Why German is strange

Following up on comments to the previous post, some readers may be interested in the following list of the top ten rarest typological features of Northwestern European languages (on WALS), ordered from most to least unusual:

1. Polar Questions - coded through word order (Did he? He did.); very unusual outside Europe.
   
2. Uvular Consonants - continuants only (French/German/Dutch "r"); usually languages with uvulars have a uvular stop.
   
3. The Perfect - coded with a word meaning "have" (I have done it); unparalleled outside Europe.
   
4. Coding of Evidentiality - using a modal verb; unusual outside Europe
   
5. Demonstratives - no distance contrast (German); rare worldwide.
   
6. Negative Indefinite Pronouns - used without a predicate negator (I saw nothing, instead of I ain't seen nothing); very rare outside Europe.
   
7. Front Rounded Vowels - high and mid (ü, ö); unusual outside northern Eurasia
   
8. Relativization on Subjects - using a relative pronoun; most of the world's language use non-pronominal strategies.
   
9. Weight-Sensitive Stress - Right-oriented, antepenultimate involved; unusual.
   
10. Order of Object and Verb - alternates depending on clause type (German, Dutch); most languages keep this fixed irrespective of clause type.

This is from: Cysouw, Michael. 2011. Quantitative explorations of the world-wide distribution of rare characteristics, or: the exceptionality of northwestern European languages. In: Horst Simon & Heike Wiese (Eds.) Expecting the Unexpected. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. 411-431.

For a list of some linguistic features common in Europe more generally but rare outside it, see Haspelmath 2001 (summarised here.)