group 1

German rose to prominence in the early 16th century when Martin Luther provided all of Europe’s peasants with their own bible, almost all of them published in a dialect called “Sächsische Kanzleisprache”. It took several years of Church warring with peasants for the German People to take matters into their own hands and establish a so called “Standardized German” a set of spelling and pronunciation rules everyone would follow. Titled “Hochdeutsch” or “High German” it would become the standard of speech even though hardly anyone in Germany could actually speak it. Regional dialects had branched out so far that they hardly remained recognizable as offshoots from the original language tree. However, like the stereotypical images of engineering and manufacturing (which Germans do take very seriously, by the way) Germans fastidiously adhered to the new rules until the language had taken at least a semblance of a hold in all parts of the country. And, as Germans despise being out of the spotlight, the language rose to prominence largely due to the fact that they high-stepped around large parts of Europe speaking it for a good 10 years in the early to mid 20th century. In fact, videos of Hitler giving speeches remain sources of awe and, yes, revulsion largely because of the language he is speaking. “That sounds so mean!” someone will exclaim. (Anyone can give a speech, but not a person can make it sound so fiendish).