The culture of Germany has been shaped by major intellectual and popular currents in Europe, both religious and secular.
German is the official and predominant spoken language in Germany. Standard German is a West Germanic language and is closely related to and classified alongside English, Dutch, and the Frisian languages. To a lesser extent, it is also related to the East extinct and North Germanic languages. Most German vocabulary is derived from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family.
German is written using the Latin alphabet. German orthography has gone through a series of reforms, the most recent in German dialects are distinguished from varieties of standard German. Many of them are not easily understandable to a speaker of standard German, since they often differ in lexicon , phonology , and syntax. Around the world, German has approximately million native speakers and also about 80 million non-native speakers.
In the German diaspora , aspects of German culture are passed on to younger generations through naming customs and through the use of spoken and written German. The Goethe Institute seeks to spread the knowledge of German culture worldwide.
A total of German literature can be traced back to the Middle Ages , with the most notable authors of the period being Walther von der Vogelweide and Wolfram von Eschenbach. The Nibelungenlied , whose author remains unknown, is also an important work of the epoch, as is the Thidrekssaga. The fairy tales collections collected and published by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in the 19th century became famous throughout the world. Land der Dichter und Denker Land of poets and thinkers is a phrase used by many Germans to refer to Germany, [ 7 ] [ 8 ] [ 9 ] though it is hardly known in non-German-speaking countries.
