German language

 

member of the West Germanic group of the Germanic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see Germanic languages). It is the official language of Germany and Austria and is one of the official languages of Switzerland. Altogether nearly 100 million people speak German as their first language, among them about 77 million in Germany; 8 million in Austria; 4.5 million in Switzerland; 2 million in the United States and Canada; about 2 million in Latin America; and several additional millions throughout Europe, including the Baltic republics, Belarus, the Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Romania, Ukraine, and the Balkan states. German is important as a cultural and commercial second language for millions of people in Central, Northern, and Eastern Europe and in North and South America.

High and Low German

There are two principal divisions of the German language: High German, or Hochdeutsch, and Low German, or Plattdeutsch. One of the most striking differences between them is the result of a consonant shift (usually referred to as the second, or High German, sound shift) that took place before the 8th cent. A.D. in certain West Germanic dialects. This sound shift affected the southern areas, which are more elevated and hence referred to as the High German region, whereas it left untouched the Low German prevalent in the lowland regions of the North. In a broader and purely linguistic sense, the term Low German can also be extended to cover all the West Germanic languages in which the second sound shift did not take place, such as Dutch, Frisian, and English.

Distinctive Features

Besides differences in word order, the German language is unlike English in that German makes extensive use of inflectional endings. The verb is inflected to show person, number, tense, and mood; and the subjunctive is frequently used. The declensional scheme has four cases: nominative, genitive, dative, and accusative. There are two ways of declining the adjective, and there are three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. A distinctive feature of German is its extensive use of lengthy compound words. For example, the English “history of antiquity” is translated into German as Altertumswissenschaft; the English “worthy of distinction” is translated as auszeichnungswürdig.

The Gothic or Black Letter form (in German called Fraktur) of the Roman alphabet, which first appeared in Europe around the 12th cent., is now rarely used, although knowledge of Fraktur is needed in order to read many works printed before 1945. The Roman alphabet is now exclusively used in printing. To it were added the symbol ß, representing a voiceless s (as in English mouse), now often replaced with ss; and the umlauted vowels ä, ö, and ü. German is the only language in which all nouns are capitalized, common as well as proper. There is a closer relationship between German spelling and pronunciation than there is in English.

History of German

Historically, German falls into three main periods: Old German (c.A.D. 750–c.A.D. 1050); Middle German (c.1050–c.1500); and Modern German (c.1500 to the present). The earliest existing records in German date back to about A.D. 750. In this first period, local dialects were used in writing, and there was no standard language. In the middle period a relatively uniform written language developed in government after the various chancelleries of the Holy Roman Empire began, in the 14th cent., to use a combination of certain dialects of Middle High German in place of the Latin that until then had dominated official writings.

The German of the chancellery of Saxony was adapted by Martin Luther for his translation of the Bible. He chose it because at that time the language of the chancelleries alone stood out in a multitude of dialects as a norm, and Luther thought he could reach many more people through it. The modern period is usually said to begin with the German used by Luther, which became the basis of Modern High German, or modern standard German. The spread of uniformity in written German was also helped by printers, who, like Luther, wanted to attract as many readers as possible.

During the 18th cent. a number of outstanding writers gave modern standard German essentially the form it has today. It is now the language of church and state, education and literature. A corresponding norm for spoken High German, influenced by the written standard, is used in education, the theater, and broadcasting. German dialects that differ substantially from standard German, not only in pronunciation but also in grammar, are found in regions of Germany, E France, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein; Lëtzeburgesch, an official language of Luxembourg, is a German dialect spoken by about 400,000 people there. Although dialectal differences within both the High German and Low German regions remain, a trend toward uniformity in the direction of the written standard is expected partly as a result of widespread broadcasting, diminishing isolation, and increased socioeconomic mobility.

Bibliography

See B. A. Reichenbach, Handbook of German Grammar (1987); W. B. Lockwood German Today (1987); W. M. Rivers, Teaching German (1988); C. V. J. Russ, ed., The Dialects of Modern German (1989); A. E. Hammer, German Grammar and Usage (1989).

German Deutsch
Pronunciation:	[dɔɪ̯tʃ]
Spoken in:	Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Denmark, France (Alsace, Moselle), Belgium, Poland, Italy, Romania (Transylvania), Hungary, Iceland,[1] Russia (Kaliningrad Oblast, Orenburg), Kazakhstan,[1] Czech Republic, Slovakia,[1], Slovenia,[1] Croatia,[1] Baltic countries, Argentina,[1] Brazil[1] , Chile , Paraguay , Mexico
Region:	Central Europe, Western Europe
Total speakers:	Native speakers: ca. 100 million [1][2] Non-native speakers: ca. 28 million[1]
Ranking:	10
Language family:	Indo-European  Germanic   West Germanic    German
Writing system:	Latin alphabet (German variant)
Official status
Official language of:	Austria  Belgium  Germany  Liechtenstein  Luxembourg Opole Voivodeship, Poland[3] City of Sopron, Hungary  Switzerland Province of Bolzano-Bozen, Italy  Namibia (only regional as auxiliary language)  European Union  Vatican City (official language of the Swiss Guard)
Regulated by:	no official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	de
ISO 639-2:	ger (B)	deu (T)
ISO 639-3:	variously: deu — Modern German gmh — Middle High German goh — Old High German gsw — Swiss German swg — Swabian German gct — Alemán Coloniero wae — Walser German bar — Austro-Bavarian yid — Yiddish mhn — Mócheno nds — Low German sxu — Upper Saxon cim — Cimbrian sli — Lower Silesian language wep — Westphalian pdt — Plattdeutsch pfl — Palatinate German vmf — Main-Frankonian ksh — Kölsch
Major German-speaking communities
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

The German language (Deutsch, [dɔɪ̯tʃ] (help·info)) is a West Germanic language and one of the world's major languages. German is closely related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. Around the world, German is spoken by ~100 million native speakers and also ~30 million non-native speakers, and Standard German is widely taught in schools and universities in Europe. Worldwide, German accounts for the most written translations into and from a language (Guinness Book of World Records).

Geographic distribution

German is spoken primarily in Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, in 70%+ of Switzerland, in Italy (Alto Adige/Südtirol), in the East Cantons of Belgium, and in some border villages of the former South Jutland County (in German, Nordschleswig, in Danish, Sønderjylland) of Denmark.

In Luxembourg and the surrounding areas big parts of the native population speak German dialects, and some people also master standard German (especially in Luxembourg), although in the French regions of Alsace (German: Elsaß) and Lorraine (German: Lothringen) French has replaced the local German dialects as the official language, even though it has not been fully replaced on the street.

Some German-speaking communities still survive in parts of Romania, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and above all Russia and Kazakhstan, although forced expulsions after World War II and massive emigration to Germany in the 1980s and 1990s have depopulated most of these communities. It is also spoken by German-speaking foreign populations and some of their descendants in Portugal, Spain, Italy, Morocco, Egypt, Israel, Cyprus, Turkey, Greece, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Scandinavia, Siberia in Russia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and the former Yugoslavia (Bosnia, Serbia, Macedonia, Croatia and Slovenia).

Outside of Europe and the former Soviet Union, the largest German-speaking communities are to be found in the United States, Brazil and in Argentina where millions of Germans migrated in the last 200 years; but the vast majority of their descendants no longer speak German. Additionally, German-speaking communities can be found in the former German colony of Namibia independent from South Africa since 1990, as well as in the other countries of German emigration such as Canada, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Peru, Venezuela (where Alemán Coloniero developed), South Africa and Australia.

The United States has the largest concentration of German speakers outside of Europe, and there are large and vibrant German-speaking communities throughout the country, such as New Leipzig, Munich, Karlsruhe, and Strasburg, North Dakota, and New Braunfels, Texas. In the United States, the largest concentrations of German speakers are in Pennsylvania (Amish, Hutterites, Dunkards and some Mennonites speak Pennsylvania Dutch (a West Central German variety) and Hutterite German), Kansas (Mennonites and Volga Germans), North Dakota (Hutterite Germans, Mennonites, Russian Germans, Volga Germans, and Baltic Germans), South Dakota, Montana, Texas (Texas German), Wisconsin, Indiana, Louisiana and Oklahoma. Early twentieth century immigration was often to St. Louis, Chicago, New York, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati. Most of the post-World War II wave are in the New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago urban areas, and in Florida, Arizona and California where large communities of retired German, Swiss and Austrian expatriates live.

In Brazil the largest concentrations of German speakers are in Rio Grande do Sul (where Riograndenser Hunsrückisch was developed), Santa Catarina, Paraná, and Espírito Santo, and large German-speaking descendant communities in Argentina, Uruguay and Chile. In the 20th century, over 100,000 German political refugees and invited entrepreneurs settled in Latin America, such as Costa Rica, Panama, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic to establish German-speaking enclaves, and there is a reportedly small German immigration to Puerto Rico.

In Canada there are people of German ancestry throughout the country and especially in the western cities such as Kelowna. German is also spoken in Ontario and southern Nova Scotia. There is a large and vibrant community in the city of Kitchener, Ontario. German immigrants were instrumental in the country's three largest urban areas: Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, but post-WWII immigrants managed to preserve a fluency in the German language in their respective neighborhoods and sections. In the first half of the 20th century, over a million German-Canadians made the language one of Canada's most spoken after French.

Generally, In some USA and Canadian communities, German immigrant communities lost their mother tongue more quickly than those who moved to South America^{[citation needed]}, possibly because for German speakers, English is easier to learn than Portuguese or Spanish. But mainly, it was due to fervent anti-German sentiment in the United States before and after the World Wars followed by the espionage hysteria of East German spies, and "Americanism" (patriotism or nationalism) during the Cold War in the 1950s, and the fear (partly generated by "Anglo-American conformity" and xenophobia) it caused in German-speakers of being attacked. In all English-speaking countries, there was also fervent anti-German sentiment during, before, and after the World Wars.

In Mexico there are also large populations of German ancestry, mainly in the cities of: Mexico City, Puebla, Mazatlán, Tapachula, and larger populations scattered in the states of Chihuahua, Durango, and Zacatecas. German ancestry is also said to be found in neighboring towns around Guadalajara, Jalisco and much of Northern Mexico, where German influence was immersed into the Mexican culture.

Plautdietsch/Plattdeitsch is a large minority language spoken in the north by the Mennonite communities, and is spoken by more than 200,000 people in Mexico, while standard German is spoken by the affluent German communities in Puebla, Mexico City, Nuevo Leon, San Luis Potosi and Quintana Roo.

German is the main language of about 90–95 million people in Europe (as of 2004), or 13.3% of all Europeans, being the second most spoken native language in Europe after Russian, above French (66.5 million speakers in 2004) and English (64.2 million speakers in 2004). German is the third most taught foreign language worldwide, also in the United States (after Spanish and French); it is the second most known foreign language in the EU (after English; see [1]) It is one of the official languages of the European Union, and one of the three working languages of the European Commission, along with English and French.

According to Global Reach (2004), 6.9% of the Internet population is German.^[4][5] According to Netz-tipp (2002), 7.7% of webpages are written in German,^[6] making it second only to English. They also report that 12% of Google's users use its German interface.^[6]

Older statistics: Babel (1998) found somewhat similar demographics.^[7] FUNREDES^[8] (1998) and Vilaweb^[9] (2000) both found that German is the third most popular language used by websites, after English and Japanese.

History

Main article: History of German

The neutrality of this article is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved.

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 preterite 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 (German: Pressburg), 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, learned 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.

The German spelling reform of 1996 led to public controversy indeed to considerable dispute. Some state parliaments (Bundesländer) would not accept it (North Rhine Westphalia and Bavaria). The dispute landed at one point in the highest court which made a short issue of it, claiming that the states had to decide for themselves and that only in schools could the reform be made the official rule - everybody else could continue writing as they had learned it. After 10 years, without any intervention by the federal parliament, a major yet incomplete revision was installed in 2006, just in time for the new school year of 2006. In 2007, some venerable spellings will be finally invalidated even though they caused little or no trouble. The only sure and easily recognizable symptom of a text's being in compliance with the reform is the -ss at the end of words, like in "dass" and "muss". Classic spelling forbade this ending, it had to be "daß" and "muß". The cause of the controversy evolved around the question whether a language is part of the culture which must be preserved or a means of communicating information which has to allow for growth. (The reformers seemed to be unimpressed by the fact that a considerable part of that culture - namely the entire German literature of the 20th century - is in the old spelling.)

The increasing use of English in Germany's higher education system, as well as in business and in popular culture, has led various German academics to state, not necessarily from an entirely negative perspective, that German is a language in decline in its native country. For example, Ursula Kimpel, of the University of Tübingen, said in 2005 that “German universities are offering more courses in English because of the large number of students coming from abroad. German is unfortunately - a language in decline. We need and want our professors to be able to teach effectively in English.” [2]

Classification

German is a member of the western branch of the Germanic family of languages, which in turn is part of the Indo-European language family.

Official status

Standard German is the only official language in Liechtenstein and Austria; it shares official status in Germany (with Danish, Frisian and Sorbian as minority languages), Switzerland (with French, Italian and Romansch), Belgium (with Dutch and French) and Luxembourg (with French and Luxembourgish). It is used as a local official language in German-speaking regions of Denmark, Italy, and Poland.

German is one of the 23 official languages of the European Union. It is the language with the largest number of native speakers in the European Union, and, shortly after English and long before French, the second-most spoken language in Europe.

It is also a minority language in Argentina, Brazil, Cameroon, Canada, Chile, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Namibia, Paraguay, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Tajikistan, Togo, Ukraine and the United States.

German was once the lingua franca of Central, Eastern and Northern Europe and remains one of the most popular foreign languages in Europe. 32% of citizens of the EU-15 countries say they can converse in German (either as a mother tongue or as a second/foreign language). [3] This is assisted by the widespread availability of German TV by cable or satellite.

Standard German

Main article: Standard German

In German linguistics, only the traditional regional varieties are called dialects, not the different varieties of standard German.

Standard German has originated not as a traditional dialect of a specific region, but as a written language. However, there are places where the traditional regional dialects have been replaced by standard German; this is the case in vast stretches of Northern Germany, but also in major cities in other parts of the country.

Standard German differs regionally, especially between German-speaking countries, especially in vocabulary, but also in some instances of pronunciation and even grammar and orthography. This variation must not be confused with the variation of local dialects. Even though the regional varieties of standard German are only to a certain degree influenced by the local dialects, they are very distinct. German is thus considered a pluricentric language.

In most regions, the speakers use a continuum of mixtures from more dialectical varieties to more standard varieties according to situation.

In the German-speaking parts of Switzerland, mixtures of dialect and standard are very seldom used, and the use of standard German is largely restricted to the written language. Therefore, this situation has been called a medial diglossia. Swiss Standard German is only spoken with people who do not understand the Swiss German dialects at all. It is expected to be used in school.

Grammar

Main article: German grammar

German grammar
Nouns
Verbs
Articles
Adjectives
Pronouns
Adverbial phrases
Conjugation
Sentence structure

German is an inflected language.

Noun inflection

German nouns inflect into:

• one of four cases: nominative, genitive, dative, and accusative.
• one of three genders: masculine, feminine, or neuter. Word endings sometimes reveal grammatical gender; for instance, nouns ending in ...ung(-ing), ...schaft(-ship) or ...heit(-hood) are feminine, while nouns ending in ...chen or ...lein (diminutive forms) are neuter and nouns ending in ...ismus (-sm) are masculine. Others are controversial, sometimes depending on the region in which it is spoken. Additionally, ambiguous endings exist, such as ...er (-er), e.g. Feier (feminine), engl. celebration, party, and Arbeiter (masculine), engl. labourer. Sentences can usually be reorganized to avoid a misunderstanding.
• two numbers: singular and plural

Although German is usually cited as an outstanding example of a highly inflected language (With about 100 million native speakers German is by far the most spoken strongly inflecting Germanic language in the world), the degree of inflection is considerably less than in Old German, or in other old Indo-European languages such as Latin, Ancient Greek, or Sanskrit. The three genders have collapsed in the plural, which now behaves, grammatically, somewhat as a fourth gender. With four cases and three genders plus plural there are 16 distinct possible combinations of case and gender/number, but presently there are only six forms of the definite article used for the 16 possibilities. Inflection for case on the noun itself is required in the singular for strong masculine and neuter nouns in the genitive and sometimes in the dative. Both of these cases are losing way to substitutes in informal speech. The dative ending is considered somewhat old-fashioned in many contexts and often dropped, but it is still used in sayings and in formal speech or in written language. Weak masculine nouns share a common case ending for genitive, dative and accusative in the singular. Feminines are not declined in the singular. The plural does have an inflection for the dative. In total, seven inflectional endings (not counting plural markers) exist in German: -s, -es, -n, -ns, -en, -ens, -e.

In the German orthography, nouns and most words with the syntactical function of nouns are capitalised, which is supposed to make it easier for readers to find out what function a word has within the sentence (Am Freitag bin ich einkaufen gegangen. — "On Friday I went shopping."; 'Eines Tages war er wirklich da. — "One day he finally showed up".) This spelling convention is almost unique to German today (shared perhaps only by the closely related Luxemburgish language), although it was historically common in other languages (e.g., Danish and English), too.

Like most Germanic languages, German forms left-branching noun compounds, where the first noun modifies the category given by the second, for example: Hundehütte (eng. dog hut; specifically: doghouse). Unlike English, where newer compounds or combinations of longer nouns are often written in open form with separating spaces, German (like the other German languages) nearly always uses the closed form without spaces, for example: Baumhaus (eng. tree house). Like English, German allows arbitrarily long compounds, but these are rare. (See also English compounds.)

The longest German word verified to be actually in (albeit very limited) use is Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz.

Verb inflection

Standard German verbs inflect into:

• one of two conjugation classes, weak and strong (like English).

(There is actually a third class, known as mixed verbs, which exhibit inflections combining features of both the strong and weak patterns.)

• three persons: 1st, 2nd, 3rd.
• two numbers: singular and plural
• three moods: Indicative, Subjunctive, Imperative
• two genera verbus: active and passive; the passive being composed and dividable into static and dynamic.
• two non-composed tenses (Present, Preterite) and four composed tenses (Perfect, Pluperfect, Future I, Future II)
• distinction between grammatical aspects is rendered by combined use of subjunctive and/or preterite marking; thus: neither of both is plain indicative voice, sole subjunctive conveys second-hand information, subjunctive plus Preterite marking forms the conditional state, and sole preterite is either plain indicative (in the past), or functions as a (literal) alternative for either second-hand-information or for the conditional state of the verb, when one of them may seem indistinguishable otherwise.
• distinction between perfect and progressive aspect is and has at every stage of development been at hand as a productive category of the older language and in nearly all documented dialects, but, strangely enough, is nowadays rigorously excluded from written usage in its present normalised form.
• disambiguation of completed vs. uncompleted forms is widely observed and regularly generated by common prefixes (blicken - to look, erblicken - to see [unrelated form: sehen - to see]).

There are also many ways to expand, and sometimes radically change, the meaning of a base verb through a relatively small number of prefixes. Some of those prefixes have a meaning themselves (Example: zer- refers to the destruction of things, as in zerreißen=to tear apart, zerbrechen=to break apart, zerschneiden=to cut apart), others do not have more than the vaguest meaning in and of themselves (Example: ver- , as in versuchen=to try, vernehmen=to interrogate, verteilen=to distribute, verstehen=to understand). More examples: haften=to stick, verhaften=to imprison; kaufen=to buy, verkaufen=to sell; hören=to hear, aufhören=to cease; fahren=to drive, erfahren=to get to know, to hear about something.

Syntax

see also: thou

for a basic present tense statement sentence, the word order is:

• Subject, verb, time element, indirect object, direct object.

Generally, for a basic spoken past tense sentence, the word order is:

• Subject, supporting verb, time element, indirect object, direct object, past tense verb.

The word order is generally more rigid than in Modern English except for nouns (see below). One word order is for a main and another for subordinate clauses. In normal positive sentences the inflected verb always has position 2; In questions, exclamations, and wishes, it always has position 1. In subordinate clauses the verb is supposed to occur at the very end. In speech this rule is often disregarded. For example in a subordinate clause introduced by "weil" ("because") the verb quite often occupies the same order as in a main clause. The correct way of saying it is "... weil ich pleite bin." (...because I'm broke). In the vernacular you hear "...weil ich bin pleite." This may be caused by mixing weil with a second, alternative word for "because", denn, which confusingly is used with the main clause order ("...denn ich bin pleite."). Another cause weil is used is, that the spoken form includes a small pause after the weil: "Ich gehe zum Arzt, weil - ich bin krank" ( I'm going to see the doctor, because I am ill). The pause replaces the words: "folgendes der Fall ist:" (the following is the case:).

Sentences using modal verbs separate the auxiliary putting the infinitive at the end. For example, the sentence in Modern English "Should he go home?" would be rearranged in German to say "Should he (to) home go?" (Soll er nach Hause gehen?). Thus in sentences with several subordinate or relative clauses verbs tend to gather at the end. The reader or listener then has the job of reconnecting these verbs individually to the subjects to which they belong. Compare the mental acrobatics to rearrange prepositions in the following English sentence: What did you bring that book that I don't like to be read to out of up for?

To ease the German syntax, a rule has been imposed to limit the number of infinitives at the end to two, placing the third infinitive or auxiliary verb that would have gone to the end to the beginning of the chain of verbs. In the sentence "Should he move into the house that he just has had renovated?" would be rearranged to "Should he into the house move, that he just has renovated had?". (Soll er in das Haus einziehen, das er gerade hat renovieren lassen?).. If there are more than three, all others are relocated to the beginning of the chain. Needless to say the rule is not exclusively applied. Many native speakers spend their entire lives without ever using it outside of school at all. It's found in newspapers, radio or TV reports and in educated circles. Mostly the situation is avoided by reorganizing the sentence.

The position of a noun as a subject or object in a German sentence doesn't affect the meaning of the sentence as it would in English. In a declarative sentence in English if the subject does not occur before the predicate the sentence could well be misunderstood. In a headline, for example, "Man bites dog" it's clear who did what to whom. To exchange the place of the subject with that of the object changes the meaning completely. In other words the word order in a sentence conveys significant information. In German, nouns and articles are declined as in Latin thus indicating its case as nominative or accusative (among others). The above example in German would be Ein Mann beißt den Hund or Den Hund beißt ein Mann with exactly the same meaning. If the articles are omitted, which is sometimes done in headlines (Mann beißt Hund), it's like in English, the first noun is the subject. The noun following the predicate is the object.

Except for cases of emphasis adverbs of time have to appear in the third place in the sentence (just after the predicate). Otherwise the speaker would be recognised as non-German. For instance the German word order (in Modern English) is: We're going tomorrow(morning) to town. (Wir gehen morgen in die Stadt.)

Many German verbs have a separable prefix, often with an adverbial function. In finite verb forms this is split off and moved to the end of the clause, and is hence considered by some to be a "resultative particle". For example, mitgehen (with going), meaning "to go with" would be split giving Gehen Sie mit? (Literal: "Go you with?" ; Formal: "Are you going with (me or us)"?).

Vocabulary

Most German vocabulary is derived from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, although there are significant minorities of words derived from