Language Diversity - Language Diversity - Map of Minorities & Regional and Minority Languages of Europe for and about linguistic and cultural diversity in Europe.

Language

German (Deutsch)

Description

The German language belongs to the West-Germanic group of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family.

There are approximately 90 to 98 million mother tongue speakers of German, and at least 80 million people who speak it as a foreign language.

German is spoken in the German language area in Germany, Austria, the German-speaking part of Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, East-Belgium, South Tyrol, in Alsace and Lorraine and by minorities in other Central- and East-European countries and some countries outside Europe. German is recognised as a minority language in Brazil, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kirgizstan, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary and South Africa. German is a national language in Namibia, Africa. The language has also an official status in Poland (“auxiliary language” in several municipalities) and Denmark (working language and language of administration of the German minority in Denmark).

Together with Dutch and Low German, German forms a linguistic continuum of continental-West-Germanic languages. It comprises of the German language standard that was created on the basis of high German dialects, and is also called “High German” (Hochdeutsch), and also of many different local Middle German and South-German (Upper German) dialects.

Important Words

  • Hello - Hallo
  • Bye - Tschüss
  • Thank you - Danke
  • Please - Bitte
  • Cheers- Prost
  • Use your tongue not just for kissing - Nutze deine Zunge nicht nur zum Küssen
  • You are not alone - Du bist nicht allein

Special

German is, next to Luxembourgian, the only language in which the nouns are always written with a capital. One of the most noticeable features of German are the so-called “umlaute” ä, ö and ü. German is a language in which verbs that are composed of different parts will end up on either side of the rest of the sentence. Furthermore German has a rich system of word-formation, e.g. you can make compositions like Kran­ken­ver­sicher­ungs­än­der­ungs­ge­setz (health insurance amending act) that form just one word.

Language families

  1. Indo-European
  2. Germanic
  3. West-Germanic
  4. German

Minorities

Carpathian Germans in Slovakia (5.500 Speaker)
Germans in Moldova (7.300 Speaker)
Hungarian Germans in Hungary (220.000 Speaker)
Germans in Lithuania (2.000 Speaker)
Germans in Estonia (1.300 Speaker)
Germans in Poland (450.000 Speaker)
Germans in Latvia (1.800 Speaker)
Russian Germans in Russia (842.000 Speaker)
Germans in Romania (60.000 Speaker)
Germans in Ukraine (38.000 Speaker)
Germans in Turkey (5.000 Speaker)
German-speaking Swiss in Switzerland (4.131.000 Speaker)
North Schleswig Germans in Denmark (20.000 Speaker)
South Tyroleans in Italy (304.000 Speaker)
Germans in France (1.400.000 Speaker)
Germans in Belgium (66.000 Speaker)
Germans in Serbia (5.400 Speaker)
Gottschee Germans in Slovenia (1.000 Speaker)
Germans in Czech Republic (38.000 Speaker)
Germans in Croatia (3.000 Speaker)