How many dialects are there in German? What does the standard German pronunciation mean?

German belongs to the Germanic language family of Indo-European language family, which is related to Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Dutch and English. German grammar is difficult to master. The sentence shape is a "frame structure", verbs (predicates) are placed at the beginning or end of the sentence, and other sentence components (such as objects, predications, adverbials and adverbs) are placed in the sentence. German also depends on the difference between person and time. Verbs should change their position and tense, nouns should change their case, and nouns can be divided into gender and genus. Although the grammar of German is difficult, its words are easy to write and remember. Generally speaking, as long as the pronunciation is accurate, you can write correctly.

In Germany, the formation of standard German has gone through a long and complicated process. Long before the formation of standard German, there are many Germanic dialects in Germany today, such as Frankish, Saxon, Bavarian and so on. For a long time, German only existed in local dialects and was only the language used by ordinary people. Scholars, missionaries and dignitaries, who are the upper class of society, communicate in Latin instead of German. The earliest written record of German is a small Latin-German dictionary, which appeared around 770 AD. German has been monopolized by feudal elites since the appearance of writing, and it mainly appears in the form of poetic language, which is beyond the grasp of ordinary people and hinders German from becoming a unified cultural language. This situation lasted until16th century. Before that, German was incomprehensible to Germans today. People must understand these ancient German as if they were learning a foreign language.

In the15-16th century, with the rise of cities, German has been used by the general public, and a unified and popular language has become an urgent need for social development. From 65438 to 0522, Martin Luther, the pioneer of the German Reformation, published the German Bible, which became an important milestone in the formation of standard German. Since then, with the rise of publishing industry and the publication of various books, German prose has replaced the ancient poetic language. /kloc-After the 0/7th century, German linguists, poets and writers sprang up like mushrooms after rain. With its own wisdom, German has reached a high level in terms of expressive ability, rigorous structure and beautiful rhetoric. Generation after generation of literary giants and poets such as Schiller, Goethe, Lessing and Heine also entered the world literary world. They have made outstanding contributions to a unified, perfect and popular Germany.

Since the 20th century, with the progress of society, the rapid development of economy and the emergence of new things, especially the rapid development of high technology, German has also experienced a rapid development process, especially in terms of language vocabulary, which has exceeded 65.438+million, reaching an amazing level. After thousands of years of development, today's German can be compared with French and English in any respect, and it has become a bright pearl in the world language forest.

Earlier, I talked about the differences formed by the development of ancient German tribes so far, among which the biggest difference is their respective dialects. There are many dialects in Germany, and people can tell from their dialects and spoken languages where most Germans come from. Although there has been a large-scale population movement after World War II and radio and television have been widely popularized, dialects still have strong vitality. If a Bavarian and a Lower Saxon speak in their pure dialect, they need an interpreter to understand each other. In Germany, northerners generally speak standard German, such as the German spoken by Hamburg people, which is clear, loud and easy to understand. The most difficult thing to understand is the German spoken by Nande, just like Beijingers don't know what to say when they listen to Cantonese. It is precisely because there are so many German dialects that a foreigner who has studied German for many years will be afraid even if he has just set foot in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and other German-speaking areas.

More than 100 million people in the world speak German as their mother tongue. In addition to Germany, along the German border there are Austria, Liechtenstein, most of Switzerland, South Tyrol, Italy, a small part of Belgium, Alsace, France and Luxembourg. At present, there is no exact figure on how many people in the world use German, but it is generally believed that it has exceeded 1 100 million. Although German, as an international language, plays a less important role in world politics and economy, its position in the cultural field is more important. One out of every ten books published in the world is written in German. As a translated text, German ranks third in the world after English and French. And he is a leader in translating other languages into German.