The German speaking world
10 1/2 furious facts about the German language:
(1) German is the official language of
Germany, Liechtenstein and
Austria, and one of
Switzerland's four official languages. It is also an officially recognised minority language in
Italy (Südtirol - Alto Adige: Southern Tyrol) and
Belgium (Eastern Belgium: Eupen, Malmedy). A sizeable Germanic-speaking minority exists in
France (Alsace, Lorraine), their dialects are recognised as
langues régionales - which are still strong in some rural areas, especially with the older generation. Further, German also is officially recognised in
Namibia, a former German colony, and it is co-official language in
Luxembourg (besides French and Luxemburgish).
Currently there are possibly
around 105 million native speakers of German (minorities all over the world included).
(2)
Smaller German speaking minorities (partly recognised minorities) also exist in some Western European countries (e. g. Denmark and the Netherlands). However, of greater numbers are still those in Central and Eastern Europe as well as in Russia (with Asian part included) and Kazakhstan (many Volga-Germans - 'Wolgadeutsche' - have been deported there during World War II) as well as other former USSR states (noticeably Baltic ones), plus on the
Balkans (so-called '(Donau)-Schwaben' and 'Sachsen' from Transsylvania); all those are on a steep decline now as many migrated to Germany as soon as this became possible, after the fall of the Iron Curtain.
(3) German(ic) speaking
migrant communities exist in many countries overseas: sizeable German communities exist in the United States (among those e. g. 'Pennsylvania Dutch', an old Southern German dialect of the Amish, even boasting a
Wiki page of their own), noticeable Austrian communities exist in Canada and locally in the United States (Chicago is renowned for being the biggest 'Burgenland town', as this is a centre of an Austrian Burgenland migrant community - pop. (estimation) ~60,000 (that is of course only those which, supposedly, have Burgenland roots), but sizeable migrant communities really are spread all over the world - some are even big cities, like Blumenau (Santa Catarina, Brazil) which was still mostly German speaking only half a century ago; they're now still known for the annual
Oktoberfest.
There's also a more recent trend of migration to the European Sun Belt (Spain, mainly); not only of pensioners.
(4) It is an
urban myth that
German had been rejected as official language of the USA by only one vote. See
Zwiebelfisch about that, for those who can read German; I will
not give a short summary of the article for those which can't - to keep you curious, and thus motivated for improving sufficiently to read it in the original language
... weeell okay, I'll give away the tiniest of hints on facts: the story is true at its core but, like it should be done in myths, has been blown up slightly.
(5)
German as a foreign language once was strong in Central and Eastern Europe, lost importance during Communism but re-gained some of its previous status there recently. Also, German is an important foreign language in parts of Scandinavia and the Benelux states, while it was and still is relatively less taught in other Western and Southern European states. For this see also the Wiki map of
knowledge of German in the EU - as the map only gives figures for EU states it should be added that German also has some status as a foreign language in Russia.
(6)
German is a multicentric language, with 3 main standard varieties: those of
Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and several regional ones, ranging from Southern Tyrol (basically Austrian German with some peculiarities) all the way down to insular German communities in the States (like the above-mentioned 'Pennsylvanian Dutch' which is a standardised dialect quite different from modern German standard language).
(7)
German dialects are still strong throughout the German speaking area, but status of dialects differ extremely between regions. Learners of German are well-advised to learn at least passive (if not active) competence if they intend to (temporarily) move to some regions, while at most (if at all) passive competence of local dialects is asked for in others. To
oversimplify gravely, dialects are strongest in the south (in German speaking Switzerland even active competence in local dialects is highly recommended for those who intend to settle there) and weakest in the north (where competence in standard language is completely sufficient for full integration). But the situation is way too complicated to explain in a simple furious fact line.
(8) The
German alphabet has 26 characters, 3 umlaut characters 'ä ö ü' and one special character 'ß'. Despite the fact that this makes for 30 characters, German native speakers only count 26 letters in their alphabet (from which we might deduce, it seems, that native speakers of German aren't that good at counting
).
(9) The German alphabet is
not phonemic, this is one of the most common misconceptions of learners: while it is phonemic to a relatively high degree as e. g. compared to English or French it is not highly phonemic as compared to, say, Slovene or Italian. Compare
alphabet <> and phonemes // of standard language:
<a aa ä e ee i ie ö ö ü ü e o oo u u> = /a aː ɛː ɛ eː ɪ iː œ øː ʏ yː ə ɔ oː ʊ uː/ (diphthongs) <au ei=ai eu=äu> /aʊ̯ aɪ̯ ɔʏ̯/
<p b t d k g - m n ng - r l - f=v w=v s/ß s sch ch> = /p b t d k ɡ - m n ŋ - r=ʀ=ʁ l - f v s z ʃ ç=x/
The phonemic status of /ɛ:/ is questionable, many speakers do not distinguish /ɛː/ from /eː/ in standard language, i. e. pronounce them both /eː/. Note, dialect phonemes are not included here; if they were added the list would become much longer.
(10) The
term German as such - the name of the language - changed in meaning in the course of its history (see
etymonline for more details). So no, Dutch is not German, but yes, the roots of both 'Deutsch' and 'Dutch' have a common origin (and yes, Pennsylvanian 'Dutch' is, basically, German, or anyway it is definitely not Dutch; rather, it is an ancient Southern German dialect preserved in migrant communities which have been cut off from mainstream German trends for centuries). And no, Luxemburgish is not German (not anymore) as it has evolved into a separate language, and has been defined as national language of Luxembourg.
(bonus fact)
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens, by real name) was a
great fan of the German language (quotes):
- Yes, sir, once the German language gets hold of a cat, it's goodbye cat.
- A dream...I was trying to explain to St. Peter, and was doing it in the German tongue, because I didn't want to be too explicit.
- I can understand German as well as the maniac that invented it, but I talk it best through an interpreter.
- Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.
- Some German words are so long that they have a perspective.
