german is rich in variation

i'd say, pound-for-pound, as in amount of geographical area a language covers with respect to how much flexuation (in lexicon, phonology, ...) how many varieties there are, german is incredibly strong. even just strictly speaking in respect to vowel flectuation, from northerly "standards" to swiss german to bavarian to high german, the whole feel of someone's voice can change from just some slight closing and/or rounding of a few common vowelss, say, /a/--> /œ/ and /e/ --> /I/. this cool map from 1898 is of the german and dutch dialects spread throughout north central europe. it's actually an enormous file, so if you wanna see it bigger, DO IT!