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84-602: The government hoped to limit union activity by passing the Works Council Act. The left-wing German political parties the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) and Communist Party of Germany (KPD) backed the workers who wanted unrestricted organizing powers. To push their point a protest was called for on January 13, 1920, in front of the Reichstag. The protection of the building lay with

168-460: A de facto official language of Namibia after the end of German colonial rule alongside English and Afrikaans , and had de jure co-official status from 1984 until its independence from South Africa in 1990. However, the Namibian government perceived Afrikaans and German as symbols of apartheid and colonialism, and decided English would be the sole official language upon independence, stating that it

252-452: A parliamentary democracy . The USPD was instrumental in the creation of the 2½ International in 1921. Over time, the political differences between SPD and USPD dwindled. Following the assassination of foreign minister Walther Rathenau by right-wing extremists in June 1922, the two parties' factions in the Reichstag formed a common working group on 14 July 1922. Two months later on 24 September,

336-402: A second language , and 75–100   million as a foreign language . This would imply the existence of approximately 175–220   million German speakers worldwide. German sociolinguist Ulrich Ammon estimated a number of 289 million German foreign language speakers without clarifying the criteria by which he classified a speaker. As of 2012 , about 90   million people, or 16% of

420-587: A "commonly used" language and the Pan South African Language Board is obligated to promote and ensure respect for it. Cameroon was also a colony of the German Empire from the same period (1884 to 1916). However, German was replaced by French and English, the languages of the two successor colonial powers, after its loss in World War I . Nevertheless, since the 21st century, German has become

504-556: A greater need for regularity in written conventions. While the major changes of the MHG period were socio-cultural, High German was still undergoing significant linguistic changes in syntax, phonetics, and morphology as well (e.g. diphthongization of certain vowel sounds: hus (OHG & MHG "house") → haus (regionally in later MHG)→ Haus (NHG), and weakening of unstressed short vowels to schwa [ə]: taga (OHG "days")→ tage (MHG)). A great wealth of texts survives from

588-453: A native tongue today, mostly descendants of German colonial settlers . The period of German colonialism in Namibia also led to the evolution of a Standard German-based pidgin language called " Namibian Black German ", which became a second language for parts of the indigenous population. Although it is nearly extinct today, some older Namibians still have some knowledge of it. German remained

672-679: A popular foreign language among pupils and students, with 300,000 people learning or speaking German in Cameroon in 2010 and over 230,000 in 2020. Today Cameroon is one of the African countries outside Namibia with the highest number of people learning German. In the United States, German is the fifth most spoken language in terms of native and second language speakers after English, Spanish , French , and Chinese (with figures for Cantonese and Mandarin combined), with over 1 million total speakers. In

756-475: A result, the surviving texts are written in highly disparate regional dialects and exhibit significant Latin influence, particularly in vocabulary. At this point monasteries, where most written works were produced, were dominated by Latin, and German saw only occasional use in official and ecclesiastical writing. While there is no complete agreement over the dates of the Middle High German (MHG) period, it

840-681: A settlement with the SPD as the German Revolution began and even became part of the government in the form of the Rat der Volksbeauftragten ( Council of the People's Deputies ), which was formed on 10 November 1918 and mutually led by Ebert and Haase during the German Revolution. However, the agreement did not last long as Haase, Wilhelm Dittmann and Emil Barth left the council on 29 December 1918 to protest

924-580: Is a recognized minority language in the following countries: In France, the High German varieties of Alsatian and Moselle Franconian are identified as " regional languages ", but the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages of 1998 has not yet been ratified by the government. Namibia also was a colony of the German Empire, from 1884 to 1915. About 30,000 people still speak German as

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1008-596: Is also notable for its broad spectrum of dialects , with many varieties existing in Europe and other parts of the world. Some of these non-standard varieties have become recognized and protected by regional or national governments. Since 2004, heads of state of the German-speaking countries have met every year, and the Council for German Orthography has been the main international body regulating German orthography . German

1092-546: Is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Germanic group of the Germanic languages . The Germanic languages are traditionally subdivided into three branches: North Germanic , East Germanic , and West Germanic . The first of these branches survives in modern Danish , Swedish , Norwegian , Faroese , and Icelandic , all of which are descended from Old Norse . The East Germanic languages are now extinct, and Gothic

1176-472: Is called the "German Sprachraum ". German is the official language of the following countries: German is a co-official language of the following countries: Although expulsions and (forced) assimilation after the two World wars greatly diminished them, minority communities of mostly bilingual German native speakers exist in areas both adjacent to and detached from the Sprachraum. Within Europe, German

1260-430: Is complicated by the existence of several varieties whose status as separate "languages" or "dialects" is disputed for political and linguistic reasons, including quantitatively strong varieties like certain forms of Alemannic and Low German . With the inclusion or exclusion of certain varieties, it is estimated that approximately 90–95 million people speak German as a first language , 10–25   million speak it as

1344-520: Is generally seen as ending when the 1346–53 Black Death decimated Europe's population. Modern High German begins with the Early New High German (ENHG) period, which Wilhelm Scherer dates 1350–1650, terminating with the end of the Thirty Years' War . This period saw the further displacement of Latin by German as the primary language of courtly proceedings and, increasingly, of literature in

1428-595: Is generally seen as lasting from 1050 to 1350. This was a period of significant expansion of the geographical territory occupied by Germanic tribes, and consequently of the number of German speakers. Whereas during the Old High German period the Germanic tribes extended only as far east as the Elbe and Saale rivers, the MHG period saw a number of these tribes expanding beyond this eastern boundary into Slavic territory (known as

1512-559: Is less closely related to languages based on Low Franconian dialects (e.g., Dutch and Afrikaans), Low German or Low Saxon dialects (spoken in northern Germany and southern Denmark ), neither of which underwent the High German consonant shift. As has been noted, the former of these dialect types is Istvaeonic and the latter Ingvaeonic, whereas the High German dialects are all Irminonic; the differences between these languages and standard German are therefore considerable. Also related to German are

1596-435: Is one of the major languages of the world . German is the second-most widely spoken Germanic language , after English, both as a first and as a second language . German is also widely taught as a foreign language , especially in continental Europe (where it is the third most taught foreign language after English and French), and in the United States. Overall, German is the fourth most commonly learned second language, and

1680-587: Is one of the three biggest newspapers in Namibia and the only German-language daily in Africa. An estimated 12,000 people speak German or a German variety as a first language in South Africa, mostly originating from different waves of immigration during the 19th and 20th centuries. One of the largest communities consists of the speakers of "Nataler Deutsch", a variety of Low German concentrated in and around Wartburg . The South African constitution identifies German as

1764-401: Is partly derived from Latin and Greek , along with fewer words borrowed from French and Modern English . English, however, is the main source of more recent loanwords . German is a pluricentric language ; the three standardized variants are German , Austrian , and Swiss Standard German . Standard German is sometimes called High German , which refers to its regional origin. German

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1848-510: Is the Sachsenspiegel , the first book of laws written in Middle Low German ( c.  1220 ). The abundance and especially the secular character of the literature of the MHG period demonstrate the beginnings of a standardized written form of German, as well as the desire of poets and authors to be understood by individuals on supra-dialectal terms. The Middle High German period

1932-750: Is the most spoken native language within the European Union . It is the most widely spoken and official (or co-official) language in Germany , Austria , Switzerland , Liechtenstein , and the Italian autonomous province of South Tyrol . It is also an official language of Luxembourg , Belgium and the Italian autonomous region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia , as well as a recognized national language in Namibia . There are also notable German-speaking communities in France ( Alsace ),

2016-566: Is the only language in this branch which survives in written texts. The West Germanic languages, however, have undergone extensive dialectal subdivision and are now represented in modern languages such as English, German, Dutch , Yiddish , Afrikaans , and others. Within the West Germanic language dialect continuum, the Benrath and Uerdingen lines (running through Düsseldorf - Benrath and Krefeld - Uerdingen , respectively) serve to distinguish

2100-411: Is unclear whether the warnings existed. Almost all the dead and injured were found south of the Reichstag, on the opposite sidewalk and in the adjacent zoo, according to reports from various sides. There, on Simsonstrasse, the crowd was at least four meters away from the police. So there were no violent attacks during the storming of the building. Most of the victims were hit here. After the shots broke out

2184-481: Is understood in all areas where German is spoken. Approximate distribution of native German speakers (assuming a rounded total of 95 million) worldwide: As a result of the German diaspora , as well as the popularity of German taught as a foreign language , the geographical distribution of German speakers (or "Germanophones") spans all inhabited continents. However, an exact, global number of native German speakers

2268-673: The Ostsiedlung ). With the increasing wealth and geographic spread of the Germanic groups came greater use of German in the courts of nobles as the standard language of official proceedings and literature. A clear example of this is the mittelhochdeutsche Dichtersprache employed in the Hohenstaufen court in Swabia as a standardized supra-dialectal written language. While these efforts were still regionally bound, German began to be used in place of Latin for certain official purposes, leading to

2352-574: The 1928 Reichstag election , but it won no seats. It merged into the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany ( Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschland , SAPD) in 1931. German language German (German: Deutsch , pronounced [dɔʏtʃ] ) is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family , mainly spoken in Western and Central Europe . It

2436-627: The Alamanni , Bavarian, and Thuringian groups, all belonging to the Elbe Germanic group ( Irminones ), which had settled in what is now southern-central Germany and Austria between the second and sixth centuries, during the great migration. In general, the surviving texts of Old High German (OHG) show a wide range of dialectal diversity with very little written uniformity. The early written tradition of OHG survived mostly through monasteries and scriptoria as local translations of Latin originals; as

2520-557: The Czech Republic ( North Bohemia ), Poland ( Upper Silesia ), Slovakia ( Košice Region , Spiš , and Hauerland ), Denmark ( North Schleswig ), Romania and Hungary ( Sopron ). Overseas, sizeable communities of German-speakers are found in Brazil ( Blumenau and Pomerode ), South Africa ( Kroondal ), Namibia , among others, some communities have decidedly Austrian German or Swiss German characters (e.g. Pozuzo , Peru). German

2604-522: The Early Middle Ages . German is an inflected language , with four cases for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative); three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) and two numbers (singular, plural). It has strong and weak verbs . The majority of its vocabulary derives from the ancient Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, while a smaller share

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2688-417: The European Union 's population, spoke German as their mother tongue, making it the second most widely spoken language on the continent after Russian and the second biggest language in terms of overall speakers (after English), as well as the most spoken native language. The area in central Europe where the majority of the population speaks German as a first language and has German as a (co-)official language

2772-514: The German states . While these states were still part of the Holy Roman Empire , and far from any form of unification, the desire for a cohesive written language that would be understandable across the many German-speaking principalities and kingdoms was stronger than ever. As a spoken language German remained highly fractured throughout this period, with a vast number of often mutually incomprehensible regional dialects being spoken throughout

2856-724: The Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I , and the other being Meißner Deutsch , used in the Electorate of Saxony in the Duchy of Saxe-Wittenberg . Alongside these courtly written standards, the invention of the printing press led to the development of a number of printers' languages ( Druckersprachen ) aimed at making printed material readable and understandable across as many diverse dialects of German as possible. The greater ease of production and increased availability of written texts brought about increased standardisation in

2940-644: The Old High German language in several Elder Futhark inscriptions from as early as the sixth century AD (such as the Pforzen buckle ), the Old High German period is generally seen as beginning with the Abrogans (written c.  765–775 ), a Latin-German glossary supplying over 3,000 Old High German words with their Latin equivalents. After the Abrogans , the first coherent works written in Old High German appear in

3024-640: The Sprachraum in Europe. German is used in a wide variety of spheres throughout the country, especially in business, tourism, and public signage, as well as in education, churches (most notably the German-speaking Evangelical Lutheran Church in Namibia (GELK) ), other cultural spheres such as music, and media (such as German language radio programs by the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation ). The Allgemeine Zeitung

3108-536: The Standard German language in its written form, and the Duden Handbook was declared its standard definition. Punctuation and compound spelling (joined or isolated compounds) were not standardized in the process. The Deutsche Bühnensprache ( lit.   ' German stage language ' ) by Theodor Siebs had established conventions for German pronunciation in theatres , three years earlier; however, this

3192-503: The Upper German dialects spoken in the southern German-speaking countries , such as Swiss German ( Alemannic dialects ) and the various Germanic dialects spoken in the French region of Grand Est , such as Alsatian (mainly Alemannic, but also Central–and   Upper Franconian dialects) and Lorraine Franconian (Central Franconian). After these High German dialects, standard German

3276-522: The pacifists surrounding Hugo Haase and ultimately led to the expulsion of the group from the SPD on 24 March 1916. To be able to continue their parliamentary work, the group formed the Social Democratic Working Group ( Sozialdemokratische Arbeitsgemeinschaft , SAG). Concerns from the SPD leadership and Friedrich Ebert that the SAG was intent on dividing the SPD then led to the expulsion of

3360-462: The pagan Germanic tradition. Of particular interest to scholars, however, has been the Hildebrandslied , a secular epic poem telling the tale of an estranged father and son unknowingly meeting each other in battle. Linguistically, this text is highly interesting due to the mixed use of Old Saxon and Old High German dialects in its composition. The written works of this period stem mainly from

3444-551: The Comintern would allow the party to implement its socialist ideals. Ultimately, the proposition to join the Comintern was approved at a party convention in Halle in October 1920 by 237 votes to 156, with various international speakers including Julius Martov , Jean Longuet and Grigory Zinoviev . The USPD split up in the process, with both groups seeing themselves as the rightful USPD and

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3528-714: The Empire. Its use indicated that the speaker was a merchant or someone from an urban area, regardless of nationality. Prague (German: Prag ) and Budapest ( Buda , German: Ofen ), to name two examples, were gradually Germanized in the years after their incorporation into the Habsburg domain; others, like Pressburg ( Pozsony , now Bratislava), were originally settled during the Habsburg period and were primarily German at that time. Prague, Budapest, Bratislava, and cities like Zagreb (German: Agram ) or Ljubljana (German: Laibach ), contained significant German minorities. In

3612-718: The Frisian languages— North Frisian (spoken in Nordfriesland ), Saterland Frisian (spoken in Saterland ), and West Frisian (spoken in Friesland )—as well as the Anglic languages of English and Scots. These Anglo-Frisian dialects did not take part in the High German consonant shift, and the Anglic languages also adopted much vocabulary from both Old Norse and the Norman language . The history of

3696-524: The German language begins with the High German consonant shift during the Migration Period , which separated Old High German dialects from Old Saxon . This sound shift involved a drastic change in the pronunciation of both voiced and voiceless stop consonants ( b , d , g , and p , t , k , respectively). The primary effects of the shift were the following below. While there is written evidence of

3780-447: The German states; the invention of the printing press c.  1440 and the publication of Luther's vernacular translation of the Bible in 1534, however, had an immense effect on standardizing German as a supra-dialectal written language. The ENHG period saw the rise of several important cross-regional forms of chancery German, one being gemeine tiutsch , used in the court of

3864-675: The Germanic dialects that were affected by the High German consonant shift (south of Benrath) from those that were not (north of Uerdingen). The various regional dialects spoken south of these lines are grouped as High German dialects, while those spoken to the north comprise the Low German and Low Franconian dialects. As members of the West Germanic language family, High German, Low German, and Low Franconian have been proposed to be further distinguished historically as Irminonic , Ingvaeonic , and Istvaeonic , respectively. This classification indicates their historical descent from dialects spoken by

3948-516: The International's 21 conditions of entry, Crispien and Dittmann opposed them, leading to a controversial debate over joining the Comintern to break out in the USPD. Many members felt that the necessary requirements for joining would lead to a loss of the party's independence and a perceived dictate from Moscow while others, especially younger members such as Ernst Thälmann , argued that only the joining of

4032-646: The Irminones (also known as the Elbe group), Ingvaeones (or North Sea Germanic group), and Istvaeones (or Weser–Rhine group). Standard German is based on a combination of Thuringian - Upper Saxon and Upper Franconian dialects, which are Central German and Upper German dialects belonging to the High German dialect group. German is therefore closely related to the other languages based on High German dialects, such as Luxembourgish (based on Central Franconian dialects ) and Yiddish . Also closely related to Standard German are

4116-507: The MHG period. Significantly, these texts include a number of impressive secular works, such as the Nibelungenlied , an epic poem telling the story of the dragon -slayer Siegfried ( c.  thirteenth century ), and the Iwein , an Arthurian verse poem by Hartmann von Aue ( c.  1203 ), lyric poems , and courtly romances such as Parzival and Tristan . Also noteworthy

4200-555: The SAG members from the SPD on 18 January 1917. On 6 April 1917, the USPD was founded at a conference in Gotha , with Hugo Haase as the party's first chairman. The Spartakusbund also merged into the newly founded party, but it retained relative autonomy. To avoid confusion, the existing SPD was typically called the Majority Social Democratic Party of Germany ( Mehrheits-SPD or MSPD, majority-SPD) from then on. Luise Zietz

4284-637: The SPD's use of military force during the sailors' uprising in Berlin. At the same time, the Spartakusbund, led by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht , separated from the USPD in order to merge with other left-wing groups and form the Communist Party of Germany ( Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands , KPD). During the elections for the National Assembly on 19 January 1919 from which the SPD emerged as

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4368-406: The USPD led to another interruption at 4:37 p.m. After the reopening at 5:09 p.m. Fehrenbach, who had now taken note of the fatalities, closed the trial at 5:11 p.m. The works council law passed the National Assembly at a subsequent meeting on January 18. With the announcement in the Reichsgesetzblatt, it came into force on February 4, 1920. After the riot, a total exclusion zone for demonstrations

4452-495: The crowd fired shots at Portal II of the Reichstag building. At least one police officer was hit. Members of the metalworkers' union immediately took the gun from the gunman – apparently captured by the Sipo – and beat him up. The majority of the demonstrators were calm anyway or even tried to prevent the police from being aggressive. The events that followed were highly controversial among contemporaries - and still are in research to this day. One version, represented among others by

4536-422: The crowd fled in panic, the Sipo fired several more minutes with their rifles and machine guns. Nowhere in the sources claims that demonstrators would have been shot back. The figures for the victims vary between 42 dead and 105 injured on the part of the demonstrators and around 20 dead, including one police officer, and around 100 injured, including 15 police officers. In any case, the casualties of this event were

4620-430: The development of non-local forms of language and exposed all speakers to forms of German from outside their own area. With Luther's rendering of the Bible in the vernacular, German asserted itself against the dominance of Latin as a legitimate language for courtly, literary, and now ecclesiastical subject-matter. His Bible was ubiquitous in the German states: nearly every household possessed a copy. Nevertheless, even with

4704-404: The dialect so as to make the work as natural and accessible to German speakers as possible. Copies of Luther's Bible featured a long list of glosses for each region, translating words which were unknown in the region into the regional dialect. Luther said the following concerning his translation method: One who would talk German does not ask the Latin how he shall do it; he must ask the mother in

4788-435: The eastern provinces of Banat , Bukovina , and Transylvania (German: Banat, Buchenland, Siebenbürgen ), German was the predominant language not only in the larger towns—like Temeschburg ( Timișoara ), Hermannstadt ( Sibiu ), and Kronstadt ( Brașov )—but also in many smaller localities in the surrounding areas. In 1901, the Second Orthographic Conference ended with a (nearly) complete standardization of

4872-435: The home, the children on the streets, the common man in the market-place and note carefully how they talk, then translate accordingly. They will then understand what is said to them because it is German. When Christ says ' ex abundantia cordis os loquitur ,' I would translate, if I followed the papists, aus dem Überflusz des Herzens redet der Mund . But tell me is this talking German? What German understands such stuff? No,

4956-417: The influence of Luther's Bible as an unofficial written standard, a widely accepted standard for written German did not appear until the middle of the eighteenth century. German was the language of commerce and government in the Habsburg Empire , which encompassed a large area of Central and Eastern Europe . Until the mid-nineteenth century, it was essentially the language of townspeople throughout most of

5040-400: The inner city on Königsplatz in front of the Reichstag, but many only came to the adjacent side streets due to the crowds. Though numbers vary considerably, according to Weipert it was "at least 100,000, probably there were significantly more." Speakers from the USPD, the KPD and the works council center made speeches. There were several assaults on Members of parliament (MPs) on their way to

5124-409: The largest factions in the new Reichstag , second only to the SPD (21.7%). During that period, the USPD briefly published a newspaper, Arbeiterpost . In 1920, four delegates from the USPD ( Ernst Däumig , Arthur Crispien , Walter Stoecker and Wilhelm Dittmann ) attended the 2nd World Congress of the Comintern to discuss participating in the Comintern . Whilst Däumig and Stoecker agreed with

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5208-414: The largest for any demonstration in German history. When Fehrenbach reopened the meeting at 4:13 p.m., the USPD requested that the meeting be adjourned immediately with the note "There are dead and seriously wounded people downstairs in the house". The President was not convinced of the reason but asked the plenary the question of supporters. Only a tiny minority supported the request, but stormy protests by

5292-410: The meantime, the USPD MPs in the plenary either asked for the Sipo to be withdrawn from the building or for the debate to be closed. As a result of a massive disturbance by the USPD faction, Fehrenbach had to interrupt the meeting at 3:48 p.m. MPs who were now watching the tumult on the Königsplatz from the windows of the Reichstag were threatened with revolvers by excited demonstrators. One person from

5376-433: The militarily organized security police (Sipo) . Between September 1919 and January 1920, the Reich Government, which was led by the Social Democrats and in continued cooperation with the Army Command, was specially set up in Berlin to protect the existing order, because the existing Berlin police force during the November Revolution and during the uprising had failed. The Sipo consisted mainly of former Freikorps members and

5460-402: The mother in the home and the plain man would say, Wesz das Herz voll ist, des gehet der Mund über . Luther's translation of the Bible into High German was also decisive for the German language and its evolution from Early New High German to modern Standard German. The publication of Luther's Bible was a decisive moment in the spread of literacy in early modern Germany , and promoted

5544-423: The ninth century, chief among them being the Muspilli , Merseburg charms , and Hildebrandslied , and other religious texts (the Georgslied , Ludwigslied , Evangelienbuch , and translated hymns and prayers). The Muspilli is a Christian poem written in a Bavarian dialect offering an account of the soul after the Last Judgment , and the Merseburg charms are transcriptions of spells and charms from

5628-442: The other one as being outcast. On 4 December 1920, the left wing of the USPD with about 400,000 members merged into the KPD, forming the United Communist Party of Germany ( Vereinigte Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands , VKPD) while the other half of the party, with about 340,000 members-including three quarters of the USPD's 81 Reichstag members-continued under the name USPD. Led by Georg Ledebour and Arthur Crispien , they advocated

5712-418: The other. After several splits and mergers, the last part of the organization was terminated in 1931 through merger with the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (SAPD). On 21 December 1915, several SPD members in the Reichstag , the German parliament, voted against the authorization of further credits to finance World War I , an incident that emphasized existing tensions between the party's leadership and

5796-466: The parties officially merged again after a joint party convention in Nürnberg , adopting the name of United Social Democratic Party of Germany ( Vereinigte Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands , VSPD) which was shortened again to SPD in 1924. Elements of the USPD continued as an independent party led by Georg Ledebour and Theodor Liebknecht , who refused to work with the SPD, but it never attained any significance again. The party got 20,275 votes in

5880-462: The pronunciation of the ending -ig as [ɪk] instead of [ɪç]. In Northern Germany, High German was a foreign language to most inhabitants, whose native dialects were subsets of Low German. It was usually encountered only in writing or formal speech; in fact, most of High German was a written language, not identical to any spoken dialect, throughout the German-speaking area until well into the 19th century. However, wider standardization of pronunciation

5964-500: The session. After the last speech fell silent, the protesters did not leave the square. Before the President of the Reichstag, Constantin Fehrenbach , opened at 3:19 p.m., demonstrators in several places had begun to taunt Sipo men, to push them away, this quickly escalated into groups of protestors disarming and abusing the Sipo guards. Conversely, the police fought back with the pistol blows of their carbines; but individual officers were reprimanded by their superiors for these actions. In

6048-541: The states of North Dakota and South Dakota , German is the most common language spoken at home after English. As a legacy of significant German immigration to the country , German geographical names can be found throughout the Midwest region , such as New Ulm and Bismarck (North Dakota's state capital), plus many other regions. A number of German varieties have developed in the country and are still spoken today, such as Pennsylvania Dutch and Texas German . In Brazil,

6132-450: The strongest party with 37.9% of the votes, the USPD only managed to attract 7.6%. Nevertheless, the party's strong support for the introduction of a system of councils ( Räterepublik ) instead of a parliamentary democracy attracted many former SPD members and in spring 1920 the USPD had grown to more than 750,000 members, managing to increase their share of votes to 17.9% during the parliamentary elections on 6 June 1920 and becoming one of

6216-460: The then Chancellor Gustav Bauer , blamed the escalation on the demonstrators and especially the organizers. According to this, around 4:00 p.m. demonstrators tried to enter the building, whereupon the Sipo on Königsplatz opened fire and threw hand grenades at the rally participants. Independent and communists, on the other hand, emphasized that the shooting had been done for no reason and without warning. It

6300-496: The third most commonly learned second language in the United States in K-12 education. The language has been influential in the fields of philosophy, theology, science, and technology. It is the second most commonly used language in science and the third most widely used language on websites . The German-speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of annual publication of new books, with one-tenth of all books (including e-books) in

6384-543: The world being published in German. German is most closely related to other West Germanic languages, namely Afrikaans , Dutch , English , the Frisian languages , and Scots . It also contains close similarities in vocabulary to some languages in the North Germanic group , such as Danish , Norwegian , and Swedish . Modern German gradually developed from Old High German , which in turn developed from Proto-Germanic during

6468-579: The written form of German. One of the central events in the development of ENHG was the publication of Luther's translation of the Bible into High German (the New Testament was published in 1522; the Old Testament was published in parts and completed in 1534). Luther based his translation primarily on the Meißner Deutsch of Saxony , spending much time among the population of Saxony researching

6552-429: Was a "neutral" language as there were virtually no English native speakers in Namibia at that time. German, Afrikaans, and several indigenous languages thus became "national languages" by law, identifying them as elements of the cultural heritage of the nation and ensuring that the state acknowledged and supported their presence in the country. Today, Namibia is considered to be the only German-speaking country outside of

6636-563: Was a short-lived political party in Germany during the German Empire and the Weimar Republic . The organization was established in 1917 as the result of a split of anti-war members of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), from the left of the party as well as the centre and the right. The organization attempted to chart a course between electorally oriented reformism on the one hand and Bolshevist revolutionism on

6720-530: Was an artificial standard that did not correspond to any traditional spoken dialect. Rather, it was based on the pronunciation of German in Northern Germany, although it was subsequently regarded often as a general prescriptive norm, despite differing pronunciation traditions especially in the Upper-German-speaking regions that still characterise the dialect of the area today – especially

6804-538: Was commanded by army officers. Numerous relatives and officers were clearly right-wing extremists. Neither the leadership nor the police on the ground had extensive training. Smaller Sipoverbände with machine guns were stationed in the Reichstag building, bigger front of the entrance of the building at King Square and along Samson Street. On January 13, starting at around 12 noon, most of the large companies in Berlin stopped working; these include, for example, AEG , Siemens , Daimler and Knorr-Bremse . The workers moved to

6888-566: Was declared around the immediate vicinity of the Reichstag (the Bannmeile Decree), which still remains in force. The workers' concerns were ignored and, on February 3, 1920, the Works' Councils Act ( German : Betriebsrätegesetz ) was passed. Notes References Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany The Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany ( German : Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands , USPD )

6972-485: Was established on the basis of public speaking in theatres and the media during the 20th century and documented in pronouncing dictionaries. Official revisions of some of the rules from 1901 were not issued until the controversial German orthography reform of 1996 was made the official standard by governments of all German-speaking countries. Media and written works are now almost all produced in Standard German which

7056-527: Was one of the main agitators in favor of a split in the party in 1917. She became a leader in the creation of the USPD's women's movement. Following the Januarstreik in January 1918, a strike demanding an end to the war and better food provisioning that was organized by revolutionaries affiliated with the USPD and officially supported by the party, the USPD quickly rose to about 120,000 members. The USPD reached

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