"DEUTSCHE" - SAME LANGUAGE, MANY DIFFERENCES

Well, since we have already acquired a nice knowledge about the geography and some beauties of Austria, let's get to know a bit about the main way of communication and expression used by this country and others around it: the German language. Bur first, for a better comprehension of the theme, I uploaded a short video explaining you how languages change and envolve.

Now, that you understood all this context, I'll thell you more about the German language, originated around the 8th century. It started with the Indo-European language and people on the Northeast Europe, spreading, throughout the ages, in the extension of European and Asian territory. Then, these people divided themselves into Franks, Bavarians, Alemanni and Old-Saxon groups, building the historical basis of the German language, until it became how it is nowadays. 

Today, German is spoken not only by 7.5 million people in Austria, but by a total of 118 million people worldwide, 77 million in Germany, 5 million in Switzerland, 1.2 million in France, 1.1 million in the US and Brazil, 35.000 in Lichtenstein, and many more in several other countries.

Nevertheless, in this scenario, despite the fact that all the countries mentioned have German speakers, each one has its own peculiarities, and there may be lots of linguistic differences even within a unic country.

In Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Lichtenstein, where German is the official language, most of their states have an own dialect, a situation caused by historical, cultural, social and geographical factors. 

The same thing happens with the Portuguese language, used in my country (Brazil), differently spoken in each state 😂. In addition, when visiting Portugal that colonized my country and introduced that language into Brazilian territory, I noticed that the repertoire of words, expressions and accents used were also very different, showing that although, theoretically, the language is the same, in fact it is unique in each people's culture.

Intersting, right? However, in practice, these divergences can cause communication difficulties... Therefore, some languages have a linguistic ''standard'', as for example, the High German, considered the language for academic purposes, facilitating its understanding for most of the people.