German language Article

German language summary

verifiedCite
While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions.
Select Citation Style
verifiedCite
While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions.
Select Citation Style
Below is the article summary. For the full article, see German language.

German language, Official language of Germany and Austria and one of the official languages of Switzerland, used by more than 100 million speakers. It belongs to the West Germanic group of the Germanic languages. German has four noun cases and masculine, feminine, and neuter genders. Its many dialects belong to either the High German (Hochdeutsch) or Low German (Plattdeutsch) groups. Modern High German, spoken in the central and southern highlands of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, is now standard written German, used in administration, higher education, literature, and the mass media in both High and Low German speech areas.