Johannes Sass (also in German: Saß) born in Hamburg, died ) was a

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

who specialized in the Low German language. He obtained his

doctorate A doctorate (from Latin ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism ''li ...

in 1926 from the

University of Hamburg The University of Hamburg (german: link=no, Universität Hamburg, also referred to as UHH) is a public research university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by combining the previous General Lecture System ('' Allgemeines Vo ...

Significance in Low German

Although Low German has no official written form, Sass's dictionary of the language holds a similar authoritative place for the language that the

Duden The Duden () is a dictionary of the Standard High German language, first published by Konrad Duden in 1880, and later by Bibliographisches Institut GmbH. The Duden is updated regularly with new editions appearing every four or five years. , ...

dictionary does for the Standard High German language. The diverse writing systems for Low German caused Sass to develop his spelling rules which he published in 1935. In 1956 this led to the Fehrs-Gilde, an organization promoting the Low German language, producing the 'Rules for Low German spelling', which mainly followed the example of the

orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and ...

laid down by Sass. The Johannes-Saß-Preis (Johannes Sass Prize) for scientific works about Low German is named after Sass. {{DEFAULTSORT:Sass, Johannes Low German Linguists from Germany 1889 births 1971 deaths German lexicographers 20th-century linguists 20th-century lexicographers University of Hamburg alumni