German dialects

German is one of the world's major languages (ranked tenth), spoken natively (as of year 2000) by more than 100 million people, only 80% of whom actually live in Germany. When people speak of the German language today, they are likely thinking of the standard German that is the official language of Germany. What may not be understood by many non-Germans is that most people born in Germany today do not learn the official national language (called High German, or Hoch Deutsch) as their first language. Instead, families tend to speak one of several regional dialects among themselves at home, such as Bavarian, Swabish, Thuringian, or Brandenburgish. Only when they begin public school are German children forced to use the official language.

Official German versus regional dialects

There are approximately a dozen regional dialects within modern Germany, and a few more in surrounding countries such as Switzerland. The regional dialects may be considered to be different languages since they are often not mutually intelligible, although people from geographically neighboring regions can understand each other a little more easily than if from distant regions (an effect called dialect continuum). Official German began to be standardized in the late nineteenth century after the different regions were finally united politically under the Kaiser. The spoken version of official High German was a compromise that drew heavily on the dialects in the middle of what is now Germany, to minimize the amount of adaptation needed for the most people. Similarly, for American English, a midwestern accent (from the middle of the country) is the preferred TV newscaster dialect.

High German has been successful at encouraging a national identity and fostering inter-regional communications. However, native Germans can often tell from what region a person hails immediately from that person's high German accent, since many people do not lose all the traces of their original dialect. TV stations in Germany today still run some programming in the local dialect.

There are several other dialects of German in communities living outside of Germany. For example, Yiddish--spoken by many Jewish communities around the world--began as a dialect of German. Many Hebrew words were added to it, and vast regional differences also arose. Similarly, in South Africa which was formerly a Dutch colony, a dialect called Afrikaans arose which incorporated many new words and concepts from South African native tribes. The Pennsylvania Dutch language in the United States may be considered as yet another dialect of German. Aside from the expanded, specialed vocabularies, these three German dialects--Yiddish, Afrikaans, and Pennsylvania Dutch--are only about as different from the official high German language as the other regional dialects within Germany.

The West Germanic dialect continuum

From the point of view of historical comparative linguistics, the various local "Dutch" dialects in The Netherlands are part of the same West Germanic dialect continuum as the regional Germanic dialects in what is today Germany. There are at least a half dozen or so local regional dialects within the Dutch-speaking part of the Netherlands (some linguists divide them into more than a dozen). In the last two centuries, these areas developed as separate politically from Germany and thus they developed their own standardized "official" language, called Dutch. But note the following clarification: "Some Dutch dialects show marked correspondences to neighbouring German dialects. For example Venlo dialect has more features in common with the German dialect of Krefeld (which is close to Venlo) than, for example, the dialect of the Zaan area. Yet Venlo dialect is still Dutch...The demarcation between Dutch and German dialects is made on the basis of the standard language spoken in the region concerned. Venlo dialect is regarded as Dutch because the inhabitants of Venlo use Dutch in school and in "official" situations; the language of Krefeld on the other hand is treated as a German dialect because High German is the overarching standard language there." This linguistical classification of Dutch dialects and German dialects as belonging to the same continuum is not intended to dispute that official Dutch and official German are different languages.

West Germanic language family

In addition to dialects within the Netherlands, the West Germanic branch of dialects also includes English and Frisian, both of which diverged somewhat more in the West Germanic continuum than those in centrally located areas. Other Germanic languages fall within a Northern Germanic branch: Icelandic, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. All the Germanic dialects are Indo-European languages that share common underpinnings of grammar and vocabulary. Germanic languages all share strong similarities in the 500 or so core words, which are the words which children typically learn first as they acquire language. These include words such as mother, father, the parts of the human body, the names of everyday animals, and common actions such as walk, run, or sleep.

West Germanic dialects to modern "standard" German

The grammar of modern standard German (and its many underlying dialects) grew out of Middle High German in the Middle Ages, which in turn grew out of Old High German in the Dark Ages. Historically, high meant areas that are in the mountainous regions (southern Germany, for example) as apposed to geographically lower-lying areas around the North Sea. For example, Netherlands (Die Niederländer in German) means low lands, and regional dialects in those areas are often styled as low Germanic dialects.

Until around the fifteenth century, Latin was the prevailing written language, and the Germanic dialects over the portion of the Holy Roman Empire that now constitute modern-day Germany (and some surrounding countries) were considered vernacular, the language of common people. Few written records of any German dialects remain except very early (and illegal at the time) tranlations of the Bible.

Martin Luther created a revolution by translating the Catholic church's official Latin Bible into a dialect of vernacular German; this initially-banned book was very successful, and written German eventually overtook written Latin for most literature of the region, culminating in the standardization of an official version of German by around 1900.

Active word-building capacity and German vocabulary

Although English is a Germanic language, it now differs from the German dialects in its extremely large vocabulary expanded from many different languages such as French, Latin or Spanish. Translators trying to render German into English may find a dozen English synonyms, of only subtle (if any) difference in meaning, as compared to a single word in German. This has made translating the works of Sigmund Freud, just for example, particularly difficult; any two translations may contain almost completely different terminology in English. Thus, scholars are encouraged to attempt to read such thinkers in the original German if at all possible. In fact, English nowadays sports a huge unabridged dictionary, but German does not have need for an unabridged dictionary of comparable size, due to its relatively smaller vocabulary and to its active word-building capacity.

Most vocabulary in German is in fact built up by compounding two or more of the core words together. The meaning of such words is generally obvious to children as they acquire language, and they do not need to look up words in a dictionary nearly as often as English-speaking children do. For example, in English we have the term "glove" but in German, that is HandSchuh (hand shoe). If children already know Hand and Schuh, the they don't have to be taught what HandSchuh means the first time they hear it. Building on this, in English we have the term "glove compartment" in reference to cars. In German, that is HandSchuhFach (hand shoe box), and in the context of a car, that is immediately clear in meaning, whereas English-speaking children must first learn the Latin-derived word "compartment" before "glove compartment" makes any sense.

Another example is the word "superficial" in English; many English-speaking children must explicitly be told its meaning at first. But the German equivalent of superficial is überflächlich ("over" + "flatliness"), and its obvious meaning to Germans is "skimming over the surface".

In mathematics, English speakers must learn arcane terms like "apex", whereas German speakers encounter "Spitz" ("peak", the same word used for mountaintop). This reliance on building larger or broader concepts out of its core words has made German a more elegant language for learning of mathematics than English, as little Latinized vocabulary need be learned when reading about math in German.

Relative ease of learning German for native English speakers

German is considered by many to be one of the most accessible foreign languages for native speakers of English to learn. This is due to the similarities of core words and grammar in the two languages, but also to German's reliance on compound words built from simple ones. To an English speaker, Spanish might seem easier initially because it has shorter words, but Spanish has a much larger "different" vocabulary which English speakers must learn. German, on the other hand, builds most of its extended words from its core words, so acquisition of sufficient German vocabulary by English speakers can occur much faster than for many other foreign languages.

Testimonials of American soldiers serving in Germany in World War II showed that American soldiers were able to pick up substantial amounts of German in only a few months without any formal training, just by hearing a lot of it spoken in real-world situations. This may well be a consequence of the close similarity of the core words of the two languages.

References

1. The World Almanac and Book of Facts, 2000, © World Almanac Books.
2. "History of the Dutch Language", Dept. of Dutch Studies, University of Vienna, http://www.ned.univie.ac.at/publicaties/taalgeschiedenis/en/; see particularly the section on "Dialects" under chapter "19th and 20th century".
3. "German Language," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2007 http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2007 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.