German is a West Germanic language mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the 11th most widely spoken language in the world, with about 1.4% of the population being German-speaking. German forms part of the West Germanic languages and shares similarities with English. However, there are also some differences in word meanings between the two languages. German has a tendency to combine words to form new compound words and has a reputation for coining very specific terms to describe concepts. All nouns in the German language are capitalized.