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| VOCABULARY DATABASE > GERMAN > INFORMATION |
Speakers. German belongs to the West Germanic group of languages. It is the mother tongue of more than 90 million people, most of which live in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Thus, German is the most widely spoken language in Europe.
Importance. Being one of the main cultural languages of the Western world, German has produced great literary persons such as Goethe, Schiller, and Thomas Mann, and many philosophers and scientists. German is one of the four major languages in scientific publications.
History. Standard "High German" ("Hochdeutsch") developed from central and southern dialects (Middle and Upper German, as opposed to Low German). It is used in the media and in higher education all over Germany. Yiddish is a dialect of High German spoken by Ashkenazic Jews. On the other hand, the "Low German" dialects of northern Germany were unable to develop a common literary standard.
Features. German is an inflected language with noun and adjective declension and has a number of irregular verbs. Its spelling system is consistent but complex. A recent reform (1998) did not succeed completely in its attempt to simplify it and is currently (2005) being revised. The German core vocabulary is smaller than that of English, and extensive word derivation by way of prefixes makes the language actually easier to learn than suggested by common belief.
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