German (Deutsch, in German) is an Indo-European language belonging to the group of West Germanic languages. It is also one of the world's major languages and has most native speakers in the European Union.

It is spoken mainly in Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, two thirds of Switzerland, two thirds in the province of South Tyrol (Italy) in two small counties in East Belgium and in some border towns in the county of South Jutland ( Nordschleswig) in Denmark.

In Luxembourg, as well as in the French regions of Alsace and Lorraine, the native population speak German dialects, and some even master standard German (especially in Luxembourg), although in Alsace and Lorraine French has significantly replaced the local German dialects during the last forty years.

Germanohablantes certain communities still survive in parts of Romania, the Czech Republic, Hungary and especially Russia, Kazakhstan and Poland, although the mass returns to Germany in the 1990s, these populations have been decreasing in a meaningful way. Outside Europe, germanohablantes the largest communities are in the United States, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Mexico, where millions of Germans migrated in the last 200 years, but the vast majority of their descendants do not speak German . In addition, communities can be found in the former colony germanohablantes German Namibia. The Alexander von Humboldt Organization of the City of Mexico has the school's largest teaching German outside Germany, as well as in other countries under German emigration such as Canada, Iceland, Thailand and Australia.

German is one of the official languages of the European Union for being the mother tongue of about 100 million people in 2004, representing 13.3% of Europeans. It is also the most spoken language on the continent, Russia excluded, above French (66.5 million speakers in 2004 in Europe) and English (64.2 million speakers in 2004 in Europe). He is considered the third most popular language taught as a foreign language worldwide, the second in Europe and the third in the U.S. after Spanish and French. With over 150 million German speakers in 38 countries, is hardly surprising that the use of language varies. As the English and Spanish, German is a language with three main centers pluricentric: Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

The German way with the Dutch, his nearest relative, an area well-defined, cohesive language that separates from its neighbors by language barriers accurate. These neighbors are in the North Frisian and Danish, for the eastern Polish, Sorbian, Czech and Hungarian, on the south Slovenian, Italian, Friulian, Ladin and Romansch; and west French. Save Frisian, none of these West Germanic languages is therefore clearly different from German and Dutch. While the Frisian is a Germanic language, like German and Dutch, are not considered to be mutually intelligible with them.

The situation is more complex with regard to the distinction between German and Dutch. Until recently there has been a dialect continuum throughout the whole area germanohablante without language barriers. In this continuum, dialects always mutually intelligible with its neighbors, but the dialects are not generally be removed. The German-Dutch continuum provides a classification of the dialects of High German and Low German based on the presence of the second consonant shift. The Netherlands is part of the group under German. However, due to the political separation between Germany and the Netherlands, Low German dialects of Germany and the Netherlands are beginning to diverge throughout the twentieth century. In addition, many dialects in both countries are on the brink of extinction, having been replaced by the standard language. Thus, the linguistic border between Dutch and German is beginning to form.