GERMAN LANGUAGE

German is spoken by some 60 millions besides 10 millions in Austria and 244 millions in Switzerland. German is an Aryan tongue, belonging to the group that embraces English, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish. In Germany the main division is between the official High Command and the Low German of thse Baltic littoral. Middle Low German had no literature to speak of, but in recent times Platt-deutsch has been used by dialectal writers like Fritz Reuter. Old H igh German was marked by a second sound shifting (c. 600), which distinguished it not only from E. Teutonic, but from other W. Teutonic speeches: thus ¢ became 2, iz, s, ; p became pf, f, H; k became ch; d became ¢. Old High German had various dialects of its own— still traceable. Upper German (Oberdeutsch) was spoken in Switzerland, Bavaria, etc.; Fraconian, in Rhine land, etc. Upper and Middle German (spoken in Middle Germany—comprising Franc on i an, Thiringian, ete.), are together Absence of national union retarded the evolution of a uniform national speech. Luther and his Bible (1531) established High German as modern standard German; Old Pru ian, akin to Lithuanian, was supplanted by German in 17th cent. Adoption of German in place of Latin as academic tongue in universities gave great im-| pet us to native language; growth of Ee ee ee national literature and national feeling gave it definite form and ensured unity for written and cultured German. The urest German, it is said, is spoken in an over. Recent tendency is to expel foreign (especially French) words in favor of Teutonic—(e.g.,) trottoir being replaced by Burgersteig, billet by Fahrkarte. German has retained power of ‘compounding words largely lost by its