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The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people [ nb 1 ] mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania, and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, English, is also the world's most widely spoken language with an estimated 2 billion speakers.
The official language of Germany is German, [2] with over 95 percent of the country speaking Standard German or a dialect of German as their first language. [3] This figure includes speakers of Northern Low Saxon, a recognized minority or regional language that is not considered separately from Standard German in statistics.
Standard German is a West Germanic language and is closely related to and classified alongside English, Dutch, and the Frisian languages. To a lesser extent, it is also related to the East (extinct) and North Germanic languages. Most German vocabulary is derived from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family. [9]
The appearance of the German language begins in the Early Middle Ages with the High German consonant shift. Old High German, Middle High German, and Early New High German span the duration of the Holy Roman Empire. The 19th and 20th centuries saw the rise of Standard German and a decrease of dialectal variety.
A dialect of Alsatian German is spoken in the United States by a group known as the Swiss Amish, whose ancestors emigrated there in the middle of the 19th century. The approximately 7,000 speakers are located mainly in Allen County, Indiana, with "daughter settlements" [Note 1] elsewhere. [ 5 ]
Germans (German: Deutsche, pronounced [ˈdɔʏtʃə] ⓘ) are the natives or inhabitants of Germany, or sometimes more broadly any people who are of German descent or native speakers of the German language. [1][2] The constitution of Germany, implemented in 1949 following the end of World War II, defines a German as a German citizen. [3]
The German diaspora (German: Deutschstämmige) consists of German people and their descendants who live outside of Germany. The term is used in particular to refer to the aspects of migration of German speakers from Central Europe to different countries around the world. This definition describes the "German" term as a sociolinguistic group as ...
German is the main language of approximately 95 to 100 million people in Europe, or 13.3% of all Europeans. This makes it the second most spoken native language in Europe, behind only Russian(with 144 million speakers), and ahead of French(with 66.5 million) and English(with 64.2 million). The European countries with German-speaking majorities ...