Talk:German language

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the German language article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic. New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help. Assume good faith Be polite and avoid personal attacks Be welcoming to newcomers Seek dispute resolution if needed Article policies Neutral point of view No original research Verifiability

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8Auto-archiving period: 180 days

This  level-3 vital article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Languages Top‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Languages, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of languages on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.LanguagesWikipedia:WikiProject LanguagesTemplate:WikiProject Languageslanguage articles Top This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale. Germany Top‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Germany, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Germany on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.GermanyWikipedia:WikiProject GermanyTemplate:WikiProject GermanyGermany articles Top This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale. France Low‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject France, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of France on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.FranceWikipedia:WikiProject FranceTemplate:WikiProject FranceFrance articles Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale. Switzerland Top‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Switzerland, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Switzerland on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SwitzerlandWikipedia:WikiProject SwitzerlandTemplate:WikiProject SwitzerlandSwitzerland articles Top This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.

German language was a good article, but it was removed from the list as it no longer met the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. If you can improve it, please do; it may then be renominated. Review: October 13, 2006.

Remember that article talk pages are provided to coordinate the article's improvement only, and are not for engaging in discussion of off-topic matters not related to the main article. User talk pages are more appropriate for non-article-related discussion topics. Please do not use this page as a discussion forum for off-topic matters. See talk page guidelines.

• intro: "or more precisely High German" and table with "Language family ... High German" vs. ISO 639-3 in the talble: "nds – Low German"

  Low German is not High German

• nativename in the table: "Deutsch" vs. bar – Bavarian etc. in the table

  in the various dialects like Bavarian the term for German is different, e.g. in ksh – Kölsch it's Dütsch (cp. WT)

• WP speaks of "High German languages" (plural), yet this is only "German language" (singular). German is broader than High German, so it should be German languages, or German here is short for Standard German which already has a more proper article.

date=June 2023

I am moving this here sic erat from a cleanup hatnote posted by this anonymous user. Dylanvt (talk) 20:56, 14 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

From the article:

The Low Franconian dialects [...] Nevertheless, topologically these dialects are structurally and phonologically far more similar to Dutch, than to German and form both the smallest and most divergent dialect cluster within the contemporary German language area.^[1]

• Niebaum, Hermann (2011). "Wege und Schwerpunkte der deutschen Dialektologie" [Ways and focuses of German dialectology]. Einführung in die Dialektologie des Deutschen [Introduction to the dialectology of German] (in German) (2nd ed.). Tübingen: Niemeyer. ISBN 978-3-11-091654-6.

As for the source:

• That's not properly cited, as it lacks the other author Jürgen Macha and as the year or edition is wrong (1st 1999, 2nd 2006, 3rd 2014 - 2011 could only be a reprint or a re-release as e-book or something)
• Quoting from the 3rd ed. as here the text is (basically) the same and as this can still be viewed online:
  Hermann Niebaum, Jürgen Macha, Einführung in die Dialektologie des Deutschen, 3rd ed., 2014, p. 104 ([1])): "Auf der Karte sind ebenfalls drei Hauptgebiete, erkennbar, die sich, wie Nerbonne/Siedle (2005:[...]) festellen, „im Wesentlichen mit den Verteilungen des Nieder-, Ostmittel- und Oberdeutschen (Cluster 1, 4 und 5) nach traditioneller Einteilung decken, sowie ein heterogenes Gebiet im Westen, das in etwa Ripuarisch (Cluster 3) und Niederrheinisch-Westmünderländisch (Cluster 2) entspricht.“

Thus:

• The source doesn't state that Low Franconian is the smallest and most divergent cluster. It's stating that Ripuarisch + Niederrheinisch-Westmünsterländisch form a heterogeneous area. So both the dialect(s) and the degree of comparison (superlative vs. positive) aren't sourced.
• Article stated: "within the contemporary German language area". There's a difference between "in Germany" and "in the German language area". The German language area also comprehends Austria and Switzerland. As the source only considered Germany, the wording in the article wasn't correct.

-06:54, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

The German article on the Germanics https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanen says, that the concept can be defined historically outside the linguistic sphere. Sarcelles (talk) 19:28, 21 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The very concept of Germanics is disputed by science in Germany, this German article says sourcedly. Furthermore, Germanics hardly is used as a concept for the present by Germans nowadays. Sarcelles (talk) 08:16, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

One problem here is that "Germanics" is simply not a term found in the English-language literature, so arguing that there's something wrong with it is entirely beside the point. --Pfold (talk) 08:45, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The word "Germanics" doesn't appear in the article, so why are you discussing this here? Largoplazo (talk) 09:56, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

12 pages link to Germanics, a redirect to German peoples.

Maybe we should discuss this on another talk page. Sarcelles (talk) 04:51, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@KoreaJAP: Luxembourgish is recognized as an independent language. You can't use its use in Luxembourg to argue that Luxembourgers are really speaking German. Furthermore, your changes have ignored that Luxembourg has three official languages. You can't claim that German is the "most widely spoken" when that is clearly Luxembourgish. Or else provide a source showing that Standard German is more widely spoken than Luxembourgish in Luxembourg.--Ermenrich (talk) 17:59, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have corrected it. KoreaJAP (talk) 18:18, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]