Question about learning German...?

German is "German" right...? What I mean by this is German in Germany is the same as German in Belgium, Austria, etc...?

I ask because I was taking Arabic, and throughout the course, we were told that standard Arabic was understandable throughout the Middle East, but recently a friend of mine who is a native Speaker of Arabic (from Egypt) says that although that is somewhat true, for the most part it isn't... He was telling me how all the different regions of the Middle East have different dialects of Arabic and some places are so different it is almost an entirely different language...

Well I don't feel like taking 6 levels of Arabic and learning Standard Arabic if it will be completely useless to me, and I have always been interested in German... So I am planning on starting that instead...

Just curious if German is "German" everywhere it is spoken or what..? If there are different dialects depending on region, are they small differences between one dialect and the other (like British English and American English) where the words are the same just pronounced differently or something..? Or major like in Arabic where it was so different in some cases that words would have entirely different meanings...?

Thanks

I think you may be concerned with different dialects. The language is the same.

I learn German by watching clips from Downfall with subtitles on youtube.dramaybaz

Funny, I learned Japanese doing the same thing with Letters From Iwo Jima...

[QUOTE="dramaybaz"]I learn German by watching clips from Downfall with subtitles on youtube.heysharpshooter

Funny, I learned Japanese doing the same thing with Letters From Iwo Jima...

Yeh, they are a good way to learn.

From what I know, nobody learns "Austrian", e.g.

Austrians use some different words than Germans, but that's usually only when spoken or interchangeable with the standard German word.

You learn Hochdeutsch, standard German, and that's it. Nobody learns the different dialects or some unimportant swiss/austrian special words.

Also, to the poster above me (EDIT: MAILER_DAEMON), the Swiss and Austrians write/read in standard Hochdeutsch for everything official/concerning education, only some special words or usage of words is used. Irrelevant to you at the moment. You might want to learn that the German double S ("ss" for some uses, looking similar to a "B"), e.g., isn't usually used in switzerland.

I learn languages by having people teaching me.

German should be German. Switzerland and Austria may have some different words here and there, but German is still the official language.

Also last time i looked Belgium spoke French not German.markop2003

What the others said basically. It's the same language, but even within Germany there's a great variation of dialects and accents. You're better off learning standardised German than for example Austrian or Swiss German. Especially the latter sounds very... awkward.