II.

Chief Characteristics

The development of the German languages was affected by several systematic shifts of certain consonants. The so-called Germanic consonant shift distinguished the ancient Proto-Germanic tongue from other Indo-European speech. In this shift, which is described by Grimm's law, an Indo-European p, t, k changed to a Germanic f, th, h, respectively; Indo-European b, d, g to Germanic p, t, k; and similarly Indo-European bh, dh, gh, to Germanic b, d, g. After the western Germanic dialects had developed their own distinctive traits, the High German sound shift occurred. Datable to ad 500-700, it distinguished the High German dialects from other West Germanic speech, including what we now know as Low German, which was unaffected. During that period the Germanic p, when used initially, or after consonants, or when doubled, became pf (Standard German Pflanze, Low German Plante, “plant”); when used medially or finally after vowels it became ff or f (Standard German hoffen, Low German hopen, “to hope”). Under the same conditions the Germanic t became z (pronounced ts, as in Pflanze) or ss (Standard German essen, Low German eten, “to eat”). After vowels, k became ch (Standard German machen, Low German maken, “to make”); in all other cases k remained unchanged except in the extreme south of Germany, where it first became kch, and later ch. A later change, found also in Low German, is that of the Germanic th to d (Standard German das, Low German dat, “that”).

Another characteristic of German, as well as of all the Germanic languages, is that the principal accent falls regularly upon the first syllable of a word; in verbal combinations, however, the root syllable, not the prefix, is stressed.

The phonological characteristics of the German language include the use of the glottal stop before every initial stressed vowel in simple words or independent parts of a word; the pronunciation of u, o, ü, and ö with full lip-rounding; the tenseness of long vowels and the laxness of short vowels; the articulation of r lingually and gutturally; the voicing of the single s before and between vowels, and the devoicing of the final b, d, g to p, t, k, respectively; the use of the affricates pf and ts; and the pronunciation of w as v and of v as f. Vowels are nasalized only in words borrowed from French.

German is an inflected language, with three genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter), four cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative), and a strong and weak declension of qualifying adjectives. Because of the declensional and conjugational endings, some parts of speech are more precisely identified than in languages that show less inflection. Word order is strictly regulated; for example, subject and predicate are inverted when preceded by an adverb, prepositional phrase, or dependent clause; the verb is placed in the final position in a subordinate clause introduced by a relative pronoun or conjunction. In the formation of new words, German makes extensive use of compounds of two or more independent words and of prefixes and suffixes (Oberbaumeister; Handelsluftfahrt; Geteilheit; teilbar). The poetic and philosophical vocabulary and scientific and technical terminology of German are particularly rich.

On August 1, 1998, all German-speaking countries officially underwent, among much controversy, a spelling reform (Rechtschreibreform), adopting new orthographical rules in official domains including government and education. The new spellings have since been phased in gradually (the German media began using them about a year after the official date) and must come into general use by July 2005. The rules are numerous and affect both punctuation and spelling, including, for example, the use of “ss” rather than “ß” in certain words and a change in the use of commas. This is not the first spelling reform the German language has seen; in 1901 the first official reform was implemented in a bid to standardize the written language.