German is the standard language that is used above all in Germany, Austria and parts of Switzerland. But how did German come to be the standard language? And how has the perception of standard German ...

Language is constantly changing and adapting. For the German language, one of the most significant moments of change came 25 years ago with the introduction of the German spelling reform. The ...

The wrangling about the German spelling reform in the 1990s could hardly have been more acrimonious. What caused this heated row in the German press and public administration, in schools and even in ...

Apostrophes aren’t used to show possession in German in most cases, but the highest authority on the language is changing that. Here’s the scoop on the English ‘idiot’s apostrophe’ - and why critics ...

BERLIN -- Some German words, as Mark Twain observed in despair, seem not to be words at all but “alphabetical processions.” He would have been delighted to hear that Germany’s longest official word ...

In French, to show that someone possesses something, you use their word for “of,” which is “de”: La plume de ma tante. Spanish works the same way: La venganza de Moctezuma. Italian, too: Buca di Beppo ...

Medium Ævum, which first appeared in 1932, is one of the leading international academic periodicals in medieval studies. It is published twice yearly and its present editors are Professors Nigel F.