| 10
things you didn't know about German
As part of the build-up to the
2006 World Cup, which kicks off in Munich on 9th June,
EITI brings you 10 things you didn't know about German...
Click
here to download this page
in PDF format.
| 1 |
German
is the tenth most widely spoken language in
the world: 95 million people use it as their
mother tongue. |
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| 2 |
The language has official
status in six countries: Germany, Austria,
Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein. |
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| 3 |
There are German-speaking
communities all over the world, in places
as diverse as Namibia and Tajikistan |
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| 4 |
The word for German
takes different forms in different languages:
in German it is deutsch; in Spanish
alemán; in Italian tedesco;
and in Russian nemetsky. |
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| 5 |
German has a 60% lexical
similarity with English. |
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| 6 |
Some words that are
exactly the same in German and English are
Hand, Butter and Name. |
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| 7 |
The German alphabet
includes one additional letter: the ß
or double s. |
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| 8 |
German uses the umlaut,
which appears over the letters ä,
ö and ü. |
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| 9 |
All German nouns begin
with a capital letter. German is only language
in the world in which this happens. |
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| 10 |
There are two major
dialects of German: High German, which is
spoken in the southern highlands; and Low
German, which is spoken in the northern lowlands. |
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Above:
The Brandenburg Gate in Berlin was built between
1788 and 1791. The gate consists of 12 Doric
columns - six on each side - topped by the
goddess of victory driving a four-horse chariot. |
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Sources: The Languages of the
World (Routledge, 1995); Ethnologue 15th Edition (2005)
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Ethnologue
Languages of the World
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