As the official language of the Federal Republic of Germany,
Austria, Liechtenstein, and portions of several other European
countries—and with linguistic enclaves in the Americas and
Africa—German is today the native tongue of close to 120 million
people. For advanced-degree programs in fields such as art
history, music history, philosophy, and European history, German
is still a required language. And whether the motivation for
study is business, culture, travel, friendship, or heritage, a
knowledge of German can add inestimable depth to a student’s
landscape of thought and feeling. Students should ideally plan
to study German for at least two years. First- and second-year
German aim to teach students how to communicate in German and
acquire grammatical competency through exercises that both
demand accuracy and encourage free expression. While conference
work in Beginning German consists of intensive grammar work with
the German assistant (both group and individual conferences),
intermediate-level students w