German (Deutsch) is a West Germanic language spoken by more than 120 million people in 38 countries of the world. Like English and French, German is a pluricentric language with Germany, Austria and Switzerland as the three main centers of usage.
Worldwide, German accounts for the most written translations into and from a language. Furthermore it belongs to the three most learned and to the ten most spoken languages worldwide (according to the Guinness Book of Records).
German is spoken primarily in Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, in two-thirds of Switzerland, in two-thirds of the South Tyrol province of Italy (in German, Südtirol), in the small East Cantons of Belgium, and in some border villages of the South Jutland County (in German, Nordschleswig, in Danish, Sønderjylland) of Denmark.
In Luxembourg (in German, Luxemburg), as well as in the French régions of Alsace (in German, Elsass) and parts of Lorraine (in German, Lothringen), the native populations speak several German dialects, and some people also master standard German (especially in Luxembourg), although in Alsace and Lorraine French has for the most part replaced the local German dialects in the last 40 years.
Some German speaking communities still survive in parts of Romania, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and above all Russia and Kazakhstan, although massive relocations to Germany in the late 1940s and 1990s have depopulated most of these communities. It is also spoken by German-speaking foreign populations and some of their descendants in Portugal, Spain, United Kingdom, Netherlands, and Scandinavia.
Outside of Europe and the former Soviet Union, the largest German speaking communities are to be found in the U.S., Brazil and in Argentina where millions of Germans migrated in the last 200 years; but the great majority of their descendants no longer speak German. Additionally, German speaking communities are to be found in the former German colony of Namibia, as well as in the other countries of German emigration such as Canada, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Peru, Venezuela (where Alemán Coloniero developed), South Africa, Thailand, and Australia. See also Plautdietsch.
In the USA, the largest concentrations of German speakers are in Pennsylvania (Amish, Hutterites and some Mennonites speak Pennsylvania German and Hutterite German), Texas (Texas German), Kansas (Mennonites and Volga Germans), North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wisconsin and Indiana. Early twentieth century immigration was often to St. Louis, Chicago, New York, and Cincinnati. Most of the post Second World War wave are in the New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago urban areas, and in Florida. In Brazil the largest concentrations of German speakers are in Rio Grande do Sul (where Riograndenser Hunsrückisch was developed), Santa Catarina, Paraná, and Espírito Santo. Generally, German immigrant communities in the USA have lost their mother tongue more quickly than those who moved to South America, possibly due to the fact that for German speakers, English is easier to learn than Portuguese or Spanish.
In Canada there are people of German ancestry throughout the country and especially in the west as well as in Ontario. There is a large and vibrant community in the city of Kitchener, Ontario.
German is the main language of about 100 million people in Europe (as of 2004), or 13.3% of all Europeans, being the second most spoken native language in Europe after Russian, above French (66.5 million speakers in 2004) and English (64.2 million speakers in 2004). German is the third most taught foreign language worldwide, also in the USA (after Spanish and French); it is the second most known foreign language in the EU (after English; see [1]) It is one of the official languages of the European Union, and one of the three working languages of the EU, along with English and French.
The history of the German language begins with the High German consonant shift during the Migration period, separating South Germanic dialects from common West Germanic. The earliest testimonies of Old High German are from scattered Elder Futhark inscriptions, especially in Alemannic, from the 6th century, the earliest glosses (Abrogans) date to the 8th and the oldest coherent texts (the Hildebrandslied, the Muspilli and the Merseburg Incantations) to the 9th century. Old Saxon at this time belongs to the North Sea Germanic cultural sphere, and Low German should fall under German rather than Anglo-Frisian influence during the Holy Roman Empire.
As Germany was divided into many different states, the only force working for a unification or standardisation of German during a period of several hundred years was the general preference of writers trying to write in a way that could be understood in the largest possible area.
When Martin Luther translated the Bible (the New Testament in 1522 and the Old Testament, published in parts and completed in 1534) he based his translation mainly on this already developed language, which was the most widely understood language at this time. This language was based on Eastern Upper and Eastern Central German dialects and preserved much of the grammatical system of Middle High German (unlike the spoken German dialects in Central and Upper Germany that already at that time began to lose the genitive case and the preterit tense). In the beginning, copies of the Bible had a long list for each region, which translated words unknown in the region into the regional dialect. Roman Catholics rejected Luther's translation in the beginning and tried to create their own Catholic standard (gemeines Deutsch) — which, however, only differed from 'Protestant German' in some minor details. It took until the middle of the 18th century to create a standard that was widely accepted, thus ending the period of Early New High German.
German used to be the language of commerce and government in the Habsburg Empire, which encompassed a large area of Central and Eastern Europe. Until the mid-19th century it was essentially the language of townspeople throughout most of the Empire. It indicated that the speaker was a merchant, an urbanite, not their nationality. Some cities, such as Prague (German: Prag) and Budapest (Buda, German: Ofen), were gradually Germanized in the years after their incorporation into the Habsburg domain. Others, such as Bratislava (German: Pressburg), were originally settled during the Habsburg period and were primarily German at that time. A few cities such as Milan (German: Mailand) remained primarily non-German. However, most cities were primarily German during this time, such as Prague, Budapest, Bratislava, Zagreb (German: Agram), and Ljubljana (German: Laibach), though they were surrounded by territory that spoke other languages.
Until about 1800, standard German was almost only a written language. At this time, people in urban northern Germany, who spoke dialects very different from Standard German, learnt it almost like a foreign language and tried to pronounce it as close to the spelling as possible. Prescriptive pronunciation guides used to consider northern German pronunciation to be the standard. However, the actual pronunciation of standard German varies from region to region.
Media and written works are almost all produced in standard German (often called Hochdeutsch in German) which is understood in all areas where German is spoken, except by pre-school children in areas which speak only dialect, for example Switzerland. However, in this age of television, even they now usually learn to understand Standard German before school age.
The first dictionary of the Brothers Grimm, the 16 parts of which were issued between 1852 and 1860, remains the most comprehensive guide to the words of the German language. In 1860, grammatical and orthographic rules first appeared in the Duden Handbook. In 1901, this was declared the standard definition of the German language. Official revisions of some of these rules were not issued until 1998, when the German spelling reform of 1996 was officially promulgated by governmental representatives of all German-speaking countries. Since the reform, German spelling has been in an eight-year transitional period where the reformed spelling is taught in most schools, while traditional and reformed spelling co-exist in the media. See German spelling reform of 1996 for an overview of the heated public debate concerning the reform with some major newspapers and magazines and several known writers refusing to adopt it.
After the spelling reform of 1996 let to so much public controversy and some of its changed rules introduced new ambiguities or were simply percieved as "ugly", the transitional period (initially scheduled to end on Dec, 31. 2005) was extended until at least end 2006 and some parts of the reform were changed again in March 2006. This new "reform of the reform" tries to remove the ambiguities introduced in 1996. To date (April 2006), it is yet to be accepted by all german speaking countries.
German is a member of the western branch of the Germanic family of languages, which in turn is part of the Indo-European language family.
In these modern days Germany is surrounded by language borders, in the north by the Frisian and Danish; in the east Polish, Sorbian, Czech, Slovak, and Hungarian; in the south Slovenian, Italian, Friulian, Ladin, and Romansh; in the west French and Dutch. Except for Frisian and Dutch, none of these languages are West Germanic, and so they are clearly distinct from German. Frisian, after Scots, the closest related living language to English; and Dutch, the closest related living language to German are generally considered not to be mutually intelligible with German. Although a dialect continuum still exists at certain places along the Dutch-German language border this is fading away because of standardisation in both countries, as can be seen in the pictures to the right in which the dialectal borders and the standard borders can be seen.
While German is grammatically quite similar to Dutch in many ways, it is very different in speech. Speakers of one, especially Germans, require practice to effectively understand a speaker of the other. Compare, for example:
Dutch speakers are generally able to read German, and German speakers who can speak Low German or English are generally able to read Dutch, but have problems understanding the spoken language. Germans who speak High German, or, even better, Low German, can cope with Dutch much better than people from Southern Germany, Switzerland and Austria who have grown up with the Alemannic or Bavarian dialects.
Standard German is the only official language in Liechtenstein and Austria; it shares official status in Germany (with Danish and Sorbian as minority languages), Switzerland (with French, Italian and Romansh), and Luxembourg (with French and Luxembourgish). It is used as a local official language in German-speaking regions of Belgium, Italy, Denmark, and Poland. It is one of the 20 official languages of the European Union.
It is also a minority language in Poland, Canada, France, Russia, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania, Togo, Cameroon, the USA, Namibia, Brazil, Paraguay, Hungary, Slovakia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Croatia, Ukraine, Argentina, and Australia.
German was once the lingua franca of central, eastern and northern Europe, but first Russian and now English have assumed much of this role. However, German remains one of the most popular foreign languages taught world-wide, and is more popular than French as a foreign language in Europe. 8% of citizens of the EU-15 countries say they can converse in German, in addition to the 24% who speak German as a mother tongue.[2] This is assisted by the availability of German TV by cable or satellite, where series like Star Trek are shown dubbed into German.
German is also the second language of the Internet. More than 8% of websites are written in German, English 50%, French 6%, Japanese 5%, Spanish 3% and Portuguese 2%.
In German linguistics, only the traditional regional varieties are called dialects, not the different varieties of standard German.
Standard German has originated not as a traditional dialect of a specific region, but as a written language. However, there are places where the traditional regional dialects have been replaced by standard German (especially in major cities of Germany, and to some extent in Vienna).
Standard German differs regionally, especially between German-speaking countries, especially in vocabulary, but also in some instances of pronunciation and even grammar. This variation must not be confused with the variation of local dialects. Even though the regional varieties of standard German are to a certain degree influenced by the local dialects, they are very distinct. German is thus considered a pluricentric language.
In most regions, the speakers use a continuum of mixtures from more dialectical varieties to more standard varieties according to situation.
In the German-speaking parts of Switzerland, mixtures of dialect and standard are very seldom used, and the use of standard German is almost entirely restricted to the written language. Therefore, this situation has been called a medial diglossia. Standard German is rarely spoken, for instance when speaking with people who do not understand the Swiss German dialects at all, and it is expected to be used in school.
German is an inflected language.
German nouns inflect into:
Although German is usually cited as an outstanding example of a highly inflected language, it should be noted that the degree of inflection is considerably less than in Old German, or in Icelandic today. The three genders have collapsed in the plural, which now behaves, grammatically, somewhat as a fourth gender. With four cases and three genders plus plural there are 16 distinct possible combinations of case and gender/number, but presently there are only six forms of the definite article used for the 16 possibilities. Inflection for case on the noun itself is required in the singular for strong masculine and neuter nouns in the genitive and sometimes in the dative. This dative ending is considered somewhat old-fashioned in many contexts and often dropped, but it is still used in sayings and in formal speech or written language. Weak masculine nouns share a common case ending for genitive, dative and accusative in the singular. Feminines are not declined in the singular. The plural does have an inflection for the dative. In total, six inflectional endings (not counting plural markers) exist in German: -s, -es, -n, -en, -ns, -e
In the German orthography, nouns and most words with the syntactical function of nouns are capitalized, which makes it quite easy for readers to find out what function a word has within the sentence. On the other hand, things get more difficult for the writer. This spelling convention is almost unique to German today (shared perhaps only by the closely related Luxembourgish language), although it was historically common in other languages (e.g., Danish), too.
Like most Germanic languages, German forms left-branching noun compounds, where the first noun modifies the category given by the second, for example: Hundehütte (eng. doghouse). Unlike English, where newer compounds or combinations of longer nouns are often written in open form with separating spaces, German (like the other German languages) always uses the closed form without spaces, for example: Baumhaus (eng. tree house). Like English, German allows arbitrarily long compounds, but these are rare. (See also English compounds.) The longest official German word is Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz. There is even a child's game played in kindergartens and primary schools where a child begins the spelling of a word (which is not told) by naming the first letter. The next one tells the next letter, the third one tells the third and so on. The game is over when the a child cannot think of another letter to be added to the word (see Ghost). Another popular child's game consists of building a noun compound. The first child starts with a noun or more commonly already a compound (Donaudampfschifffahrtskapitän (Danube Steam-boat captain) is somewhat popular and infamous). The next child has to append another noun so that the compound still has a sensible meaning (Example: Donaudampfschifffahrtskaptiän -> Donaudampfschiffahrtskapitänsmütze (Danube Steam-boat captain's hat) -> Donaudampfschifffahrtskapitänsmützenfabrik (Danube Steam-boat captain's hat factory) and so on). The game ends when the next child can't think of a word to append that would yield a meaningful compound.
Standard German verbs inflect into:
(Note: in fact there is a third class, called "gemischte Verben", which can be either weak ("active meaning") or strong ("passive meaning"). There are about 200 strong or irregular verbs.)
There are also many ways to expand, and sometimes radically change, the meaning of a base verb through several prefixes. Examples: haften=to stick, verhaften=to imprison; kaufen=to buy, verkaufen=to sell; hören=to hear, aufhören=to cease.
The word order is much more flexible than in English. The word order can be changed for subtle changes of a sentence's meaning. In normal positive sentences the verb always has position 2, in questions it has position 1.
Most German vocabulary is derived from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, although there are significant minorities of words derived from Latin, French, and most recently English (which is known as Germish (in English) or Denglisch (in German)).
German is written using the Latin alphabet. In addition to the 26 standard letters, German has three vowels with Umlaut, namely ä, ö and ü, as well as a special symbol for "ss", the Eszett or Scharfes-S (sharp "s") ß.
In traditional German spelling, ß replaces inseparable "ss" before consonants, word-, or partial-word-endings. If "ss" or "ß" was to be used mostly had to be memorized, and was a constant source of misspellings. In reform spelling the usage rules for "ß" were streamlined. Now "ss" is to be used after short single vowels and at word endings, while "ß" is to be used after diphtongs and long vowels and can not appear at word endlings, that is, in places, where it originally replaced sz. Since there is no capital "ß", in capitalized writing "ß" is always written as "SS" (Example: Maßband (Tape measure) in normal writing, but MASSBAND in capitalized writing.) ß is not used at all in Switzerland.
Umlaut vowels (ä,ö,ü) can be circumscibed with ae, oe and ue if the umlauts are not available on the keyboard used. In the same manner "ß" can be circumscribed as "ss". German readers understand those circumscriptions (although they look unusual), but they are avoided if the regular umlauts are available since "ae", "oe" and "ue" can in rare cases also mean a prologued regular vowel with silent "e", in the manner of "ah", "oh" and "uh".
Until the early 20th century, German was mostly printed in blackletter typefaces (mostly in Fraktur, but also in Schwabacher) and written in corresponding handwriting (for example Kurrent and Sütterlin). These variants of the Latin alphabet are very different from the serif or sans serif antiqua typefaces used today, and particularly the handwritten forms are difficult for the untrained to read. The printed forms however are claimed by some to be actually more readable when used for printing Germanic languages. The Nazis initially promoted Fraktur and Schwabacher since they were considered Aryan, although they later abolished them in 1941 by claiming that these letters were Jewish.
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "German language".
last update April 28th, 2006