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Do you know that most Europeans consider German to be their native language?
Well, if you didn’t, then here is some more information that might take you by
surprise. German is the second most spoken language in the Europen Union (EU),
in terms of overall speakers. It is also the second most widely taught foreign
language in the EU at primary education level. German ranks second as a scientific
language and continues to be the second most widely used language for websites.
And so, here we go! There should not be a single reason why you shouldn’t learn
German. And if this information isn’t enough to get you convinced that German is
the language for you, especially if you’re planning to study, work or live in the EU,
then we have something more for you!
There are six interesting countries in Central Europe that consider German to be
either an official or a co-official language. These countries include Germany,
Liechtenstein, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium and Luxembourg. Apart from these
nations, countries like Denmark, Hungary, Italy, and Poland, have German as a
national minority language. What more do you need to learn this wonderful
language from the Indo-European language family?
Does German share any similarities with English?
Yes, of course! Both these languages are said to be long-lost linguistic siblings. Even
though these languages recently descended from the same root language, which is
Proto-Germanic, it was only around 500 years ago these languages diverged to their
present forms. This shared cultural history and the conspicuous similarities
between several words might benefit you while learning German. For instance,
‘Hallo’ means ‘Hello’, ‘Guten Morgen’ means ‘good morning’, ‘haus’ means ‘house’
and ‘buch’ means ‘book’.
Words from German and English are often incredibly similar in their
pronunciations as well. A good example is the German letter P, which changed to F
around 1,500 years ago. These languages were once the same, meaning the
grammar of English and German used to be quite similar. Everything that we find
‘difficult’ in modern German, from cases to gender to movable sentence structure,
all of these once existed in English. These two languages have grown and changed,
intermingled and drifted apart over time.
Ten compelling reasons why you should be taking German language
classes at Langma: