GERMAN IN THE CIRCLE OF EUROPEAN LANGUAGES ( WITH THE EXCURSION INTO BROTHERS GRIMMS WORKS)

The paper aims to show the position of German among other Indo-European languages from the point of view of historical and typological linguistics. The German language which had enjoyed prestige in university education in Japan till the end of the war (1945) has seemingly lost popularity in recent years. This article tries to stress that German is still culturally and internationally an important language as it was in previous days. German is described here §1 as an Indo-European language, §2 as a Germanic language, and §3 as a European language. §1 and §2 are historical, and §3 is a typological treatment. German, although largely enriched by Latin and Greek (both founders of European culture), still retains conservative Germanic character, compared with English.