10 facts about German
Friday, 17th April 2009
Although German normally ranks behind French and Spanish in the popularity stakes when it comes to language learning, it is actually a very interesting language to study. Here are 10 facts about the language that you may not know...
1. German is part of the West Germanic group of languages within the Indo-European language family and is a close relative of English.
2. As is the case in many foreign languages, all nouns in German have a specific gender. German is different to a lot of the Latin languages though, in that it has not 2 but 3 genders - in addition to ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ it also has ‘neuter’.
der - masculine
die - feminine
das - neuter
3. Today German is spoken by more than 100 million people worldwide.
4. It is spoken in Germany, Austria, a large part of Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, the South Tyrol region of Italy, the Opole Voivodship of Poland, parts of Belgium, parts of Romania and the Alsace region of France. Several former German colonies, such as Namibia, also have remaining pockets of German speakers.
5. The dialects of German are typically divided into High German and Low German. The Low German dialects are more closely related to ‘Lower Franconian’ languages such as Dutch than to the High German dialects, which are closer to what we associate with the German that we hear on the international stage.
6. Following the American Wars of Independence, the Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia and considered adopting a new language for the future of the United States. When it came to the vote, English was chosen above German as the language of the new republic – reputedly only by one vote!
7. The first printed book in the world was in German. Johannes Gutenberg invented book printing and printed the first book in the world - a 42-page bible - in 1455. Martin Luther had translated the Bible from Latin into German to make it available to common people - who could not read Latin - that language of the Church.
8. Traditionally German was written in a Gothic style known as Fraktur, which dates from the fourteenth century. However, from 1945 onwards, the Roman characters used throughout the rest of Europe were adopted.
9. German is often considered to be one of the most important cultural languages worldwide. Many famous musicians and scientists like Freud, Beethoven, Goethe, Mozart and Einstein wrote and spoke in German.
10. German is the third most commonly taught foreign language worldwide.
Tags: languages, tailor-made, germany, learning, german
Posted by Laura Harrison 2009-04 under Experience Cultures,
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