German is the most spoken language in the European Union, with about 100 million speakers worldwide. It is either the official language or a dominant language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Liechtenstein.

The German word for the language is Deutsch, and Germany is called Deutschland.

German has three grammatical genders for nouns: feminine, masculine, and neuter. Old English actually featured a similar system, as did Classical Latin.

In German, all nouns are capitalized regardless of their position in a sentence.

In addition to the standard Latin alphabet, German includes four unique letters. The characters ä, ö, and ü are modified vowels, while ß (called Eszett or sharp S) is a unique character.

There are two main dialect groups in German. Low German is ironically spoken in northern Germany, while High German is primarily spoken in southern Germany and Austria.

A notable false friend in German is the word Gift, which actually means “poison.”

Like many European languages, German borrowed many words from Latin and Greek, and later from French and English.

In the Middle Ages, there was a dialect of German called Räubersprache, which translates to “thieves’ speak.” It was used by criminal groups as a form of coded language.

Yiddish, which was spoken by European Jewish communities for centuries, is closely related to German and is based on an older form of the language.

The standardization of the German language was heavily influenced by Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible.

Many Amish communities in the United States still speak a variation of the German language.