Important in Academia. With that big a number of award-winning scientists from its home country, it might not come as a surprise that German is very important in the academic community.
- Germany Is an Economic Powerhouse. German is not only an interesting option for academics, but also those in the business world should consider brushing up on their Deutsch.
- Overview
- High German (Hochdeutsch)
- Low German (Plattdeutsch, or Niederdeutsch)
- Other major dialects
German language, official language of both Germany and Austria and one of the official languages of Switzerland. German belongs to the West Germanic group of the Indo-European language family, along with English, Frisian, and Dutch (Netherlandic, Flemish).
The recorded history of Germanic languages begins with their speakers’ first contact with the Romans, in the 1st century bce. At that time and for several centuries thereafter, there was only a single “Germanic” language, with little more than minor dialect differences. Only after about the 6th century ce can one speak of a “German” (i.e., High German) language.
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German is an inflected language with four cases for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative), three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter), and strong and weak verbs. Altogether, German is the native language of more than 90 million speakers and thus ranks among the languages with the most native speakers worldwide. German is widely studied as a foreign language and is one of the main cultural languages of the Western world.
As a written language, German is quite uniform; it differs in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland no more than written English does in the United States and the British Commonwealth. As a spoken language, however, German exists in many dialects, most of which belong to either the High German or Low German dialectal groups. The main difference between High and Low German is in the sound system, especially in the consonants. High German, the language of the southern highlands of Germany, is the official written language.
Old High German, a group of dialects for which there was no standard literary language, was spoken until about 1100 in the highlands of southern Germany. During Middle High German times (after 1100), a standard language based on the Upper German dialects (Alemannic and Bavarian) in the southernmost part of the German speech area began to arise. Middle High German was the language of an extensive literature that includes the early 13th-century epic Nibelungenlied.
Modern standard High German is descended from the Middle High German dialects and is spoken in the central and southern highlands of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. It is used as the language of administration, higher education, literature, and the mass media in the Low German speech area as well. Standard High German is based on, but not identical with, the Middle German dialect used by Martin Luther in his 16th-century translation of the Bible. Within the modern High German speech area, Middle and Upper German dialect groups are differentiated, the latter group including Austro-Bavarian, Alemannic (Swiss German), and High Franconian.
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Low German, with no single modern literary standard, is the spoken language of the lowlands of northern Germany. It developed from Old Saxon and the Middle Low German speech of the citizens of the Hanseatic League. The language supplied the Scandinavian languages with many loanwords, but, with the decline of the league, Low German declined as well.
Although the numerous Low German dialects are still spoken in the homes of northern Germany and a small amount of literature is written in them, no standard Low German literary or administrative language exists.
Alemannic dialects, which developed in the southwestern part of the Germanic speech area, differ considerably in sound system and grammar from standard High German. These dialects are spoken in Switzerland, western Austria, Swabia, and Liechtenstein and in the Alsace region of France. Yiddish, the language of the Ashkenazic Jews (Jews whose ancesto...
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Students of the Master’s degree programme in German as a foreign Language/ German as a second language explore the following fundamental questions: How do humans learn language(s)? What are the cognitive prerequisites to learning a language?
German literature, German literature comprises the written works of the German-speaking peoples of central Europe. It has shared the fate of German politics and history: fragmentation and discontinuity.
Germans are world leaders in engineering. German and English are similar. Many words in German sound or look the same as equivalent English words, because the two languages share the same “grandparent.”. For example, look at these words:
Oct 8, 2018 · Over 500 years ago, technology accelerated literature: More than anything else, printing processes made it possible for German-language texts to be read in large numbers in places around the globe.
