If we want to understand how German speakers think about themselves and the world in which they live, then a useful place to begin is by looking at the language they use. This fully revised and updated edition provides a systematic approach to the study of the German language and an introduction to the social aspects of the language, including its dialects, its history and the uses of the language today. No previous knowledge of linguistics is assumed, and each chapter is accompanied by a series of practical exercises. This edition includes a brand new section on gender, purism and German unification, fresh examples for analysis and an updated chapter on the geography of Germany today. The book will help students not only to find new ways of exploring the German language, but also of thinking and talking about German-speaking cultures.

Covers the linguistic variety within German speech community and the main systematic linguistic features of the language. Detailed in its use of illustrative texts and examples, and the application of modern linguistic concepts.

This third edition of Kenneth Katzner's best-selling guide to languages is essential reading for language enthusiasts everywhere. Written with the non-specialist in mind, its user-friendly style and layout, delightful original passages, and exotic scripts, will continue to fascinate the reader. This new edition has been thoroughly revised to include more languages, more countries, and up-to-date data on populations. Features include: *information on nearly 600 languages *individual descriptions of 200 languages, with sample passages and English translations *concise notes on where each language is spoken, its history, alphabet and pronunciation *coverage of every country in the world, its main language and speaker numbers *an introduction to language families

The German language holds an ambivalent and controversial place in the modern history of European Jews, representing different—often conflicting—historical currents. It was the language of the German classics, of German Jewish writers and scientists, of Central European Jewish culture, and of Herzl and the Zionist movement. But it was also the language of Hitler, Goebbels, and the German guards in Nazi concentration camps. The crucial role of German in the formation of Jewish national culture and politics in the late nineteenth century has been largely overshadowed by the catastrophic events that befell Jews under Nazi rule. German as a Jewish Problem tells the Jewish history of the German language, focusing on Jewish national movements in Central and Eastern Europe and Palestine/Israel. Marc Volovici considers key writers and activists whose work reflected the multilingual nature of the Jewish national sphere and the centrality of the German language within it, and argues that it is impossible to understand the histories of modern Hebrew and Yiddish without situating them in relation to German. This book offers a new understanding of the language problem in modern Jewish history, turning to German to illuminate the questions and dilemmas that largely defined the experience of European Jews in the age of nationalism.

Specially chosen for their power to evoke German life and culture, these short, simple readings include poems, stories, essays, and anecdotes by Goethe, Hesse, Heine, Schiller, and others.

Recent sociopolitical events have profoundly changed the status and functions of German and influenced its usage. In this study (published by Cambridge in 1984) Michael Clyne revises and expands his original analysis of the German language in Language and Society in the German-speaking Countries in the light of such changes as the end of the Cold War, German unification, the redrawing of the map of Europe, increasing European integration, and the changing self-images of Austria, Switzerland and Luxembourg. His discussion includes the differences in the form, function and status of the various national varieties of German; the relation between standard and non-standard varieties; gender, generational and political variation; Anglo-American influence on German; and the convergence of east and west. The result is a wide-ranging exploration of language and society in the German-speaking countries, all of which have problems or dilemmas concerning nationhood or ethnicity which are language-related and/or language-marked.

The contributions in this volume present cutting-edge theoretical and structural analyses of issues surrounding German-language islands, or "Sprachinseln," throughout the world. The individual topics of study in this volume focus on various aspects of these German-language islands such as (but not limited to) phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic aspects of these languages under investigation. Collectively, the body of research contained in this volume explores significantly under-researched topics in the fields of language contact and language attrition and illustrates how this on-going research can be enhanced through the application of formal theoretical frameworks and structural analyses.

The Position of the German Language in the World focuses on the global position of German and the factors which work towards sustaining its use and utility for international communication. From the perspective of the global language constellation, the detailed data analysis of this substantial research project depicts German as an example of a second-rank language. The book also provides a model for analysis and description of international languages other than English. It offers a framework for strengthening the position of languages such as Arabic, Chinese, French, Portuguese, Spanish and others and for countering exaggerated claims about the global monopoly position of English. This comprehensive handbook of the state of the German language in the world was originally published in 2015 by Walter de Gruyter in German and has been critically acclaimed. Suitable for scholars and researchers of the German language, the handbook shows in detail how intricately and thoroughly German and other second-rank languages are tied up with a great number of societies and how these statistics support or weaken the languages’ functions and maintenance.