page_title: Germans
section_title: Dialects
hierarchical_section_title: Germans / Language / Dialects
caption_attribution_description: West Germanic languages &#160;&#160; Dutch (Low Franconian, West Germanic) &#160;&#160; Frisian (Anglo-Frisian, West Germanic) &#160;&#160; English (Anglo-Frisian, West Germanic) &#160;&#160; Low German (West Germanic) &#160;&#160; Central German (High German, West Germanic) &#160;&#160; Upper German (High German, West Germanic) North Germanic languages &#160;&#160; East Scandinavian &#160;&#160; West Scandinavian &#160;&#160; Line dividing the North and West Germanic languages
context_page_description: Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe, who share a common German ancestry, culture, and history. German is the shared mother tongue of a substantial majority of ethnic Germans.
  The English term Germans has historically referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages. Ever since the outbreak of the Protestant Reformation within the Holy Roman Empire back in the 16th century, German society has been characterized by a Catholic-Protestant divide.
  Of approximately 100 million native speakers of German in the world, roughly 80 million consider themselves Germans. There are an additional 80 million people of German ancestry mainly in the United States, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, South Africa, the post-Soviet states, and France, each accounting for at least 1 million. Thus, the total number of Germans lies somewhere between 100 and more than 150 million, depending on the criteria applied.
  Today, people from countries with German-speaking majorities which were earlier part of the Holy Roman Empire, most often subscribe to their own national identities and may or may not also self-identify as ethnically German.
context_section_description: High German
  Upper German
  Bavarians (c. 10 million) form the Austro-Bavarian linguistic group, together with those Austrians who speak German and do not live in Vorarlberg and the western Tyrol district of Reutte. Swabians (ca. 10 million) form the Alemannic group, together with the Alemannic Swiss, Liechtensteiners, Alsatians and Vorarlbergians.
  Central German dialect group (c. 45 million)
  West Central German
  Central Franconian (Ripuarian, Kölsch), forms a dialectal unity with Luxembourgish, Rhine Franconian (Hessian)
  East Central German
  Standard German, Thuringian, Upper Saxon, High Prussian, German Silesian
  Yiddish, a High German language of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world. It developed as a fusion of German dialects with Hebrew, Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages.
  Low German (c. 3–10 million), forms a dialectal unity with Dutch Low Saxon
  Low Saxon, East Low German
caption: West Germanic languages   Dutch (Low Franconian, West Germanic)   Low German (West Germanic)   Central German (High German, West Germanic)   Upper German (High German, West Germanic)   English (Anglo-Frisian, West Germanic)   Frisian (Anglo-Frisian, West Germanic) North Germanic languages   East Scandinavian   West Scandinavian   Line dividing the North and West Germanic languages
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