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 Germanic West Germanic      German High German
Basic word order:	SVO, OVS/V2
Morphological type:	inflecting
Morphosyntactic alignment:	nominative-accusative
Writing system:
Created by:
unknown	1800-Present C.E.

Difference between 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 stops became 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/.
   

The last stage was shared by Low German and Dutch.

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. Also the only part of stage 3 which actually became part of standard High German was /d/>/t/. The other two happened only in the Highest of High German or Upper German dialects

Orthography

High German is written with the Latin alphabet. It has extra letters which represent some of the sounds of the German language, which are not otherwise found in the Latin alphabet. These include Ö ö, Ü ü, Ä ä, ß.

Phonology

Consonants

Consonants
	Bilabial		Labiod.		Alveolar		Post-alv.		Palatal		Velar		Glottal
Nasal		m				n						ŋ
Plosive	p	b			t	d					k	g
Fricative			f	v	s	z	ʃ	(ʒ)		ç	x		h
Affricate			pf		ʦ		ʧ	(ʤ)			(kx)
Approximants										j
Trill						r
Lateral Approximant						l

• The diagraph ch is /x/ after a back vowel, and /ç/ elsewhere.
• v and f are (usually) both pronounced /f/, and w is pronounced /v/.
• /ŋ/ occurs as ng and /ŋk/ is nk.
• sch is pronounced /ʃ/. tsch is pronounced /ʧ/.
• Initially s is pronounced /z/ before vowels, and /ʃ/ before a consonant (such as st and sp).
• j is pronounced /j/.
• The spellings tz and z are pronounced /ʦ/.
• ß and ss are pronounced /s/.
• German has final devoicing. This means that all voiced consonants with voiceless forms become those voiceless forms, at the end of the word.

Vowels

Vowels
	Front		Central	Back
	Unround	Rounded	Unrounded	Rounded
High	iː - ɪ	yː - ʏ		uː - ʊ
Mid	eː - ɛ	øː - œ	ə	oː - ɔ
Low			aː/a
All entries are: Tense - Lax

• In order to form the long version of a vowel, add -h after the vowel.
• Final e is pronounced /ə/.
• ü is pronounced /yː/, /ʏ/.
• ö is pronounced /øː/, /œ/.
• ä is pronounced /eː/, /ɛ/.

Diphthongs

• eu and äu are pronounced /oj/.
• ei and ai are pronounced /aj/.
• au is pronounced /aw/.

Grammar

The General Stuff

Gender and Number

Nouns, Adjectives, Articless, and to some extent Pronouns all affected by Gender and Number. There are three genders and two numbers in High German. The three genders are Masculine, Feminine, and Neuter, and the numbers are Singular and Plural. Usually all forms of the Plural are the same, when it comes to adjectives and articles.

Case

In German, there are four cases, Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, and Dative. These affect articles, pronouns, adjectives, and nouns. The prepositions of German also affect whether an phrase is genitive, dative, or accusative.

Articles

There are definite articles and indefinite articles in German as well as in English. Articles are affected by case, gender, and number. The plural is the same across the genders.

Definite

Cases	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	Plural (all Genders)
Nominative	der	die	das	die
Genitive	des	der	des	der
Dative	dem	der	dem	den
Accusative	den	die	das	die

Indefinite

Cases	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	Plural (all Genders)
Nominative	ein	eine	ein	meine†
Genitive	eines	einer	eines	meinen
Dative	einem	einer	einem	meinen
Accusative	einen	eine	ein	meine

† There is no plural form of ein, but there are other indefinite article-style words that do, such as mein which means my.

Nouns

Gender is arbitrary in German, but Nouns referring to living being usually are the gender of that being. The ending of a noun is usually helpful in figuring out which gender a noun is, although it is not always the case.

Also, the first letter all German nouns is always capitalized.

Genders of Nouns

• Masculine
  • Nouns ending with -en are usually masculine (that are not derived from verbs). Ex. Der Garten, der Norden.
  • Nouns ending -er are usually masculine. Ex. Der Lehrer, die Amerikaner
  • Nouns ending with -ismus are masculine. Ex. Der Feminismus, Der Kommunismus,
• Feminine
  • To convert masculine nouns ending to feminine, add -in to it. Ex. Die Lehrerin, Die Freundin.
  • Most nouns ending with -e. Ex. Die Frage, Die Straße,
  • Nouns ending with -ion, -ik, -ie, -unft, -tät, -ei, -heit, -keit, -schaft, and -ung are almost always feminine. Ex. Die Logik, Die Magie, Die Universität, Die Voresung, Die Gesundheit, etc.
• Neuter
  • Young living beings are Neuter. Ex. Das Kind, Das Lamm, Das Baby,
  • The ending -chen and -lein are diminutives and are always neuter. Ex. Das Mädchen, Das Märchen.
    

-lein is used more in the south than in the north, so it's less common in the standard form of German.

• • Metals and infinitive-nouns are always neuter. Ex. Das Gold, Das Metall, Das Singen, Das Essen,

Forming the Plural

The formation of the plural is different for many different nouns. The idea of the Umlaut is important in forming the plural as well.

• For monosyllabic words, the plural is usually for by adding -e in the masculine and feminine and -er in some neuter nouns.
• For Polysyllabic masculine and neuter nouns, many take no ending, but most others take -e as an ending.
• For most Polysyllabic feminine nouns that end with -e, -er or -el, the ending is -n or -en. If the ending is -in then the total ending is -innen.
• Foreign words (except those from Latin) and new words usually take the ending -s.

Personal Pronouns

First person:

Cases	Singular	Plural
Nominative	ich	wir
Genitive	mein	unser
Dative	mir	uns
Accusative	mich	uns

Second person:

Cases	Singular Informal	Plural Informal	Plural/Singular Formal
Nominative	du	ihr	Sie‡
Genitive	dein	euer	Ihr
Dative	dir	euch	Ihnen
Accusative	dich	euch	Sie

‡The formal plural pronoun Sie is the same form as the 3rd person plural pronoun sie but is also always capitalized.

Third person:

Cases	Mascu. Sing.	Fem. Sing.	Neut. Sing.	Plural
Nominative	er	sie	es	sie
Genitive	sein	ihr	sein	ihr
Dative	ihm	ihr	ihm	ihnen
Accusative	ihn	sie	es	sie

Word Order

German word order is fairly unique and has particular features with which a learner must become acquainted. The normal order is SVO, and occasional OVS, because German has a structure know as V_{2 or 2nd Position Verb rule, as described here:}

"...I find German to be the strangest in the area of syntax. German has several interesting word order issues. Now a simple German sentence can be SVO. But German, as well as most other Germanic language such as Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, and Dutch, follow what I call the 2nd Position Verb rule. This states that now matter where the objects and subjects move, the conjugated verb or Finite verb stays in the second position. So this means that SVO or OVS are very common. Here is an example, You can say in German: Ich sehe den Himmel. (I see the sky.) or Den Himmel sehe ich. (The sky see I.) We can see how the verb stays when the other elements move. Now for questions it is acceptable to have a verb in the first position, using a standard inverted word order. However for many statements the verb second ideal needs to stay in place." Timothy Patrick Snyder

However, German and Dutch both have a unique trait in having something called Transposed or Dependent Clause word order. This type of word order only occurs inside dependent clauses, and what happens is that the inflected or finite verb is sent to the end. It is described as this:

"Now the pattern that Dutch and German have, but not really in the other Germanic languages, is the movement of the conjugated verb to the end of a dependent clause. This might seem strange at first, but one must learn to notice it. And example would be: Der Mann, den ich gestern sah, ist gelassen. (The man, whom I yesterday saw, left.) Instead of; The man, whom I saw yesterday, left." Timothy Patrick Snyder

Another interesting feature is the movement of the Infinitives and Past Participles to the end of the sentence. This is a trait that written German got from Latin, and then it became common in spoken German as well. It also leads to idioms such as Ich kann Deutsch.' (Lit. I can German, but means, I can speak German) which comes from the expression "Ich kann Deutsch sprechen." In the cases of Transposed word order, the inverted verb goes after the infinitives and participles.

Sources and External Links

Translations