Useful Notes / German Dialects
Dialects still play a major role in Germany. Even German politicians often speak their dialects (even if sometimes in a form closer to Standard German).
German dialects can be a problem even to native German speakers. It's especially problematic in more remote and rural areas, where schoolteachers who have moved from other regions can't understand their pupils at all. TV documentaries sometimes have Standard German subtitles or voice-over because the people featured in them speak a dialect that is incomprehensible to the majority of viewers.
The most important German dialects:
- In Northern Germany there are both north German accents (spoken in cities and younger people) and Plattdeutsch ("Flat German"note , Low German, spoken mostly by older people and in rural areas). While most people speak Standard German (or High German) with an accent strongly influenced by Plattdeutsch, Platt is recognized as a language distinct from Standard German, which even many people who grew up in the urban areas of northern Germany can not understand because not only the pronunciation, but also the vocabulary and grammar differs quite significantly. The northern dialects are spoken in the north, in Hamburg, Bremen and other Hanseatic cities, and extending south as far as the northern edge of the Ruhr in places. It is also notable that Plattdeutsch varies strongly with different villages as close as 50 km together often using forms of it that are almost mutually unintelligible and different dialects spouting new words and different meanings to huge extents. Associated with fishermen, sailors and other people dealing with the sea (if they speak at all - the cliché says that they're rather taciturn). Or with pimps in Hamburg, of the (in)famous Reeperbahn redlight district. As the historic Angles and Saxons who migrated to Britain were from the regions north and south of Hamburg, Plattdeutsch is a close relative of the English language, and shares much more words and a much more similar phonetics with it than modern Standard German; it is even more closely related to Dutch, with which it forms a continuum. When people speak a mixture of High and Low German, this is called Missingsch, a word that some say is derived from Messing (brass), an alloy of two metals, copper and zinc, meaning that Missingsch is an alloy of the two forms of German. About a century ago it was said e. g. about Hamburg that members of the lower classes and of very old upper-class families spoke Platt among themselves while the middle-class and nouveau riches would try to speak Hochdeutsch. The Plattdüütsch language region also extends into the northeastern Netherlands, where it is locally termed as Dutch Low Saxon. Similarly, the Dutch language region creeps into Germany (in the vicinity of Düsseldorf and Duisburg) where it is termed as Low Frankish. Generally speaking, the modern Netherlands and Germany have well-differentiated national identities, though their shared national border does not coincide at all with their traditional linguistic boundaries. Typical elements of northern German dialects:
- The sounds "St" and "Sp" at the beginning of words are pronounced like that, and not like "Sht" and "Shp" as in most of Germany. This is however rapidly disappearing in recent decades.
- In the Hamburg-Lübeck area, it is very common to drop most Ds and Ts and drastically contract words. Something like hinter der Tür (behind the door) turns into hin'ner Tür.
- Like several accents of English, it is also nonrhotic and does not pronounce most Rs, often replacing them with an additioinal vowel. Turning the above example into hin'nea Tüe.
- Hamburg accent is recognized by the drawing out all vowels.
- One of the most noticeable of North German dialects of High German is that they tend to mix up the dative and accusative case, originally because Low German makes no difference between the two (e. g. for "me", High German has "mir" (dative) and "mich" (accusative), while Low German only has "mi").
- Stereotypical greeting is "Moin!" or "Moin Moin!" — you hear the sailors in Das Boot saying this to each other. While it sounds like it is a corrupted form of "Morgen!" (morning), it is in fact short for "mooien Dag", which means "good" or "nice day".
- There is a joke playing with the similarities to English: A German girl is visiting her grandparents on the countryside. She's having the first English lessons in school and wants to show off her knowledge, so she mentions during the lunch: "The door is open!" Her grandpa just replies: "Denn maak se man tau, min deern!" (Well, then close it, my girl!) The joke being here that "The door is open" is pronounced practically the same in Plattdüütsch and English, and yes, means the same too.
- Hanoverian: This is said to be a dialect, but mostly it sounds like standard ("high") German. A Swabian journalist who moved there stated that she was surprised that in Hanover, even proles spoke perfect Standard German, while in her home area, this alone would qualify you to be Mayor. As a matter of fact, Hanoverians used to speak a dialect of Low German, and among lower-class speakers it was for instance not uncommon to pronounce "ei" as a long "ah" and long "ah" as a kind of long "öh".
- In Three Men On The Bummel, Jerome K. Jerome recounts (in the 1910s) that conventional thinking says 'you must go to Hanover to learn the purest, proper German'. He states that this is true, the only problem being that it will be a form of German that no-one in any other part of Germany seems to understand.
- This is today largely untrue: Everyone can speak Standard German.note In Germany itself the joke is mostly "You have to go to Hanover to hear actual Standard German... the problem is: you'd be in Hanover..."
- Generally speaking, the former Low German speaking regions tend to speak High German with less of an accent than the traditional High German regions since there wasn't as much time to develop a unique accent (the language unification is often dated back to Luther's first bible translation).
- Berlinerisch (Berlin German): The most notable German(y) big city slang, which over time has absorbed quite a bit of vocabulary from French (starting with the large numbers of Huguenots settling in Berlin since the late 17th century) and Yiddish, as well as some Slavic languages. As its home is a North German city, the dialect is somewhat coloured by a Low German substratum, and thus typical elements like "ick(e)" for "ich" ("I") are originally Plattdeutsch, while others are specific Berlin variants of same, such as "det" for the neutrum of the definite article ("dat" in Low German, "das" in High German). Berliners are stereotypically big-mouthed, brash and cocky. The stereotypical Prussian army accent was to a large extent coloured by Berlinerisch, partly because the Prussian Guards were stationed in and around Berlin, which was also home to the main military academies. Typical features include:
- The letter 'G' is often substituted by 'J' (consonantic "Y" in English), as in "jut, jut" (well,well) or "Orje" (a diminutive form of "Georg").
- The diphthong "au" can become a long "o", as in "ooch" for High German "auch,"note and "Oogen" (pronounced with a velar fricative sound like the (Modern) Greek gamma) for "Augen"note .
- A short "I" will often be given a darker pronunciation close to a short "Ü", as in "nüscht" for "nichts"note and "Kürche" for "Kirche"note .
- Like other North Germans, Berliners have a tendency to mix up the dative and accusative case.
- Saxonnote : According to a 2008 poll (here: http://www.ifd-allensbach.de/news/prd_0804.html), by far the most unpopular German dialect. Was spoken by many prominent politicians of East Germany (like Walter Ulbricht, head of the SED Central Committee from 1950 to 1971), and their border guards, which didn't help its popularity. The Saxon dialect replaces P, T, K sounds by B, D, G (and several vowels too, but that's too complicated to explain). Thuringian (the area west of Saxony) is a bit like it. Most notable for the invention or adoption of new vocab (as "Plinsen" (pancakes), a loanword from Slavic languages, specifically Sorbic) and new meanings to vocabs (mentioned "Pfannkuchen" in Saxon are Plinsen. In other regions pancakes are called pancakes, "Pfannkuchen" - in Saxon, however "Pfannkuchen" is what in other regions in Germany is a "Krapfen" - a fried doughy pastry filled with jelly ... what an American would call a "jelly donut".note Hilarity Ensues when a Saxonian orders Pfannkuchen in a Bavarian bakery). Also known as typical Saxon is "Nu" - the universially used word for approval, yes, maybe, scepticism ("Nu, nu...") etc. - there are cases known where entire conversations were held only by using "Nu".)
- The bad image of Saxon was in no little part due to the fact that Saxon and Thuringian were the only dialect unambiguously associated with the GDR (the dialects of the coastal regions are very similar to those of Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg etc., while the Berlin dialect was shared by East and West Berliners). Specifically, communist party leaders Walter Ulbricht and Erich Honecker spoke with a very noticeable Saxon accent (which in the latter case was an acquired one - Honecker originally came from the Saarland).
- Has been described, for the benefit of British tropers, as someone speaking German with a thick Brummy accent.
- However, it is true that an old subdialect of Saxon (Sächsische Kanzleisprache, Saxon Chancellery German) was what Martin Luther used for his German translation of The Bible, because being a Middle German dialect it could be understood by more or less everybody (provided they could read, of course) and because he was at the time under the protection of the Duke of Saxony; the language of Luther's Bible became the kernel of modern Standard German. Saxons are understandably fond of pointing this out.
- This joke is somewhat translatable: Two Saxon policemen see a car with the nationality sticker "GB".
Policeman 1: "What country is zat? Gingdom of Boland?"
Policeman 2: "You are so dumb! Zat's one of us! Zis means 'Griminal Bolice'!"
- Franconian: Spoken in the area between Thuringia, (Old) Bavaria and Hessen. Replaces P and T sounds by B and D respectively.
- The locals call it the hard B and the soft B respectively.
- Also, if you want to emphazise any part of your sentence, just add 'fei' in front of the part you what to give extra weight. And no, 'fei' cannot be translated. Not even into Standard German.
- Diphtongs 'AU' or 'EI' are substituted by single vowels (usually 'A'). This is the most important difference to bavaria, there single vowels are substituted with diphtongs. For example the word "Arbeit" (work,job) becomes "Ärbad" in Franconian, while it would be "Oarbeit" in Bavarian. Using diphtongs in Franconia makes you look suspicious, because Francons hate Bavarians.
- "Ja" ("Yes") becomes "Hoh"/"Joh" and "Nein" ("No") becomes "Nah". This may lead to confusions because "Nah" may be confused with "Ja".
- Bavarian: Most popular German dialect, according to the earlier mentioned poll. (For the Oktoberfest, maybe?) Associated with the gemütlich Bavarian guys who like beer, rich food, wear lederhosen and listen to Bavarian (Polka-like) music. Typically has quite a singsong intonation and in inclination similar to Welsh to put a slight pause in between the first and second syllables of a word.
- While regular Bavarian accents can be understood by most Germans, Lower Bavarian (Niederbairisch) from the eastern end of the state is often unintelligible even to other Bavarians.
- Single vowels are often substituted by diphtongs, so words often get more syllables and 'EI' is often substituted by 'OA'. For example "Eichhörnschenschwanz" bzw. "Eichkätzchenschweif" (tail of a squirrel) becomes "Oachkoatzelschwoaf". In general Bavarian has lots of 'OA'.
- Austrian: Can be used to describe three main dialect groups spoken in Austria, "Donaubairisch" (in Salzburg, Upper Austria, Lower Austria, Vienna, parts of Styria and Burgenland and northern Tyrol), "Südbairisch" (spoken in the rest of Tyrol, Eastern Tyrol, the rest of Styria) and "Allemanisch" (Vorarlberg). Donaubairisch and Südbairisch are closely allied to Bavarian, and are sometimes grouped with the actual Bavarian dialects in Bavaria as "Austro-Bavarian," but there are some differences. (An example and useful tip: The sentence "My name is" ("Ich heiße") becomes "I hoaß" in Bavarian, but "I haaß" in the Austrian capital Vienna, which has its own subdialect.) The Allemanisch is closer to the Allemanisch of Baden-Württemberg and Swiss German and more distantly related to Swabian (but still closer to either of those than the Bavarian dialects spoken in the rest of Austria).
- If you study classical voice, you will learn to pronounce Austrian German, as the major writers of German songs lived and wrote in Vienna—-from Haydn and Mozart through Richard Strauss—and therefore Austrian is the dialect used for singing.
- As an example: "I hoaß" (i.e. as in Bavaria) is the way it's said in Salzburg, northern Styria, northern Tyrol, parts of Upper and Lower Austria and Burgenland (when not yet superseded by the Viennese "â"), but not in Vienna and areas influenced by the Viennese dialect, where people say "I hâß".
- The city of Vienna itself has a few different dialects:
- The general Viennese dialect is rather closer to "understandable" German than the Alpine districts, having less vowel shifts and hardly any consonant shifts (also, being the capital, Viennese have more reason to be understandable internationally), but still has a lot of dialectal loanwords borrowing from any of the languages in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Yiddish.
- The most distinct Viennese dialect is the Meidlinger Dialect, which is the common, working class dialect, and famous for the "Meidlinger L", a sound even most non-Viennese Austrians can't replicate.
- The other major Viennese dialect, now almost extinct, is "Schönbrunner Deutsch", spoken by the nobility, which sounds completely different. It is named after the Schönbrunn Palace, the former seat of the Habsburg monarchs, for it was their dialect of German as well.
- There is also Tyrolean, which is a term used for the whole of Tyrol, but actually mostly applies to Innsbruck (the capital) and surrounding areas, where consonants almost underwent another consonant shift: several consonants hardened (f.e. "k" to almost "kch") and vowels darkened ("a" -> "o" instead of "â" (standard Oberbairisch)). Also, the Germanic "s" (pronounced as "sch") was retained in some areas, resulting in pronunciations of "bist" as "bischt".
""Bisch a Tiroler, bisch a Mensch."note "Bisch koaner, bisch a oaschloch."note
- Actually, each of the nine Bundesländer has its own notably different dialect (usually with several variants), with dialect borders closely following political borders.
- The most easily recognizable dialect may be Carinthian, because it has very distinctive pronounciation yet is easy to understand, so it's recognised by many people. The most widely spoken dialect in Austria is Donaubairisch. Tyrolians, on the other hand, usually have to switch to a more standardized version of German to be understood by other Austrians.
- Things get absolutely crazy with dialects in Vorarlberg, Austria's western-most Bundesland. The dialects are part of the allemanic group and thus very different from other Austrian dialects. There are at least four major groups (and many more subgroups) of dialects with some very distinct words and prounciation. Noticeably the Vorarlbergerisch dialects are more closely related to Swiss German, which is one of the reasons Vorarlbergers are often referred to (more or less) jokingly as Swiss by other Austrians. The other wiki has more.
- For example, listen to this - I chose the line basically because I could understand it
Vorarlbergerisch: Vo Mello bis ge Schoppornou bean i gloufa - d'Füaß hend mr weh tau
Hochdeutsch: Von Mellau bis nach Schoppernau bin ich gegangen - die Füße haben mir weh getan
English: I walked from Mellau to Schoppernau, my feet hurt
- Remember that we are talking about a state with only 370.000 inhabitants here.
- Finally, "Austro-Bavarian" Südbairisch German is also spoken in the Italian province of South Tyrol.
- Swabian: Spoken in the southwest in a region centered on Stuttgart, the capital of Baden-Württemberg. Speakers like to apply the ending "-le" to quite many words, which make these words a diminutive. It has its own distinct grammar, as well as a very different pronunciation from Standard German, which makes understanding and speaking it even more complicated for out-of-regioners.
- Spätzle, the little noodle/dumpling crossovers familiar to some American tropers, are Swabian in origin.
- Alemannisch: Another southwestern dialect, spoken in Baden (which prides itself on not being Swabian) and French Elsass/Alsace (Alsatian, as in the type of dog known as a German Shepherd in the United States for reasons relating to World War I). Since both Swabian and Alemannisch are spoken in the state of Baden-Württemberg (known for innovative science and industry), the state had a bit of fun with an ad campaign that ran, "Wir können alles. Außer Hochdeutsch." ("We can do anything. Except speak Standard German.") Alemannisch is related to...
- Swiss German: Similar to Swabian, but even more incomprehensible for other German-speakers. Has many loan words from French and Italian (which are the other official languages spoken in Switzerland).
- The Swiss Transport Museum in Lucerne has language-selection buttons on its videos offering English, French, German and Swiss-German. The Swiss essentially regard it as a separate language, and it has been suggested that if Dutch is a separate language, then Swiss should be too.
- Perhaps, since "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy", the Dutch qualify but the Swiss don't, since the Swiss Navy is somewhat minimal.
- The Swiss German "dialect" itself has more than half-a-dozen dialects, with those even having "sub"-dialects, variing from one region to another. It can be argued that, despite not officially recoginzed as such, Swiss German pratically is a separate language.
- Wikipedia uses the terms Swiss Standard German and Swiss German to distinguish the two. "Swiss Standard German" is Standard German (Hochdeutsch), the written language common to all German speakers, with Swiss intonation and vocabulary, while "Swiss German" is any of the several dialects spoken in Switzerland, which are as a group distinct from other variations of German. There is a common joke about Germans mistaking "Swiss Standard German" for actual Swiss German because the Swiss accent alone is already very different from Standard German.
- The stereotypical Swiss German word is "Chuchichäschtli" (the "ch" pronounced as in Scottish "loch"), which would be "Küchenschrank" (literally: "Küchenkästchen") in Standard German, and means "kitchen cupboard".
- Hessian: Spoken e. g. in the area around Frankfurt. Became somewhat famous when parts of it entered "Kanaksprak" (the slang used by youths from immigrant families).
- "Alle Hejje sin' Verbrejje, denn se klaue Ajjenbejje."
- Was also spoken by no one less than Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, as is visible in the lines "Ach neige / du Schmerzensreiche..." from Faust. In standard German, this would make a Painful Rhyme, but in Hessian, it's smooth. And the character saying it (Gretchen) would definitely speak dialect.
- If you fly Lufthansa, you'll probably stop in Frankfurt. While they do their best to cover it up, there's a definite Hessian tinge to the German spoken among the people manning FRA security, so if you've been there, that's what it's like (if you can tell).
- Palatinate: Pfälzisch, the dialect of former chancellor Helmut Kohl, who became the target of so many jokes.
- Pennsilfaanisch Deitsch: Or Pennsylvania German, spoken by the so-called "Pennsylvania Dutch" (who are actually German) and Amish communities of the United States. Since they moved to the US in the 18th and 19th centuries, there has been some divergence, but a Palatinate speaker can still carry a conversation with an Amish person or other speaker of Pennsylvania German if he/she sticks to dialect.
- Rhenish: Similar to Pfälzisch. Spoken in the Rhineland. Related to Letzeburgisch, the German dialect spoken in Luxembourg, is also spoken by the Germanophone community of Belgium and forms a continuum with the dialect of Dutch spoken in the neighboring province of Limburg (you know, where the cheese that literally smells like feet comes from).
- Kölsch: A specific variant of Rhenish, spoken in the city of Cologne. Associated with the Cologne Carnival festivities. May be more famous than other Rhenish variants because some of Germany's most important TV stations are located in Cologne. Not to be confused with the beer from that area which is also called Kölsch...although the similarity of names has led to a German joke about how Kölsch is the only dialect you can drink.)
- Westphalian/"Ruhrpott" speech: Has quite some influences. Although it is associated with Germany's biggest urban agglomeration, the dialect is actually not all that different between the "Pütt" and rural areas like the Sauerland and Münsterland.
- Ruhr German is basically Standard High German with "t" in place of "s" at the end of words, and the use of a lot of contractions. Older generations mix up the accusative and dative cases, but younger ones don't. A more liberal use of prepositions sometimes remains, as "zu" and "nach" being used interchangeably. Ruhr Germans are said to be overly colloquial and frank with strangers, although that is somewhat exaggerated for comedic effect, and distinction. A distinction between Ruhr German and Westphalian German is that the "er" in "Donnerstag" (Thursday) is pronounced like a Standard German "er" at the end of syllables (close to "a") in the former, and closer to a British non-rhotic "er" in the latter.
As a result of World War II
, several million Germans were kicked out from the area east of Oder-Neiße-line, the new German-Polish border, as well as from many other areas of Eastern and Eastern Central Europe. Thus, these dialects were from then on just spoken by older refugees and nowadays almost completely disappeared.
- Pomeranian: Basically the regional dialects of High and Low German and as such not that different from other North German dialects. Obviously some are still spoken in the part of Pomerania west of the Oder that remains German.
- Silesian: As a funny detail, the phrase "Er ist von uns gegangen" ("he went from us") just means "he left" in Silesian, instead of being an euphemism for "he died", as most other Germans would understand it.
- Quite a few Germans stayed in Silesia after the war and are now a recognized linguistic minority under EU law. There was a distinct difference between the northern part (Lower Silesia) and the southern (Upper Silesia). The latter had a large Polish community which basically got crapped on by both sides, becoming the subject of distrust and ridicule among Germans ("Antek and Frantek" jokes used to be popular at least until the 1940s) and regarded as too "Germanified" by Poles.
- Not to be mistaken with modern Silesian language spoken by Polish Silesian minority, that uses Polish grammar, a lot of indigenous vocabulary (not strictly Polish, but definitely of Slavic origin) and many (sometimes bastardized) German loanwords.
- East Prussian: Had both High and Low German dialects. The dialect of the former German-speaking community of the Baltic states sounded rather similar, as did that of German-Speakers of West Prussia (the pre-1939 Polish Corridor). Influences came from various Slavic languages such as Polish, Kassubian and Masurian (the latter two are regarded as Polish dialects by patriotic Poles). Some slightly archaic forms, collectively known as Plautdietsch (a phonically altered form of "Plattdeutsch"), are still spoken among Mennonite communities in the Americas. Not to be confused with Old Prussian, below.
- Sudeten or Bohemian German: The dialect spoken by the German-speaking community of what is now The Czech Republic. Somewhat similar to Austrian and Silesian, with some influences from Czech. Although some might classify Franz Kafka's native dialect as Sudeten, things are somewhat less clear: he lived in Prague and was Jewish, and both Prague and the German-speaking Czech Jews had their own, mutually-interacting dialects.
- Other dialects from the former Austro-Hungarian Empire and elsewhere include those of the "Siebenbürgen Saxons" (the German community of Transylvania) and the "Banat Swabians" (Nobel Prize laureate Herta Müller is from this part of Romania). (Note: In South Eastern Europe "Swabian" is often used as a pejorative name for all kinds of Germans.)
West Germanic, but not German languages:
- Frisian (Friisk): This language is usually grouped together with English in the Anglo-Frisian group. German Frisians live in North Frisia on the west coast of Schleswig-Holstein including the islands off said coast, on Heligoland, in East Frisia (the coastal region adjoining the Dutch border including the islands on that part of the North Sea Coast), Dutch Frisians live mainly in the Province of Frisia, west of East Frisia. Most German Frisians speak High and/or Low German, but there are still enough speakers of Frisian in North Frisia and on Heligoland to warrant recognition and protection under German and European law.
- Dutch: In the border area, especially on the Lower Rhine. See above in the section on North German. During the middle ages and the Eighty Years War quite a number of people migrated from the Low Countries to Northern Germany, and for instance two old established families in Hamburg, the Sillems and the Amsincks, still pronounce their names with a sharp "s" because they originated in the Netherlands.
- Yiddish is a collection of Jewish-specific High German dialects that—despite the lack of an army and a navy—came to be considered a language; the Hebrew loanwords and being written in the Hebrew alphabet probably had something to do with it. To be quite fair, the dialects of Yiddish that survived are the eastern ones, which contained a large portion of Slavic vocabulary, as well (western Yiddish died out as German Jews assimilated to mainstream German culture—or died out in a more literal sense).
- For all the jokes about "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy" on this page—the actual quote was originally in Yiddish, about Yiddish. The fact that Yiddish is almost universally considered a separate language from High German despite the absence of these makes one really think about linguistics.
- Yiddish (and through it Hebrew) words entered the language of the general population, largely through Jews and gentiles living together, partly via the detour of Rotwelsch, the cant spoken by criminals and vagrants, which also had a big influence on the secret shibboleths etc. of journeymen craftsmen.
- English: Englishmen, Scots and Irishmen came to Northern Germany and the Baltic states since Elizabethan times, settling in fairly large numbers e. g. in Hamburg and East Prussia. However they tended to learn to speak German after a while.
Non-West Germanic languages:
- Danish, a North Germanic language, is spoken by the Danish minority in the South Schleswig region of Schleswig-Holstein (the northernmost part of the state—North Schleswig is part of Denmark, as South Schleswig had been until 1864).
- The Upper Sorbian and Lower Sorbian languages spoken in eastern Saxony and south-eastern Brandenburg are West Slavic. In the early middle ages Polabian (which means "living on the Elbe") Slavs settled as far west as Bremen and as far south as Franconia (as can be seen by names of rivers such as Pegnitz and Regnitz). They are a remnant of the Wendish group of West Slavic languages. formerly more widely spoken in what is now eastern Germany. Wendish languages started to disappear en masse with the Ostsiedlung in the 12th century, when ethnic Germans from further west started settling en masse further east and in the process assimilated much of the old Slavic population.note . The only surviving Wendish languages are Upper and Lower Sorbian, and also Kashubian in Poland (fun fact: Donald Tusk, Prime Minister of Poland 2007-present, is a Kashubian); the Wendish languages are usually seen as distinct from Polish and Czech-Slovak groups of West Slavic).
- Up until World War II, Prussia also had Polish-speaking regions, e. g. in Upper Silesia, and a tiny Czech-speaking minority. During the industrial revolution many Poles migrated to the Ruhr valley, where they were soon absorbed linguistically into the general German-speaking population.
- Some non-Germanic languages and dialects died out during the flight of non-ethnic Germans (along with ethnic German neighbors) after World War II who had already adopted a German national identity. The Wendish Slavic language Slovincian in Pomerania completely died out, as the post-war Polish authorities considered the Slovincians unwanted Germans and expelled them to Germany. Many Protestant Lechitic Slavs (such as the Masurians) and the Prussian Lithuanians were also deported to Germany, and their language was eventually lost. The entire population of what became Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast (and almost the entire population of what became Lithuania's Klaipėda region) was also expelled to Germany — they were mostly Germans and indigenous Prussian Lithuanians, but also speakers of the Baltic language New Curonian (similar to Latvian) who lived on the Curonian Spit. The descendants of all groups are now fully assimilated into modern society in Germany, mostly speaking Standard German.
- The Old Prussian language was the most prominent of the obscure West Baltic languages, spoken in the northeast Poland/Kaliningrad/Klaipeda area before the Ostsiedlung; it was related to Lithuanian and Latvian, and died out by the 17th century as the locals became Germanized. The Prussian dialects of German included a number of Old Prussian loanwords.
- Romani, a Indo-European language originating from India, was and to some extent still is spoken by the Sinti and Roma living in Germany, many of whom died in Nazi death camps during World War II. A few Romani words entered the German language via the Rotwelsch cant mentioned above in the section on Yiddish.
- A number of other languages came to Germany with larger groups of immigrants, for instance French; the biggest wave occurred after Louis XIV expelled the Huguenots from France, a smaller one during the French Revolution, but eventually they were linguistically absorbed into the German-speaking population. After World War II the "Economic Miracle" in West Germany led to the immigration of millions of "guest workers" from Italy, Spain, Portugal, former Yugoslavia, Greece and Turkey, most of whom eventually settled down in Germany, but quite a number of whom keep speaking their native languages and pass them on to their children. The end of the Cold War also led to an influx of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe and also not a few Russian Jews, which is one of the reason there are now e. g. some Russian-language newspapers in Germany.
Usage in fiction: