German
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This page offers basic guidance on typesetting a LaTeX document in the German language using the Latin script.
Please, bear in mind the ‘traditional’ styles for German based on ‘ldf’
files don’t currently conform the babel naming
conventions. Oddly, the name german refers to the
pre-1996 orthography, while the current one is selected with ngerman
(n comes from ‘new’, which was certainly the case about 30 years
ago). Also, the Unicode CLDR calls swisshighgerman the locale with
tag de-CH, because swissgerman is another
language (with tag gsw). To summarize:
| Unicode CLDR | ldf | ini |
|---|---|---|
| German | ngerman |
german |
| German (Traditional German orthography) | german |
german-traditional |
| Austrian | naustrian |
austrian |
| Austrian (Traditional German orthography) | naustrian |
austrian-traditional |
| Swiss High German | nswissgerman |
swisshighgerman |
Support with the traditional way (ldf)
The German language is supported in babel in the ‘classical’ way
based on a ldf file. See
babel-german for further details.
Support with ini locale file
Here is a minimal sample file with german as the main language
(assuming luatex, which is the recommended engine).
\documentclass[german]{article}
\usepackage[provide=*]{babel}
\begin{document}
Local name $=$ Deutsch
Chapter $=$ \chaptername
Today $=$ \today
\end{document}
Long s (ſ)
The transform longs.unifraktur implements the basic heuristic
rules for the long s (ſ) from those in Unifraktur
Maguntia (which are also used in
Yannis Fraktur Regular), excluding a
large set specific to this font. An example follows (from Einstein).
The font has been picked somewhat
randomly. See What’s new in babel
25.5
for further details.
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[german]{babel}
\babelprovide[transforms=longs.unifraktur]{german}
\babelfont{rm}{Kabinett-Fraktur}
\begin{document}
Das Schönste, was wir erleben können, ist das Geheimnisvolle. Es ist
das Grundgefühl, das an der Wiege von wahrer Kunst und Wissenschaft
steht. Wer es nicht kennt und sich nicht wundern, nicht mehr staunen
kann, der ist sozusagen tot und sein Auge erloschen.
\end{document}
Contribute
If you are a native speaker or have expertise in this language, you can contribute, make suggestion or request an enhancement by submitting a pull request, opening an issue, or contacting the Babel maintainer with the link above.