Language
The native language of Germans is German, a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch, and sharing many similarities with the North Germanic or Scandinavian languages. Spoken by approximately 100 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and the most widely spoken first language in the European Union.
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Famous quotes containing the word language:
“When you’re lying awake with a dismal headache, and repose is
taboo’d by anxiety,
I conceive you may use any language you choose to indulge in without impropriety;”
—Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836–1911)
“Like the train’s beat
Swift language flutters the lips
Of the Polish airgirl in the corner seat.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“In a language known to us, we have substituted the opacity of the sounds with the transparence of the ideas. But a language we do not know is a closed place in which the one we love can deceive us, making us, locked outside and convulsed in our impotence, incapable of seeing or preventing anything.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)