German
Deutsch
German has more native speakers than any other language in the European Union. Its most visible quirk is also the easiest to spot: every common noun takes a capital letter, a rule no other major language follows. It keeps four grammatical cases, and its habit of welding nouns together produces the famously long compounds. Dialects remain strong and far apart: a northern German will not spontaneously understand Swiss German.
- Family
- West Germanic
- Script
- Latin
- Speakers
- ≈ 95 million
- Where
- Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium
- In the game
- Common language
How to spot it
Every common noun takes a capital letter. The ß, the umlauts ä ö ü and the endlessly compounded words are its signature.
A few sentences
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Ich gehe jeden Morgen mit meinem Hund im Park spazieren.
I walk my dog in the park every morning.
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Im Sommer fahren wir immer ans Meer.
In summer we always go to the seaside.
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Ich muss heute Abend noch die Wäsche waschen.
I still have to do the laundry this evening.
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Das Wetter soll morgen besser werden.
The weather is supposed to get better tomorrow.
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Ich würde gern ein Jahr im Ausland leben.
I would like to live abroad for a year.