The German language

One hears again and again that the German language does not have a particularly beautiful sound and that it is difficult to learn because of the many cases and genders. Well, to Italian ears i.e. German certainly sounds harder and less melodic than the mother tongue. But one advantage of the German language, for all its complexity, is that it has a very logical structure. Moreover, German has many similarities with English. Both are Indo-European languages that originated in northern Europe.

Within Europe, German is the language with the most native speakers (over 100 million), ahead of English and French. German is the most spoken language in Europe with 16%. It is followed by Italian, English and French with about 12% each.

Some minorities in the world, e.g. in Blumenau and Santa Catarina in Brazil, in Namibia, Tanzania, Paraguay, Chile, Venezuela, Romania and Pennsylvania in the USA also speak German ;-).

And a few more facts:

The Germanic language, a precursor of today's German, was used to transmit sacred texts of Buddhism.

The Germanic language consisted of numerous dialects, including Gothic (a now extinct language), Icelandic or even Swedish - languages that have survived the centuries and still exist.

10% of the books published worldwide are published in German.