German
is one of the main cultural languages of the Western world,
spoken by approximately 100 million people. It is the national
language of both Germany and Austria, and is one of the four
official languages of Switzerland. Additionally it is spoken
in eastern France, in the region formerly known as Alsace-Lorraine,
in northern Italy in the region of Alto Adige, and also in eastern
Belgium, Luxembourg, and the principality of Liechtenstein.
There are about one and a half million speakers of German in
the United States, 500,000 in Canada and sizable colonies as
well in South America and such far-flung countries as Namibia
and Kazakhstan.
Like
the other Germanic languages, German is a member of the Indo-European
family. Written German is quite uniform but spoken dialects
vary considerably, sometimes to the point where communication
becomes a problem. The dialects fall within two general divisions:
High German (Hochdeutsch), spoken in the highlands of the south,
and Low German (Plattdeutsch), spoken in the lowlands of the
north. High German is the standard written language, used almost
exclusively in books and newspapers, even in the regions where
Low German is more commonly spoken. Low German sounds more like
English and Dutch, as may be seen by such words as Door (door—High
German: Tür), and eten (to eat—High German: essen).
Traditionally
German was written in a Gothic style known as Fraktur, which
dates from the 14th century. In the period following World War
II, however, Fraktur was largely superseded by the Roman characters
used throughout the rest of Western Europe. The Roman script
contains only one additional letter, the ß or double s,
which is used only in the lower case. The letter j is pronounced
y (e.g., ja—yes), v is pronounced f (vier—four),
and w is pronounced v (weiss—white). Combined consonants
include sch, pronounced sh (Schnee—snow); st, pronounced
sht (Strasse—street) sp, pronounced shp (sprechen—to
speak). The only diacritical mark is the umlaut, which appears
over the letters a, o, and u (Rücken—back). German
is the only language in which all nouns begin with a capital
letter.
Since
English is a Germanic language, it is not surprising to find
a high degree of similarity in the vocabulary of the two languages.
Finger, Hand, Butter, Ring, Name, warm, and blind are German
words meaning exactly what they do in English. Other words that
are very similar to their English counterparts are Vater (father),
Mutter (mother), Freund (friend), Gott (God), Licht (light),
Wasser (water), Feuer (fire), Silber (silver), Brot (bread),
Milch (milk), Fisch (fish), Apfel (apple), Buch (book), gut
(good), alt (old), kalt (cold), and blau (blue). More recent
German borrowings in English are schnitzel, sauerkraut, pumpernickel,
kindergarten, dachshund, poodle, yodel, lager, ersatz, edelweiss,
meerschaum, wanderlust, hinterland, and blitzkrieg. The words
frankfurter and hamburger come from the German cities of Frankfurt
and Hamburg respectively.
The
word for German in other languages takes many different forms.
In German itself it is deutsch, in Spanish alemán, in
Italian tedesco, in the Scandinavian languages tysk, and in
Russian nemetsky.
