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77-460: In German Hofkapelle (literally: court chapel) is both the word for a royal chapel and any other court chapel. As a musical venture court chapels emerged in 16th century Europe, largely due to the consolidation of more itinerant musical groups initiated by the dukes of Burgundy and their Imperial successors in the 15th century. There was a double objective: continuity and stability of religious ceremony, and showcasing splendour and artistic taste of

154-465: A de facto official language of Namibia after the end of German colonial rule alongside English and Afrikaans , and had de jure co-official status from 1984 until its independence from South Africa in 1990. However, the Namibian government perceived Afrikaans and German as symbols of apartheid and colonialism, and decided English would be the sole official language upon independence, stating that it

231-402: A second language , and 75–100   million as a foreign language . This would imply the existence of approximately 175–220   million German speakers worldwide. German sociolinguist Ulrich Ammon estimated a number of 289 million German foreign language speakers without clarifying the criteria by which he classified a speaker. As of 2012 , about 90   million people, or 16% of

308-612: A "commonly used" language and the Pan South African Language Board is obligated to promote and ensure respect for it. Cameroon was also a colony of the German Empire from the same period (1884 to 1916). However, German was replaced by French and English, the languages of the two successor colonial powers, after its loss in World War I . Nevertheless, since the 21st century, German has become

385-559: A greater need for regularity in written conventions. While the major changes of the MHG period were socio-cultural, High German was still undergoing significant linguistic changes in syntax, phonetics, and morphology as well (e.g. diphthongization of certain vowel sounds: hus (OHG & MHG "house") → haus (regionally in later MHG)→ Haus (NHG), and weakening of unstressed short vowels to schwa [ə]: taga (OHG "days")→ tage (MHG)). A great wealth of texts survives from

462-458: A native tongue today, mostly descendants of German colonial settlers . The period of German colonialism in Namibia also led to the evolution of a Standard German-based pidgin language called " Namibian Black German ", which became a second language for parts of the indigenous population. Although it is nearly extinct today, some older Namibians still have some knowledge of it. German remained

539-696: A popular foreign language among pupils and students, with 300,000 people learning or speaking German in Cameroon in 2010 and over 230,000 in 2020. Today Cameroon is one of the African countries outside Namibia with the highest number of people learning German. In the United States, German is the fifth most spoken language in terms of native and second language speakers after English, Spanish , French , and Chinese (with figures for Cantonese and Mandarin combined), with over 1 million total speakers. In

616-483: A result, the surviving texts are written in highly disparate regional dialects and exhibit significant Latin influence, particularly in vocabulary. At this point monasteries, where most written works were produced, were dominated by Latin, and German saw only occasional use in official and ecclesiastical writing. While there is no complete agreement over the dates of the Middle High German (MHG) period, it

693-516: A wide range of singing engagements outside their own programme. The Choir remains in worldwide demand well into the 21st century. Other musical chapels associated with a court include the former court chapel in Brussels and the capilla flamenca associated with the Spanish imperial court. German language German (German: Deutsch , pronounced [dɔʏtʃ] )

770-717: Is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family , mainly spoken in Western and Central Europe . It is the most spoken native language within the European Union . It is the most widely spoken and official (or co-official) language in Germany , Austria , Switzerland , Liechtenstein , and the Italian autonomous province of South Tyrol . It is also an official language of Luxembourg , Belgium and

847-601: Is a recognized minority language in the following countries: In France, the High German varieties of Alsatian and Moselle Franconian are identified as " regional languages ", but the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages of 1998 has not yet been ratified by the government. Namibia also was a colony of the German Empire, from 1884 to 1915. About 30,000 people still speak German as

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924-612: Is also notable for its broad spectrum of dialects , with many varieties existing in Europe and other parts of the world. Some of these non-standard varieties have become recognized and protected by regional or national governments. Since 2004, heads of state of the German-speaking countries have met every year, and the Council for German Orthography has been the main international body regulating German orthography . German

1001-558: Is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Germanic group of the Germanic languages . The Germanic languages are traditionally subdivided into three branches: North Germanic , East Germanic , and West Germanic . The first of these branches survives in modern Danish , Swedish , Norwegian , Faroese , and Icelandic , all of which are descended from Old Norse . The East Germanic languages are now extinct, and Gothic

1078-478: Is called the "German Sprachraum ". German is the official language of the following countries: German is a co-official language of the following countries: Although expulsions and (forced) assimilation after the two World wars greatly diminished them, minority communities of mostly bilingual German native speakers exist in areas both adjacent to and detached from the Sprachraum. Within Europe, German

1155-430: Is complicated by the existence of several varieties whose status as separate "languages" or "dialects" is disputed for political and linguistic reasons, including quantitatively strong varieties like certain forms of Alemannic and Low German . With the inclusion or exclusion of certain varieties, it is estimated that approximately 90–95 million people speak German as a first language , 10–25   million speak it as

1232-535: Is generally seen as ending when the 1346–53 Black Death decimated Europe's population. Modern High German begins with the Early New High German (ENHG) period, which Wilhelm Scherer dates 1350–1650, terminating with the end of the Thirty Years' War . This period saw the further displacement of Latin by German as the primary language of courtly proceedings and, increasingly, of literature in

1309-611: Is generally seen as lasting from 1050 to 1350. This was a period of significant expansion of the geographical territory occupied by Germanic tribes, and consequently of the number of German speakers. Whereas during the Old High German period the Germanic tribes extended only as far east as the Elbe and Saale rivers, the MHG period saw a number of these tribes expanding beyond this eastern boundary into Slavic territory (known as

1386-565: Is less closely related to languages based on Low Franconian dialects (e.g., Dutch and Afrikaans), Low German or Low Saxon dialects (spoken in northern Germany and southern Denmark ), neither of which underwent the High German consonant shift. As has been noted, the former of these dialect types is Istvaeonic and the latter Ingvaeonic, whereas the High German dialects are all Irminonic; the differences between these languages and standard German are therefore considerable. Also related to German are

1463-435: Is one of the major languages of the world . German is the second-most widely spoken Germanic language , after English, both as a first and as a second language . German is also widely taught as a foreign language , especially in continental Europe (where it is the third most taught foreign language after English and French), and in the United States. Overall, German is the fourth most commonly learned second language, and

1540-597: Is one of the three biggest newspapers in Namibia and the only German-language daily in Africa. An estimated 12,000 people speak German or a German variety as a first language in South Africa, mostly originating from different waves of immigration during the 19th and 20th centuries. One of the largest communities consists of the speakers of "Nataler Deutsch", a variety of Low German concentrated in and around Wartburg . The South African constitution identifies German as

1617-401: Is partly derived from Latin and Greek , along with fewer words borrowed from French and Modern English . English, however, is the main source of more recent loanwords . German is a pluricentric language ; the three standardized variants are German , Austrian , and Swiss Standard German . Standard German is sometimes called High German , which refers to its regional origin. German

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1694-525: Is the Sachsenspiegel , the first book of laws written in Middle Low German ( c.  1220 ). The abundance and especially the secular character of the literature of the MHG period demonstrate the beginnings of a standardized written form of German, as well as the desire of poets and authors to be understood by individuals on supra-dialectal terms. The Middle High German period

1771-578: Is the only language in this branch which survives in written texts. The West Germanic languages, however, have undergone extensive dialectal subdivision and are now represented in modern languages such as English, German, Dutch , Yiddish , Afrikaans , and others. Within the West Germanic language dialect continuum, the Benrath and Uerdingen lines (running through Düsseldorf - Benrath and Krefeld - Uerdingen , respectively) serve to distinguish

1848-485: Is understood in all areas where German is spoken. Approximate distribution of native German speakers (assuming a rounded total of 95 million) worldwide: As a result of the German diaspora , as well as the popularity of German taught as a foreign language , the geographical distribution of German speakers (or "Germanophones") spans all inhabited continents. However, an exact, global number of native German speakers

1925-689: The Ostsiedlung ). With the increasing wealth and geographic spread of the Germanic groups came greater use of German in the courts of nobles as the standard language of official proceedings and literature. A clear example of this is the mittelhochdeutsche Dichtersprache employed in the Hohenstaufen court in Swabia as a standardized supra-dialectal written language. While these efforts were still regionally bound, German began to be used in place of Latin for certain official purposes, leading to

2002-639: The Alamanni , Bavarian, and Thuringian groups, all belonging to the Elbe Germanic group ( Irminones ), which had settled in what is now southern-central Germany and Austria between the second and sixth centuries, during the great migration. In general, the surviving texts of Old High German (OHG) show a wide range of dialectal diversity with very little written uniformity. The early written tradition of OHG survived mostly through monasteries and scriptoria as local translations of Latin originals; as

2079-537: The Early Middle Ages . German is an inflected language , with four cases for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative); three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) and two numbers (singular, plural). It has strong and weak verbs . The majority of its vocabulary derives from the ancient Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, while a smaller share

2156-417: The European Union 's population, spoke German as their mother tongue, making it the second most widely spoken language on the continent after Russian and the second biggest language in terms of overall speakers (after English), as well as the most spoken native language. The area in central Europe where the majority of the population speaks German as a first language and has German as a (co-)official language

2233-522: The German states . While these states were still part of the Holy Roman Empire , and far from any form of unification, the desire for a cohesive written language that would be understandable across the many German-speaking principalities and kingdoms was stronger than ever. As a spoken language German remained highly fractured throughout this period, with a vast number of often mutually incomprehensible regional dialects being spoken throughout

2310-746: The Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I , and the other being Meißner Deutsch , used in the Electorate of Saxony in the Duchy of Saxe-Wittenberg . Alongside these courtly written standards, the invention of the printing press led to the development of a number of printers' languages ( Druckersprachen ) aimed at making printed material readable and understandable across as many diverse dialects of German as possible. The greater ease of production and increased availability of written texts brought about increased standardisation in

2387-678: The Mannheim school around 1750. The Munich court chapel was arguably the most splendid one of the second half of the 16th century, and played an important role in the European music life of its day. Orlandus Lassus was the best known musician hired by the Bavarian dukes . The Hofkapelle München, an orchestra founded in 2009, is a private initiative referring to the previous fame of the Hofkapelle in that city. The Hofkapelle Stuttgart

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2464-666: The Old High German language in several Elder Futhark inscriptions from as early as the sixth century AD (such as the Pforzen buckle ), the Old High German period is generally seen as beginning with the Abrogans (written c.  765–775 ), a Latin-German glossary supplying over 3,000 Old High German words with their Latin equivalents. After the Abrogans , the first coherent works written in Old High German appear in

2541-676: The Sprachraum in Europe. German is used in a wide variety of spheres throughout the country, especially in business, tourism, and public signage, as well as in education, churches (most notably the German-speaking Evangelical Lutheran Church in Namibia (GELK) ), other cultural spheres such as music, and media (such as German language radio programs by the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation ). The Allgemeine Zeitung

2618-550: The Standard German language in its written form, and the Duden Handbook was declared its standard definition. Punctuation and compound spelling (joined or isolated compounds) were not standardized in the process. The Deutsche Bühnensprache ( lit.   ' German stage language ' ) by Theodor Siebs had established conventions for German pronunciation in theatres , three years earlier; however, this

2695-513: The Upper German dialects spoken in the southern German-speaking countries , such as Swiss German ( Alemannic dialects ) and the various Germanic dialects spoken in the French region of Grand Est , such as Alsatian (mainly Alemannic, but also Central–and   Upper Franconian dialects) and Lorraine Franconian (Central Franconian). After these High German dialects, standard German

2772-882: The collapse of the monarchy the Choir, part of the Hofkapelle, was disbanded in 1920. In 1924 the choir was reinstated as the Vienna Boys Choir and permanently settled in the Imperial Court Chapel, the Hofkapelle of the Hofburg Palace . The Hofburg Boys Choir was subsidised by the Royal Private School. After 1926, to consolidate the financial position of the Vienna Boys Choir, the Royal Court Chapel organised

2849-469: The pagan Germanic tradition. Of particular interest to scholars, however, has been the Hildebrandslied , a secular epic poem telling the tale of an estranged father and son unknowingly meeting each other in battle. Linguistically, this text is highly interesting due to the mixed use of Old Saxon and Old High German dialects in its composition. The written works of this period stem mainly from

2926-580: The Court Chapel was housed in the former Opernhaus am Taschenberg , as a public church, until the construction of the new Hofkirche ("court church") was finished in 1751. The Mannheim Palace Church was the Old Catholic court chapel for the prince-electors of the Electorate of the Palatinate between 1731 and 1777. Best known composer of the court chapel is Johann Stamitz , founder of

3003-723: The Empire. Its use indicated that the speaker was a merchant or someone from an urban area, regardless of nationality. Prague (German: Prag ) and Budapest ( Buda , German: Ofen ), to name two examples, were gradually Germanized in the years after their incorporation into the Habsburg domain; others, like Pressburg ( Pozsony , now Bratislava), were originally settled during the Habsburg period and were primarily German at that time. Prague, Budapest, Bratislava, and cities like Zagreb (German: Agram ) or Ljubljana (German: Laibach ), contained significant German minorities. In

3080-748: The Frisian languages— North Frisian (spoken in Nordfriesland ), Saterland Frisian (spoken in Saterland ), and West Frisian (spoken in Friesland )—as well as the Anglic languages of English and Scots. These Anglo-Frisian dialects did not take part in the High German consonant shift, and the Anglic languages also adopted much vocabulary from both Old Norse and the Norman language . The history of

3157-536: The German language begins with the High German consonant shift during the Migration Period , which separated Old High German dialects from Old Saxon . This sound shift involved a drastic change in the pronunciation of both voiced and voiceless stop consonants ( b , d , g , and p , t , k , respectively). The primary effects of the shift were the following below. While there is written evidence of

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3234-451: The German states; the invention of the printing press c.  1440 and the publication of Luther's vernacular translation of the Bible in 1534, however, had an immense effect on standardizing German as a supra-dialectal written language. The ENHG period saw the rise of several important cross-regional forms of chancery German, one being gemeine tiutsch , used in the court of

3311-681: The Germanic dialects that were affected by the High German consonant shift (south of Benrath) from those that were not (north of Uerdingen). The various regional dialects spoken south of these lines are grouped as High German dialects, while those spoken to the north comprise the Low German and Low Franconian dialects. As members of the West Germanic language family, High German, Low German, and Low Franconian have been proposed to be further distinguished historically as Irminonic , Ingvaeonic , and Istvaeonic , respectively. This classification indicates their historical descent from dialects spoken by

3388-506: The Hofkapelle include Johann Sebastian Bach in the early 18th century, and chapel masters such as Johann Nepomuk Hummel , Franz Liszt and Richard Strauss in the 19th century. The court chapel of Schloss Weimar where Bach worked was built in 1630. After a fire in 1774, the west wing of the palace, with the chapel, reopened in 1847. After the first World War, the musical ensemble was renamed Staatkapelle, ultimately known as Deutsches Nationaltheater and Staatskapelle Weimar . Following

3465-655: The Irminones (also known as the Elbe group), Ingvaeones (or North Sea Germanic group), and Istvaeones (or Weser–Rhine group). Standard German is based on a combination of Thuringian - Upper Saxon and Upper Franconian dialects, which are Central German and Upper German dialects belonging to the High German dialect group. German is therefore closely related to the other languages based on High German dialects, such as Luxembourgish (based on Central Franconian dialects ) and Yiddish . Also closely related to Standard German are

3542-865: The Italian autonomous region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia , as well as a recognized national language in Namibia . There are also notable German-speaking communities in France ( Alsace ), the Czech Republic ( North Bohemia ), Poland ( Upper Silesia ), Slovakia ( Košice Region , Spiš , and Hauerland ), Denmark ( North Schleswig ), Romania and Hungary ( Sopron ). Overseas, sizeable communities of German-speakers are found in Brazil ( Blumenau and Pomerode ), South Africa ( Kroondal ), Namibia , among others, some communities have decidedly Austrian German or Swiss German characters (e.g. Pozuzo , Peru). German

3619-854: The Karl-Friedrich-Gymnasium in Mannheim he studied music and musicology at the Musikhochschule Stuttgart and at the University of Tübingen . In 1968, his first year at the Musikhochschule, he founded the Kammerchor Stuttgart (Stuttgart chamber choir). They first concentrated on a cappella music of the 19th and 20th century, but expanded their repertoire. Since 1977, Bernius has collaborated with leading German orchestras and conducted

3696-408: The MHG period. Significantly, these texts include a number of impressive secular works, such as the Nibelungenlied , an epic poem telling the story of the dragon -slayer Siegfried ( c.  thirteenth century ), and the Iwein , an Arthurian verse poem by Hartmann von Aue ( c.  1203 ), lyric poems , and courtly romances such as Parzival and Tristan . Also noteworthy

3773-510: The Old Winter Palace. They were known as the Court Choral Capella from 1763, and extended to 72 singers in 1764. From 1765 the Russian court was successful in attracting several famous Italian composers to Saint Petersburg, among them Baldassare Galuppi , Giovanni Paisiello , Vicente Martín y Soler and Domenico Cimarosa . Foreign instrumentalists employed at the court included the violinist Anton Ferdinand Titz . Besides continuing their church duties, choristers sang at secular ceremonies and in

3850-414: The Orfeo label, and also recorded Handel's Messiah (2009), Cherubini's Requiem (2010), and Johann Rudolph Zumsteeg 's opera Die Geisterinsel (2011). In 2009 he was honoured with the Bach Medal of the City of Leipzig. Bernius has been teaching numerous workshops teaching, including in Belgium in 1995. In 2012, he and the Kammerchor Stuttgart were among the "Wegbegleiter" ("Companions along

3927-527: The Stuttgart festival of Baroque music, "Internationale Festtage Alter Musik" (now "Stuttgart Barock"). In 1988, Bernius, the Kammerchor Stuttgart and the Barockorchester Stuttgart performed the first concert of the first season of the Rheingau Musik Festival at Eberbach Abbey . On 23 June they performed two works by C. P. E. Bach , his Magnificat and the oratorio Die Israeliten in der Wüste , with soloists Nancy Argenta , Lena Lootens , Mechthild Georg , Howard Crook and Stephen Roberts . Bernius and

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4004-402: The Stuttgart festival of Baroque music, "Internationale Festtage Alter Musik", in 1987, and is a recipient of the Edison Award (1990), Diapason d'Or (1990) and the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (1993). Frieder Bernius was born in Ludwigshafen -Oppau, the second child of the Protestant minister Helmut Bernius and his wife Inge, a church musician. After his Abitur at

4081-432: The Tafelmusik. In 1991 he founded the orchestra Klassische Philharmonie Stuttgart . In 2002, he became musical director of the ensemble Hofkapelle Stuttgart . On 10 July 2005, he conducted at the Rheingau Musik Festival Krzysztof Penderecki's Polish Requiem with the Kammerchor Stuttgart and the Sinfonia Varsovia at Eberbach Abbey. In 2006 he released a CD of Symphonies No. 5 and No. 6 by Johann Wenzel Kalliwoda on

4158-423: The choir is "recognized for high musical standards and stylistic flexibility, winning many international awards." Classical cites Bernius as leading "lively and intelligent performances." He has collaborated with the Musica Fiata of Cologne , the La Grande Écurie et la Chambre du Roy of Paris and the Tafelmusik of Toronto . In 1985/1987, he was instrumental in founding the Barockorchester Stuttgart and

4235-486: The choir toured the Far East in 1988 and the USA in 1989. Bernius began recording with Sony Classical in 1989. In 1992 he recorded Gluck's opera Orfeo ed Euridice with Nancy Argenta and Michael Chance . In May 1990 he was awarded the Dutch Edison Award for his recording of Symphoniae Sacrae III by Heinrich Schütz with the Musica Fiata, and in November 1990 he was awarded the French Diapason d'Or for his recording of Missa Dei Filii by Jan Dismas Zelenka with

4312-456: The choirs of broadcasters, such as the SDR and WDR , the NDR Chor and the RIAS Kammerchor . In 1985 the choir decisively turned to early music, and Bernius became known as a conductor of historically informed performance. He has continued in Bach's music the several-voice-to-a-part approach, as opposed to the one-voice-per-part approach advocated by Andrew Parrott and Joshua Rifkin . The Historical Dictionary of Choral Music says that it

4389-424: The court. The chapels and palaces that were built at the time exhibited the same splendour, and served the same goals. A court chapel was established in Moscow in 1479 for singing at church services and court ceremonies. Under Peter the Great the choir was a part of the court clergy. The choir moved to Saint Petersburg when the new capital was founded in 1703. In 1741 the choristers moved from Posadskaya Street to

4466-430: The development of non-local forms of language and exposed all speakers to forms of German from outside their own area. With Luther's rendering of the Bible in the vernacular, German asserted itself against the dominance of Latin as a legitimate language for courtly, literary, and now ecclesiastical subject-matter. His Bible was ubiquitous in the German states: nearly every household possessed a copy. Nevertheless, even with

4543-404: The dialect so as to make the work as natural and accessible to German speakers as possible. Copies of Luther's Bible featured a long list of glosses for each region, translating words which were unknown in the region into the regional dialect. Luther said the following concerning his translation method: One who would talk German does not ask the Latin how he shall do it; he must ask the mother in

4620-435: The eastern provinces of Banat , Bukovina , and Transylvania (German: Banat, Buchenland, Siebenbürgen ), German was the predominant language not only in the larger towns—like Temeschburg ( Timișoara ), Hermannstadt ( Sibiu ), and Kronstadt ( Brașov )—but also in many smaller localities in the surrounding areas. In 1901, the Second Orthographic Conference ended with a (nearly) complete standardization of

4697-435: The home, the children on the streets, the common man in the market-place and note carefully how they talk, then translate accordingly. They will then understand what is said to them because it is German. When Christ says ' ex abundantia cordis os loquitur ,' I would translate, if I followed the papists, aus dem Überflusz des Herzens redet der Mund . But tell me is this talking German? What German understands such stuff? No,

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4774-417: The influence of Luther's Bible as an unofficial written standard, a widely accepted standard for written German did not appear until the middle of the eighteenth century. German was the language of commerce and government in the Habsburg Empire , which encompassed a large area of Central and Eastern Europe . Until the mid-nineteenth century, it was essentially the language of townspeople throughout most of

4851-423: The largest concentrations of German speakers are in the states of Rio Grande do Sul (where Riograndenser Hunsrückisch developed), Santa Catarina , and Espírito Santo . Frieder Bernius Frieder Bernius (born 22 June 1947) is a German conductor, the founder and director of the chamber choir Kammerchor Stuttgart , founded in 1968. They became leaders for historically informed performances . He founded

4928-409: The late 1880s the house and concert hall at the Moika River Embankement were rebuilt and enlarged to what in the 20th century became known as the Leningrad Academic Glinka Capella. The choir became secularized and mixed in 1920, after losing its court epithet shortly after the Russian Revolution (1917). The first noble or royal court orchestras in German language regions, most of which were founded in

5005-402: The mother in the home and the plain man would say, Wesz das Herz voll ist, des gehet der Mund über . Luther's translation of the Bible into High German was also decisive for the German language and its evolution from Early New High German to modern Standard German. The publication of Luther's Bible was a decisive moment in the spread of literacy in early modern Germany , and promoted

5082-423: The ninth century, chief among them being the Muspilli , Merseburg charms , and Hildebrandslied , and other religious texts (the Georgslied , Ludwigslied , Evangelienbuch , and translated hymns and prayers). The Muspilli is a Christian poem written in a Bavarian dialect offering an account of the soul after the Last Judgment , and the Merseburg charms are transcriptions of spells and charms from

5159-407: The opera. They moved to the Moika River Embankment, next to the Novy Bridge, in a house that was built in 1773-77. The house was rebuilt in 1810, and a modest concert hall was added in 1830. Throughout the 19th century the chapel included instrumentalists. Russian composers involved with the Imperial Chapel in the 19th century included Mikhail Glinka , Mily Balakirev and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov . In

5236-462: The pronunciation of the ending -ig as [ɪk] instead of [ɪç]. In Northern Germany, High German was a foreign language to most inhabitants, whose native dialects were subsets of Low German. It was usually encountered only in writing or formal speech; in fact, most of High German was a written language, not identical to any spoken dialect, throughout the German-speaking area until well into the 19th century. However, wider standardization of pronunciation

5313-424: The sixteenth century, were called Hofkapelle. When the noble and royal courts dissipated the name was often replaced by Staatskapelle ("State Chapel"), usually indicating an orchestra with a prior tradition as Hofkapelle. As a musical institute the Dresden Hofkapelle originated in 1548. It was a top European vocal and instrumental ensemble during the period the Saxon Electors also ruled Poland (1697-1763). From 1708

5390-492: The states of North Dakota and South Dakota , German is the most common language spoken at home after English. As a legacy of significant German immigration to the country , German geographical names can be found throughout the Midwest region , such as New Ulm and Bismarck (North Dakota's state capital), plus many other regions. A number of German varieties have developed in the country and are still spoken today, such as Pennsylvania Dutch and Texas German . In Brazil,

5467-449: The third most commonly learned second language in the United States in K-12 education. The language has been influential in the fields of philosophy, theology, science, and technology. It is the second most commonly used language in science and the third most widely used language on websites . The German-speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of annual publication of new books, with one-tenth of all books (including e-books) in

5544-555: The world being published in German. German is most closely related to other West Germanic languages, namely Afrikaans , Dutch , English , the Frisian languages , and Scots . It also contains close similarities in vocabulary to some languages in the North Germanic group , such as Danish , Norwegian , and Swedish . Modern German gradually developed from Old High German , which in turn developed from Proto-Germanic during

5621-600: The written form of German. One of the central events in the development of ENHG was the publication of Luther's translation of the Bible into High German (the New Testament was published in 1522; the Old Testament was published in parts and completed in 1534). Luther based his translation primarily on the Meißner Deutsch of Saxony , spending much time among the population of Saxony researching

5698-429: Was a "neutral" language as there were virtually no English native speakers in Namibia at that time. German, Afrikaans, and several indigenous languages thus became "national languages" by law, identifying them as elements of the cultural heritage of the nation and ensuring that the state acknowledged and supported their presence in the country. Today, Namibia is considered to be the only German-speaking country outside of

5775-547: Was an artificial standard that did not correspond to any traditional spoken dialect. Rather, it was based on the pronunciation of German in Northern Germany, although it was subsequently regarded often as a general prescriptive norm, despite differing pronunciation traditions especially in the Upper-German-speaking regions that still characterise the dialect of the area today – especially

5852-492: Was established on the basis of public speaking in theatres and the media during the 20th century and documented in pronouncing dictionaries. Official revisions of some of the rules from 1901 were not issued until the controversial German orthography reform of 1996 was made the official standard by governments of all German-speaking countries. Media and written works are now almost all produced in Standard German which

5929-596: Was the court chapel of the Württemberg dynasty in Germany. It existed in several formations since it was founded in the 16th century. In the early 19th century musicians like Conradin Kreutzer , Johann Nepomuk Hummel and Carl Maria von Weber were employed at the Hofkapelle. In 2002 a new ensemble, under the same name, was founded by Frieder Bernius . With a history going back to 1482 notable musicians employed in

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