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German (Deutsch) is a West Germanic language and one of the world's major languages. German is closely related to English and Dutch. Around the world, German is spoken by approximately 100 million native speakers and another 20 million non-native speakers, and Standard German is widely taught in schools and universities in Europe, and America. Worldwide, German accounts for the most written translations into and from a language (Guinness Book of Records).People who know German are more likely to become rich in there life time due to the fact that the European market is growing fast, and German is the most spoken language in Europe.

The German language has undergone a number of changes in history. The main phases are called Old High German (Althochdeutsch, AHD), Middle High German (Mittelhochdeutsch, MHD), and New High German (Neuhochdeutsch, NHD).

History

The history of the language begins with the High German consonant shift during the Migration period, separating South Germanic dialects from common West Germanic. The earliest testimonies of Old High German are from scattered Elder Futhark inscriptions, especially in Alemannic, from the 6th century, the earliest glosses (Abrogans) date to the 8th and the oldest coherent texts (the Hildebrandslied, the Muspilli and the Merseburg Incantations) to the 9th century. Old Saxon at this time belongs to the North Sea Germanic cultural sphere, and Low Saxon should fall under German rather than Anglo-Frisian influence during the Holy Roman Empire.

As Germany was divided into many different states, the only force working for a unification or standardization of German during a period of several hundred years was the general preference of writers trying to write in a way that could be understood in the largest possible area.

When Martin Luther translated the Bible (the New Testament in 1522 and the Old Testament, published in parts and completed in 1534) he based his translation mainly on this already developed language, which was the most widely understood language at this time. This language was based on Eastern Upper and Eastern Central German dialects and preserved much of the grammatical system of Middle High German (unlike the spoken German dialects in Central and Upper Germany that already at that time began to lose the genitive case and the preterit tense). In the beginning, copies of the Bible had a long list for each region, which translated words unknown in the region into the regional dialect. Roman Catholics rejected Luther's translation in the beginning and tried to create their own Catholic standard (gemeines Deutsch) — which, however, only differed from 'Protestant German' in some minor details. It took until the middle of the 18th century to create a standard that was widely accepted, thus ending the period of Early New High German.

German used to be the language of commerce and government in the Habsburg Empire, which encompassed a large area of Central and Eastern Europe. Until the mid-19th century it was essentially the language of townspeople throughout most of the Empire. It indicated that the speaker was a merchant, an urbanite, not their nationality. Some cities, such as Prague (German: Prag) and Budapest (Buda, German: Ofen), were gradually Germanized in the years after their incorporation into the Habsburg domain. Others, such as Bratislava (German: Pressburg), were originally settled during the Habsburg period and were primarily German at that time. A few cities such as Milan (German: Mailand) remained primarily non-German. However, most cities were primarily German during this time, such as Prague, Budapest, Bratislava, Zagreb (German: Agram), and Ljubljana (German: Laibach), though they were surrounded by territory that spoke other languages.

Until about 1800, standard German was almost only a written language. At this time, people in urban northern Germany, who spoke dialects very different from Standard German, learnt it almost like a foreign language and tried to pronounce it as close to the spelling as possible. Prescriptive pronunciation guides used to consider northern German pronunciation to be the standard. However, the actual pronunciation of standard German varies from region to region.

Media and written works are almost all produced in standard German (often called Hochdeutsch in German) which is understood in all areas where German is spoken, except by pre-school children in areas which speak only dialect, for example Switzerland and Austria. However, in this age of television, even they now usually learn to understand Standard German before school age.

The first dictionary of the Brothers Grimm, the 16 parts of which were issued between 1852 and 1860, remains the most comprehensive guide to the words of the German language. In 1860, grammatical and orthographic rules first appeared in the Duden Handbook. In 1901, this was declared the standard definition of the German language. Official revisions of some of these rules were not issued until 1998, when the German spelling reform of 1996 was officially promulgated by governmental representatives of all German-speaking countries. Since the reform, German spelling has been in an eight-year transitional period where the reformed spelling is taught in most schools, while traditional and reformed spellings co-exist in the media. See German spelling reform of 1996 for an overview of the public debate concerning the reform with some major newspapers and magazines and several known writers refusing to adopt it.

Old Saxon

Old Saxon, also known as Old Low German, is a West Germanic language. It is documented from the 9th century until the 12th century, when it evolved into Middle Low German. It was spoken on the north-west coast of Germany and in Denmark by Saxon peoples. It is closely related to Old Anglo-Frisian (Old Frisian, Old English), partially participating in the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law.

Low German

The Germanic languages departed from the other Indo-European languages by a shift in sounds called the First Germanic Sound Shift, and by other distinguishing features as well.

The language we now call German departed from the other Germanic languages (mainly English, Dutch, Scandinavian and the now extinct Gothic) by a shift in sounds called the Second Germanic Sound Shift. Its effect can still be seen by comparing modern German words with their English cognates: pound->Pfund, pipe->Pfeife, hope->hoffen, apple->Apfel, plant->Pflanze, tide->Zeit, cat->Katze, heart->Herz, hate->hassen, make->machen, weak->weich.

The rules for this sound shift are:
p->f, pp->pf, t->ss, tt->ts (written [t]z), k->ch, kk->kch, where initial p, t and k are treated like their doubled counterparts. The p->(p)f shift is quite regular, and so is the t->(t)s shift, which is somewhat blurred by the later differentiation between tz and ss. The k->(k)ch shift, however, is fully in effect only in Swiss German; in standard German and in most of its dialects we find kk (written [c]k) instead of kch. (The characters in square brackets are not written initially in a syllable.)

The Second Sound Shift divides Germany into a smaller Northern part (without the sound shift) and a larger central and Southern part (with the sound shift). The border between the two regions approximates a line passing through Cologne (Köln) and Berlin, but there is a more or less fuzzy region of more than a hundred kilometres width south of that line where the language underwent the Seconds Sound Shift only partially. In Western Germany, for instance, the non-initial t (e.g. dat and wat instead of das and was) reaches much farther south than most of the other non-shifted sounds. There are several central German dialects that have neither initial p nor pf, but f instead. The other countries where German is spoken are all south of this line.

Since the part of Germany where there was no Second Sound Shift are the North German Lowlands, their language is called Low German as distinct from High German. Because High German has been the official language even there for quite some time, and because Low German is too different from High German to mix easily with it, this region has become, in fact, bilingual. We even find a two-layered dialect situation: in addition to Low German, the real vernacular of the region, new High German dialects are developing there, in particular in the larger cities. Examples are Berlinisch (Berlin), Missingsch (Hamburg, Kiel, ...), Ruhrpott-Deutsch (Bochum, Dortmund, ...). "Missingsch" has its name from the town Meißen, although Missingsch did certainly not develop there - the connexion between Meißen and High German will become clearer towards the end of this article.

Middle Low German

The Middle Low German language is an ancestor of the modern Low German. It was spoken from about 1100 to 1500, splitting into West Low German and East Low German. The neighbour languages within the dialect continuum of the West Germanic languages were Middle Dutch in the West and Middle High German in the South, later substituted by Early New High German. Middle Low German was the lingua franca of the Hanseatic League, spoken all around the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. Based on the language of Lübeck, a standardized written language was developing, though it was never codified.

High German

Old High German

The earliest testimonies of Old High German are from scattered Elder Futhark inscriptions, especially in Alemannic, from the 6th century, the earliest glosses (Abrogans) date to the 8th and the oldest coherent texts (the Hildebrandslied, the Muspilli and the Merseburg Incantations) to the 9th century.

Old High German was spoken until the 10th or 11th century. When we compare it with NHD, its most interesting feature is that it contains a full-fledged noun declension and no (or only optional) articles, and also a verb conjugation with distinctive endings and only optional pronouns. In contrast to that, MHD and NHD declension and conjugation endings may be awkward to learn for the foreigner,but they are not sufficiently distinctive to allow case markers (articles) and person markers (pronouns) to be dispensed with. In this respect, AHD grammar resembles Latin and today's Slavic languages. - There are lots of full vowels a, i, and u, in contrast to the prevailing e in MHD and NHD. AHD is mostly unintelligible to speakers of NHD who might guess many words but could hardly understand anything in context. Here is an example of a late - and thus a somewhat more understandable - text in AHD:

Trohtin almahtiger, tu der pist einiger trost unta euuigiu heila aller dero di in dih gloubant iouh in dih gidingant, tu inluihta min herza, daz ih dina guoti unta dina gnada megi anadenchin, unta mina sunta iouh mina ubila, unta die megi so chlagen vora dir, also ih des bidurfi. Leski, trohtin, allaz daz in mir, daz der leidiga viant inni mir zunta uppigas unta unrehtes odo unsubras, unta zunta mih ze den giriden des euuigin libes, daz ih den also megi minnan unta mih dara nah hungiro unta dursti also ih des bidurfi. Dara nah macha mih also fron unta kreftigin in alle dinemo dionosti, daz ih alla die arbeita megi lidan die ih in deser werolti sculi lidan durh dina era unta durh dinan namon iouh durh mina durfti odo durh iomannes durfti. (Otloh's Prayer; 11th century)

Middle High German

Middle High German (MHG, German Mittelhochdeutsch) is the term used for the period in the history of the German language between 1050 and 1350. It is preceded by Old High German and followed by Early New High German. In some older scholarship, the term covers a longer period, going up to 1500.

Middle High German was the language of the minstrels. Although the time of its oldest documents nearly overlaps with AHD times, it is quite thoroughly different from AHD. The concentration of the word stress on the word stem is now complete, leaving prefixes and suffixes with an unspecific vowel written as e. As a consequence, declension and conjugation endings have disappeared except for small residues, so that pronouns (when there is no other subject) and articles are now obligatory. But the old vowels have left their traces: An i disappearing as a suffix has modified an a, o, or u in the word stem to become ä, ö, or ü, resp., for example gibârida->gebærde(->Gebärde), guoti->güete(->Güte). In conjugations and declensions, there were already umlauts in AHD but they became more important as distinctive in MHD.

MHD is similar enough to NHD that, at least after getting accustomed to it, speakers of NHD should get the story line of a MHD text, although they will certainly miss many of the details. Here is an example from the most famous of the MHD songs, "Der Nibelunge Nôt". The NHD translation below seeks to find NHD cognates even when they do not quite fit; when this would result in wrong translation they are bracketed and followed by a more appropriate NHD word.

Early New High German

When Martin Luther translated the Bible (the New Testament in 1522 and the Old Testament, published in parts and completed in 1534) he based his translation mainly on this already developed language, which was the most widely understood language at this time. This language was based on Eastern Upper and Eastern Central German dialects and preserved much of the grammatical system of Middle High German (unlike the spoken German dialects in Central and Upper Germany that at that time had already begun to lose the genitive case and the preterit tense). In the beginning, copies of the Bible had a long list for each region, which translated words unknown in the region into the regional dialect. Roman Catholics rejected Luther's translation at first and tried to create their own Catholic standard (gemeines Deutsch) — which, however, differed from 'Protestant German' only in some minor details. It took until the middle of the 18th century to create a standard that was widely accepted, thus ending the period of Early New High German.

Early NHD looks awkward to today's readers, but mostly because of the unusual spelling. Modern readers have no problems in understanding it, except for the words that have become obsolete or have changed their meaning dramatically. Comparing the versions of 1545 and 1912 of Luther's Bible translation shows that the words have remained nearly the same over the 367 years but the spelling has changed a lot. However, one has to take into acount that the language was quite archaic in 1912, especially the word order with the verb early in the subordinate clause. The text is Matth.6:1-4.

New High German

New High German had developed out of MHD at the end of the Middle Ages. Besides the unavoidable shift in meaning of many words which always takes place over so long a time, the differences between MHD and NHD are:

• There was a major shift in diphthongs and long vowels, especially î->ai, ei->ai, û->au, ou->au, uo->û, ie->î, üe->ü, öu->oi. The first four rules show that different MHD vowels were mapped to the same NHD diphthongs; however, many NHD dialects preserve the old distinction: Bavarian (Bairisch) has î->ai, ei->oa, û->au, ou->a; Saxon (Sächsisch) has î->ai, ei->ê, û->au, ou->ô; and Swiss (Schwyzerdütsch) preserves the MHD vowels (except uo->ue). The modern orthography of NHD retains some reminiscences of MHD: long î is mostly spelled as ie, the sound ai as ei, and the sound oi as eu or äu.

• Simple vowels (monophthongs) were often lengthened, but also sometimes shortened. NHD has long vowels in syllables without a final consonant (or with a single final consonant at the end of the word): a rule with exceptions in NHD, but not valid at all in MHD. Examples: lengthening in tal->Tal, legen->legen, vride->Friede, wonen->wohnen, künec->König; shortening in wâfen->Waffe, ich dâhte->ich dachte.

• There were some changes with the sibilants. MHD z and zz, developed out of t at the Second Sound Shift, become unvoiced s (written s, ss, or ß) and ts (written z or tz). Consonants clusters with the old Germanic s (that is sl, sm, sn, sp, st, sw), especially in syllable-initial position, had the s replaced by a sh-sound (written sch, except for sp and st which retained their old spelling despite the new pronunciation). Less regularly, the same thing happened to consonants clusters with final s. Examples are: schlagen (Engl. slay), Schmied (smith), Schnee (snow), sparen (spare), Stein (stone), Schwein (swine), Arsch (arse), falsch (false).

References
a b c d e f g h i (2006) National Geographic Collegiate Atlas of the World. Willard, Ohio: R.R Donnelley & Sons Company, 257-270. ISBN Regular:0-7922-3662-9, 978-0-7922-3662-7. Deluxe:0-7922-7976-X, 978-0-7922-7976-1.
SIL Ethnologue (2006). 95 million speakers of Standard German; 95 million including Middle and Upper German dialects; 100 million including Low Saxon and Yiddish.
Michael Clyne, The German Language in a Changing Europe (1995) ISBN 0521499704
George O. Curme, A Grammar of the German Language (1904, 1922) — the most complete and authoritative work in English
Anthony Fox, The Structure of German (2005) ISBN 0199273995
W.B. Lockwood, German Today: The Advanced Learner's Guide (1987) ISBN 0198158505
http://www.lrz.de/~hr/lang/dt-hist.html

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