German
West *Germanic, spoken mainly in Germany and in Austria, and used with others as an official language in Switzerland and Luxembourg and as a regional form in the Italian Tyrol and elsewhere. Divided historically into two main dialect areas, Low German, roughly north of a line from south of Magdeburg to the frontier with Belgium, and High German, to the south. The criterion is whether or not forms underwent the so-called ‘Second Sound Shift’, by which [t]>[ts], e.g. in the word for ‘ten’ (standard High German ... ...
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