GERMAN LANGUAGE German is a language of immense economic use in the German-speaking countries.

Origin The German language, directly behind English is the second most popular Germanic language spoken today. Along with its extensive use as a second language, German has a total number of native speakers reaching approximately 98,000,000. Although Germanic languages branch from the Indo-European language family, the original words and names have been traced to Latin roots. The first historical written document of the Germanic languages is the Gothic Bible which is assumed to have been translated about AD 350. All Germanic languages are believed to have stemmed from a parent language which we call Proto-Germanic. The Proto-Germanic language is a branch of the Indo-European language. The Proto-Germanic languages differ from the Indo-European languages in subtle phonological and grammatical changes, one of which is called the consonant shift, commonly referred to as Grimm's law. The German language specifically, developed as its own language sometime in the late 19th-century. The following diagram, composed by linguistic scholars in an attempt to explain the phenomenon of different dialects of different geographical areas, nicely illustrates this development. Linguists continue to stress, however, that a language tree as such may create very definite splits when in fact, language dialects tend to be better defined as blends. Diagram, Composed By Linguistic Scholars Proto-Germnic /I\ West Germanic North Germanic East Germanic /\/\I Anglo-Frisian Netherlandic German W.Scandinavian E.Scandinavian I Gothic /\/\/I\/\ English Frisian Netherlandic German Icelandic Faroese Norwegian Danish Swedish

German is used mainly in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, although smaller German speaking communities exist in North and South America, South Africa and Australia. The written forms of German are fairly uniform with only minor regional differences. The spoken form, however, has many more dialects than all of the English language. The most popular of dialects is called Hochdeutsch, translated "High German" This is the most formal dialect used in any official setting including media, education and public communication. In order for German to develop as its own -standing Germanic language it had to pass through several stages. The first High German written documents date back to the 8th century. It is assumed that for roughly four centuries before that several middle, low and upper German dialects were beginning to converge together to form what was between 740-1050 referred to as the old period of Old High German. The German language is believed to have undergone several lingusitical shifts thereafter which would explain the development from Old High German to the more Modern High German. During this Old High German period many of the words were still being borrowed from Latin and the written documents showed what appeared to be monastery dialects. The history of the German language is thought to have begun in the 3rd century A.D. during the migration of Germanic tribes in Europe. It was around this period that phonological changes in the Germanic language took place; this change is also known as the High German consonant shift. This resulted in the formation of Old High German. In those days, High German could be classified into Upper German and Central German. There was no evidence of consistency in written German language texts until the end of the 8th century. The German language was the only language from the West Germanic language group that underwent the phonological change, while other languages remained unchanged.