36 Facts About German language

German is most similar to other languages within the West Germanic language branch, including Afrikaans, Dutch, English, the Frisian languages, Low German, Luxembourgish, Scots, and Yiddish.

German is the second most widely spoken Germanic language after English, which is a West Germanic language.

The German language has been influential in the fields of philosophy, theology, science, and technology.

The German language-speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of annual publication of new books, with one-tenth of all books in the world being published in German language.

German is an Indo-European language and belongs to the West Germanic group of the Germanic languages.

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Also related to German are the Frisian languages—North Frisian, Saterland Frisian (spoken in Saterland), and West Frisian (spoken in Friesland)—as well as the Anglic languages of English and Scots.

At this point monasteries, where most written works were produced, were dominated by Latin, and German language saw only occasional use in official and ecclesiastical writing.

ENHG period saw the rise of several important cross-regional forms of chancery German language, one being gemeine tiutsch, used in the court of the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, and the other being Meißner Deutsch, used in the Electorate of Saxony in the Duchy of Saxe-Wittenberg.

German language's Bible was ubiquitous in the German states: nearly every household possessed a copy.

Nevertheless, even with the influence of Luther's Bible as an unofficial written standard, a widely accepted standard for written German language did not appear until the middle of the eighteenth century.

In Northern Germany, Standard German was a foreign language to most inhabitants, whose native dialects were subsets of Low German.

However, an exact, global number of native German speakers is complicated by the existence of several varieties whose status as separate "languages" or "dialects" is disputed for political and linguistic reasons, including quantitatively strong varieties like certain forms of Alemannic and Low German.

German language has nowadays almost entirely yielded to its two successors, French and English.

However, as a foreign language subject German still enjoys huge popularity among pupils and students, with 300, 000 people learning or speaking German in Cameroon in 2010.

Today, Namibia is considered to be the only German language-speaking country outside of the Sprachraum in Europe.

In Brazil, the largest concentrations of German language speakers are in the states of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, and Espirito Santo.

Usage of German language sharply declined with the advent of World War I, due to the prevailing anti-German language sentiment in the population and related government action.

German language was once, and to some extent still is, a lingua franca in those parts of Europe.

Basis of Standard High German developed with the Luther Bible and the chancery language spoken by the Saxon court.

The varieties of Standard High German language refer to the different local varieties of the pluricentric Standard High German language.

Swiss Standard German language is used in the Swiss education system, while Austrian German language is officially used in the Austrian education system.

Variation among the German language dialects is considerable, with often only neighbouring dialects being mutually intelligible.

The Early New High German language gained more prestige than Low German and became the language of science and literature.

Gradually, Low German language came to be politically viewed as a mere dialect spoken by the uneducated.

The High German varieties spoken by the Ashkenazi Jews have several unique features and are considered as a separate language, Yiddish, written with the Hebrew alphabet.

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Franconian, West Central German language dialects are the Central Franconian dialects and the Rhine Franconian dialects (Hessian and Palatine).

Upper German language dialects are the Alemannic and Swabian dialects in the west and the Bavarian dialects in the east.

Many German language verbs have a separable prefix, often with an adverbial function.

German language requires a verbal element to appear second in the sentence.

Position of a noun in a German language sentence has no bearing on its being a subject, an object or another argument.

The, initiated by the Brothers Grimm (Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm) and the most comprehensive guide to the vocabulary of the German language, already contained over 330, 000 headwords in its first edition.

The Duden had become the bible of the German language, being the definitive set of rules regarding grammar, spelling, and usage of German.

German language readers understand these transcriptions, but they are avoided if the regular umlauts are available, because they are a makeshift and not proper spelling.

Until the early 20th century, German language was printed in blackletter typefaces, and written in corresponding handwriting (for example Kurrent and Sutterlin).

German language is used in German literature and can be traced back to the Middle Ages, with the most notable authors of the period being Walther von der Vogelweide and Wolfram von Eschenbach.

Fourteen German language-speaking people have won the Nobel Prize in literature: Theodor Mommsen, Rudolf Christoph Eucken, Paul von Heyse, Gerhart Hauptmann, Carl Spitteler, Thomas Mann, Nelly Sachs, Hermann Hesse, Heinrich Boll, Elias Canetti, Gunter Grass, Elfriede Jelinek, Herta Muller and Peter Handke, making it the second most awarded linguistic region after English.