Contemporary playing cards are grouped into three broad categories based on the suits they use: French, Latin, and Germanic. Latin suits are used in the closely related Spanish and Italian formats.
The Swiss-German suits are distinct enough to merit their subcategory.
Excluding jokers and tarot trumps, the French 52-card deck preserves the number of cards in the original Mamluk deck, while Latin and Germanic decks average fewer.
Latin decks usually drop the higher-valued pip cards, while Germanic decks drop the lower-valued ones.