Phone 206.325.4109 info@sealang.org
| << back to German Home |
German Language Profile DEUTSCH |
German is a member of the West Germanic branch of the Indo-European
family of languages. The regional varieties of German fall into two
broad divisions: Hochdeutsch ('High German'), spoken in the
highlands of the south, and Plattdeutsch ('Low German'), spoken
in the lowlands of the north. The standard written language is High
German. German was traditionally written in a Gothic script called Fraktur;
this was largely abandoned after the Second World War. The current German
alphabet is just like that of other western European nations with the
addition of the letter ß (double S), which is used only in the
lower case. 
German has a long and distinguished literary tradition dating from the
Middle Ages. Heroic legends are the earliest surviving works in Old
High German. The succeeding period of Middle High German was characterized
by chivalric poetry; courtly epics, such as Gottfried von Strassburg's
Tristan and Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, were often based on French
troubadour and trouvère sources. The Reformation profoundly influenced
the course of German literature, and Martin Luther's translation (1522-34)
of the Bible propagated a unified High German language. The great age
of German literature began in the 18th century, when the early works
of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich von Schiller were written.
The plays of Bertolt Brecht and the novels of Thomas Mann and Günter
Grass are among the masterpieces of German literature that achieved
world-wide recognition in the twentieth century. German is the official
national language of Germany and Austria, and is one the four official
languages of Switzerland; it is spoken by some 100 million people. |