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Episode 1: What are the Characteristics of German

German (German: Deutsch, English: German language), the language family belongs to the Indo-European language family – Germanic language family – West Germanic branch, its standard form is called Standard deutsch (Standard deutsch), is Austria, Belgium, Germany, Italy Official language of the Autonomous Province of Bolzano, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Switzerland, written in the Latin alphabet.

The number of people who speak German accounts for 3.01% of the world’s population. It is the sixth language in the world in terms of the number of countries where it is spoken. It is also one of the world’s major languages ​​and the most widely used mother tongue in the European Union.

The formation of the German standard common language can be traced back to Martin Luther’s translation of the Latin Bible. Most of the German vocabulary is derived from Indo-European-Germanic languages, some from Latin and Greek, and some from French and English. The latest data from the European Language Management Center in September 2015 shows that the number of German speakers and German learners in the world is nearly 177 million, of which 95 million are native speakers and 12 million are second language users. With as many as 70 million people, it is one of the most frequently learned foreign languages ​​in the world.

There is a huge gap between German dialects, including dozens of dialects in the two branches of High German and Low German; the vocabulary and grammar are different, and they cannot communicate with each other. High German refers to the Alps and the adjacent mountains in southern Germany. Low German is mainly distributed in the northern coastal areas of Germany. Low German is usually divided into three systems: East Low German, Low Saxon, and Low Frankish. The German term Hochdeutsch is often used to refer to Standard German rather than the High German dialects.

Features

German belongs to the Indo-European language family, the Germanic language family. Also belonging to the same language family: English, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic.

In Germany, Austria, and Liechtenstein, German is the only official language.

In Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Namibia, German plays an important role as one of the official languages.

German contains 30 letters, 4 of which are special letters.

German has its own unique pronunciation rules. If you master the pronunciation rules (usually it takes about 10 class hours), you can read general German articles smoothly.

German words are not marked with phonetic symbols in general word lists and dictionaries. It needs to be read according to the German pronunciation rules. If there are special circumstances, such as words from other languages ​​that have not been Germanized, the pronunciation is generally marked.

German has a total of 42 phonemes, 19 vowels, and 23 consonants.

There are three types of nouns in German: masculine, neuter and feminine. Can not and Chinese corresponding to participle. For example, the German word for “girl” (Mädchen).

If you are a beginner in German, you need to accumulate a certain vocabulary before you can find a little bit of the so-called internal rules. Taking word form as an example, nouns ending in -er,-or,-ist,-ant,-ent are mostly masculine; Nouns ending in -tion, -ssion, -sion, -ie are mostly feminine; nouns ending in -chen, -lein, -nis are mostly neuter.

Verbs are conjugated in German. According to the changing verbs of the personal tense, there should be corresponding changes, as well as the changes of the first participle and the second participle.

German word order is divided into three types: positive word order, negative word order, and final word order.

German dialect

German dialects are generally divided into two types: Low German and High German.

The modern German dialect is divided into two parts, Middle German and Upper German. Standard German is based on Middle German. The dialects of Austria and Switzerland belong to Upper German. There are many dialects in the southern part of the German language area, such as Austrian dialect, Swabian dialect, Bavarian dialect, Hesse dialect, Cologne dialect, Berlin dialect, etc. Generally speaking, the more southern dialects are, the stronger the pronunciation, the more short sounds and the more a sounds.