The German Language: Fast Facts

There are approximately 120 million German speakers around the world.

There are 3 German language categories: Low German, spoken in the flat northern areas, Upper German, spoken in the mountainous south and Austria, and Central German.

These 3 categories are also all divided into west and east. Additionally, there is a separate designation of the German spoken in Switzerland, Swiss German or Schwyzertüütsch.

German uses the Latin alphabet with the addition of the diacritics ¨ as in ä, ö, ü and ß.

Written German uses several letters in addition to the 26 letters used in the English alphabet: ä, ö, ü (called umlauts) and ß

The German language (“Old High German”) originates dates back to 8th Century and is, in may ways, similar to Anglo-Saxon.

One of the earliest examples of a form of German appears on Runes
from the 6th century.

The first written Germanic texts, such as the epic 'Hildebrandslied', appear in the 8th century.

Traditionally German was written in a Gothic style known as Fraktur, which dates from the fourteenth century.

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