German is in the same Indo-European subsection as English, Dutch, and the Scandinavian languages. Many words are the same or similar to English : Arm, Hand, Finger, Name, Schuh (shoe), Sport, Vater, Bruder, etc. If you can overlook the recent wars of the 20th Century and Hitler, it is the language of great composers and poets and inventors. It is a widely-spoken language with about 95 million speakers worldwide.
