German Language

I

Introduction

German Language, language of the German people and other peoples akin to or at one time politically united with the Germans. German belongs to the western branch of the Germanic languages, a subfamily of the Indo-European languages. It comprises two main groupings of languages and dialects, High German (which has two further sub-groupings of Upper and Middle German, including the standard literary German dialect) and Low German. Together, they form a continuum from Switzerland north to the sea; a local language can be understood by speakers of nearby dialects but not necessarily by speakers of faraway languages. German is spoken in 40 countries other than Germany.

II

Chief Characteristics

The development of the German languages was affected by several systematic shifts of certain consonants. The so-called Germanic consonant shift distinguished the ancient Proto-Germanic tongue from other Indo-European speech. In this shift, which is described by Grimm's law, an Indo-European p, t, k changed to a Germanic f, th, h, respectively; Indo-European b, d, g to Germanic p, t, k; and similarly Indo-European bh, dh, gh, to Germanic b, d, g. After the western Germanic dialects had developed their own distinctive traits, the High German sound shift occurred. Datable to ad 500-700, it distinguished the High German dialects from other West Germanic speech, including what we now know as Low German, which was unaffected. During that period the Germanic p, when used initially, or after consonants, or when doubled, became pf (Standard German Pflanze, Low German Plante, “plant”); when used medially or finally after vowels it became ff or f (Standard German hoffen, Low German hopen, “to hope”). Under the same conditions the Germanic t became z (pronounced ts, as in Pflanze) or ss (Standard German essen, Low German eten, “to eat”). After vowels, k became ch (Standard German machen, Low German maken, “to make”); in all other cases k remained unchanged except in the extreme south of Germany, where it first became kch, and later ch. A later change, found also in Low German, is that of the Germanic th to d (Standard German das, Low German dat, “that”).

Another characteristic of German, as well as of all the Germanic languages, is that the principal accent falls regularly upon the first syllable of a word; in verbal combinations, however, the root syllable, not the prefix, is stressed.

The phonological characteristics of the German language include the use of the glottal stop before every initial stressed vowel in simple words or independent parts of a word; the pronunciation of u, o, ü, and ö with full lip-rounding; the tenseness of long vowels and the laxness of short vowels; the articulation of r lingually and gutturally; the voicing of the single s before and between vowels, and the devoicing of the final b, d, g to p, t, k, respectively; the use of the affricates pf and ts; and the pronunciation of w as v and of v as f. Vowels are nasalized only in words borrowed from French.

German is an inflected language, with three genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter), four cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative), and a strong and weak declension of qualifying adjectives. Because of the declensional and conjugational endings, some parts of speech are more precisely identified than in languages that show less inflection. Word order is strictly regulated; for example, subject and predicate are inverted when preceded by an adverb, prepositional phrase, or dependent clause; the verb is placed in the final position in a subordinate clause introduced by a relative pronoun or conjunction. In the formation of new words, German makes extensive use of compounds of two or more independent words and of prefixes and suffixes (Oberbaumeister; Handelsluftfahrt; Geteilheit; teilbar). The poetic and philosophical vocabulary and scientific and technical terminology of German are particularly rich.

On August 1, 1998, all German-speaking countries officially underwent, among much controversy, a spelling reform (Rechtschreibreform), adopting new orthographical rules in official domains including government and education. The new spellings have since been phased in gradually (the German media began using them about a year after the official date) and must come into general use by July 2005. The rules are numerous and affect both punctuation and spelling, including, for example, the use of “ss” rather than “ß” in certain words and a change in the use of commas. This is not the first spelling reform the German language has seen; in 1901 the first official reform was implemented in a bid to standardize the written language.

III

Standard German and Other Dialects

Old High German, a group of dialects with no standard literary language, was spoken until c. 1100 when a standard language, based on the Upper German dialects, began to appear. Modern Standard German (Hochdeutsch) is descended from Middle High German dialects similar to those used by Martin Luther in his 16th-century translation of the Bible. The diversity of the German dialects (some of which are so diverse they are indeed languages) means that German speakers are often bilingual in their local dialect and Standard German, which acts as a lingua franca. Standard German (a dialect) is often confused with High German (a language grouping), but Standard German is actually a dialect within the High German sub-family, which comprises two further sub-families, Upper and Middle German.

There are three main dialect areas in German-speaking Europe. The top band (Low German) stretches from eastern Belgium and the Netherlands across the northern third of Germany into Denmark in the north to Gdañsk (Poland) in the east. The middle band (Middle German) stretches from Luxembourg and Cologne on the north-east border of this band, including Frankfurt towards the south, and into the north and east of the Czech Republic and Lower Silesia in Poland. The bottom third, Upper German, begins in southern Germany, including Nuremburg, and stretches down to encompass most of Austria and Switzerland.

Low German consists of (1) Frisian, spoken in the Netherlands, the North Sea coast of Germany, and the Frisian Islands; (2) Low Saxon (often called Low German or Plattdeutsch), spoken in the eastern Netherlands (where it is called Nedersaksisch) and northern Germany. Used to be spoken in Poland and Prussia (see Low German section, below). Middle German is made up of (1) Luxembourgish, spoken in Luxembourg, Belgium and middle Germany; (2) Lower Silesian, spoken in Lower Silesia of Poland and parts of the Czech Republic and Germany; (3) Upper Saxon, spoken in the east and south-east of Germany, including Dresden; (4) Franconian, spoken along the River Main, near Frankfurt; (5) Rhine-Franconian, spoken in the Rhineland Palatinate area; (6) Ripuarian, spoken in and around Cologne; (7) Thuringian, heard in the environs of Weimar, Jena, and Erfurt. Upper German consists of (1) Alemannic (similar to Swabian), spoken in Switzerland (Alemannisch), the south-western corner of Bavaria in Germany, Austria, and France (where it is called Alsatian); (2) Bavarian, used in the south-eastern section of Germany east of the River Lech and south of Nüremberg, including Munich, and in Austria, including the cities of Innsbruck, Vienna, and Graz, and in parts of the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Italy; (3) Swabian, spoken in south-west Germany; (4) Langobardic, ancient language spoken at one time in the parts of Lombardy (Italy) occupied by the Germanic tribe of the Langobards. The Langobardic dialect is of great historical interest because it is the earliest (mid-7th century ad) recorded German dialect, whereas the majority of German dialects can be traced back only to the 8th, 9th, or 10th centuries.

IV

Low German

Low German, Plattdeutsch or Low Saxon, is spoken in the north, in a narrow fringe along the border between the Netherlands and Germany, and in the northern lowlands as far east and north-east as the River Elbe, including the cities of Münster, Kassel, Bremen, Hanover, Hamburg, and Magdeburg. While it is called Low German (Plattdeutsch) by the Germans, the Dutch refer to the language as Low Saxon (Nedersaksisch) as they see themselves as having a Saxon, not German, heritage. There are many different varieties of Low Saxon in the Netherlands and across north Germany. There is no single modern literary standard, although the literary tradition extends back centuries, so writers tend to use their local variety. As a result of the colonization of the Baltic regions by the Teutonic Knights, Low Saxon spread throughout the lands east of the Elbe to Brandenburg, Mecklenburg, and Pomerania, as well as parts of Prussia. Low Saxon supplied the Scandinavian languages with numerous loanwords, but the language lost currency with the decline of the Hanseatic League. While most German Low Saxon speakers are bilingual in Standard German, most Standard German speakers have difficulty understanding Low Saxon. Standard German is the only official language of instruction used in education. Many linguists believe Low Saxon to have influenced the development of Afrikaans at some point.