ABSTRACT
A m em ber of the West Germanic branch of Indo-European and the official language of Germ any (over 76 million speakers), German is also spoken in Austria (over 7 million) and is one of the national languages of Switzerland (c. 4 million). In addition, there are large numbers of German speakers in the Soviet Union (about 1 million), in Romania (Vi million), and in Alsace-Lorraine (IV2 million). The world total of Germ an speakers is around the 100,000,000 mark.
Dialects
