Official language of Germany and Austria and one of the official languages of Switzerland, used by more than 100 million speakers.
It belongs to the West Germanic group of the Germanic languages . German has four noun cases and masculine, feminine, and neuter genders. Its many dialect s belong to either the High German ( Hochdeutsch ) or Low German ( Plattdeutsch ) groups. Modern High German, spoken in the central and southern highlands of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, is now standard written German, used in administration, higher education, literature, and the mass media in both High and Low German speech areas.