High German
High German, or Hochdeutsch, is the name of the standard form of Modern German. It is a West Germanic and is related to Low German, Dutch, and Anglo-Saxon/Modern English. Today it is the official language of Germany, Switzerland, and Austria.
| High German HochDeutsch | |
| Spoken in: | Germany, Switzerland, Austria (Deutschland, Schweiz, Österreich) |
| Conworld: | Real world |
| Total speakers: | 105 million |
| Genealogical classification: | Indo-European
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| Basic word order: | SVO, OVS/V2 |
| Morphological type: | inflecting |
| Morphosyntactic alignment: | nominative-accusative |
| Writing system: | |
| Created by: | |
| unknown | 1800-Present C.E. |
Difference of High and Low German
High German differs from other West German languages such as Low German, English, and Dutch in that High German when through the High German Consonant Shift. The High German Consonant Shift (or HGCS) is the sound shift where; 1. non-geminated voicless stopsbecame fricatives, 2. geminated and liquid-adjacent voiceless stops became affricates, 3. voiced stops became voiceless stops, and finally 4. all interdental fricatives (/ð/ and /θ/) became the dental stop and/or Alveolar stop /d̻/ and /d/.
All of these stages occur in the Highest of High German dialects, but Standard High German does not have all of them. The shift of /k/>/kx/ in stage 2 did not occur in the standard, although it did in Upper German dialects, such as Bavarian.
