SprachraumIn linguistics, a sprachraum (ˈsprɑːkraʊm; ˈʃpʁaːxˌʁaʊm, "language area", plural sprachräume) is a geographical region where a common first language (mother tongue), with dialect varieties, or group of languages is spoken. Many sprachräume are separated by national borders, whilst others are separated by oceans or ethnolinguistic boundaries. The five major Western sprachräume (by number of speakers) are those of English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and German.
DudenThe Duden (ˈduːdn̩) is a dictionary of the Standard High German language, first published by Konrad Duden in 1880, and later by Bibliographisches Institut GmbH. The Duden is updated regularly with new editions appearing every four or five years. , it is in its 28th edition. It is printed as twelve volumes, with each volume covering different aspects of the German language such as loanwords, etymology, pronunciation, synonyms, etc.
MannheimMannheim (ˈmanhaɪm; Palatine German: Mannem or Monnem), officially the University City of Mannheim (Universitätsstadt Mannheim), is the second-largest city in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, after the state capital of Stuttgart, and Germany's 21st-largest city, with a 2021 population of 311,831 inhabitants. The city is the cultural and economic centre of the Rhine-Neckar Metropolitan Region, Germany's seventh-largest metropolitan region with nearly 2.4 million inhabitants and over 900,000 employees.
Autonomy and heteronomyAutonomy and heteronomy are complementary attributes of a language variety describing its functional relationship with related varieties. The concepts were introduced by William A. Stewart in 1968, and provide a way of distinguishing a language from a dialect. A variety is said to be autonomous if it has an independent cultural status. This may occur if the variety is structurally different from all others, a situation Heinz Kloss called abstand. Thus language isolates such as Basque are necessarily autonomous.
Culture of GermanyThe culture of Germany has been shaped by major intellectual and popular currents in Europe, both religious and secular. Historically, Germany has been called Das Land der Dichter und Denker (the country of poets and thinkers). German culture originated with the Germanic tribes, the earliest evidence of Germanic culture dates to the Jastorf culture in Northern Germany and Denmark. Contact with Germanic tribes were described by various Greco-Roman authors.
