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| | MSN Encarta - German Language |
 | | German is an inflected language, with three genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter), four cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative), and a strong and weak declension of qualifying adjectives. |
 | | Another characteristic of German, as well as of all the Germanic languages, is that the principal accent falls regularly upon the first syllable of a word; in verbal combinations, however, the root syllable, not the prefix, is stressed. |
 | | The diversity of the German dialects (some of which are so diverse they are indeed languages) means that German speakers are often bilingual in their local dialect and Standard German, which acts as a lingua franca. |
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