Nowadays, German (Deutsch) is spoken natively by over 100 million people. German is the official language of Germany, Austria, and Liechtenstein. It is also one of the four national languages of Switzerland. German is spoken in diverse modern dialects in Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, northern Italy, much of Switzerland, eastern France (Alsace and parts of Lorraine), as well as parts of Belgium and Luxembourg. Small groups of German speakers live in various eastern European countries.

Emigration has spread the language to many other parts of the globe. There are German-speaking communities in Canada, the U.S. (approximately 1.5 million speakers), South America (Argentina, Brazil, and Chile), South Africa, and Australia. The fact that every tenth book published in the world is written in German reveals the extent of the German language across the globe!

Low German dialects are spoken in the flatlands of the northern regions of Germany. They sound more similar to Dutch and English than to High German. No standard literary language exists for this group of dialects. The High German dialectal group stems from the highlands in the southern parts of Germany. The standard written German language evolved from High German dialects.

Swiss and Austrian dialects belong to the Alemannic group of dialects. Alemannic dialects differ considerably from High German in phonology and grammar. In Swiss German, for example, the word "Kind" (child) is pronounced "Chind." Furthermore, in most of the Swiss German dialects, the nouns do not differentiate case inflections like they do in High German.

German belongs to the West Germanic sub-branch (along with English, Frisian, Yiddish, Dutch, and Afrikaans) of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. The language was shaped by migration of the Germanic tribes who lived in northern Europe during the first millennium BC. It underwent several major changes in pronunciation before it crystallized in the form of High German in the 6th century AD. The earliest record written in Old High German is a Latin-German dictionary, dating from 770 AD.

Kindergarten and dachshund are English words of German origin. So are frankfurter and hamburger. They refer to the German cities, Frankfurt and Hamburg.

Beware of false friends! They can make you look ridiculous! If you tell someone that the Chef lost his Tag in the Klosett. You are really saying that the boss lost his day in the lavatory! Other words that might trick you are bald, which means "soon"; Brief, which means "letter"; and also, which means "thus."

There are two ways of addressing a person in German: the formal style of address and the informal style of address. The formal address uses the pronoun Sie and the last name of a person preceded by Frau (Mrs.) or Herr (Mr.).

Example: "Frau Meier, wo wohnen Sie?"

(Mrs. Meier, where do you live?)

Relatives, friends and youths address each other with du and their first names.

Example: "Sabine, wo wohnst du?"

(Sabine, where do you live?)

In German, all nouns are capitalized. For example, in the sentence Das Haus steht am See (The house is located at the lake), the nouns Haus (house) and See (lake) are capitalized. For a number of years, experts and politicians discussed the revision of the German rules of spelling. The debate drew widespread public interest, since the matter was a very controversial one. Finally, however, the new spelling system was implemented officially on August 1, 1998. The reform aims to ease daily usage of the German language. The original 212 spelling rules were reduced to 112, and the rules of punctuation were cut down from 52 to 9. For the time being, an arrangement is effective that allows the usage of the old rules together with the new ones. This arrangement will end July 31, 2005. From that point on, only the new spelling rules will apply.

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