Low Saxon Languages
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Low Saxon Languages
Low German is a West Germanic language spoken mainly in Northern Germany and the northeastern Netherlands. The dialect of Plautdietsch is also spoken in the Russian Mennonite diaspora worldwide. "Low" refers to the altitude of the areas where it is typically spoken. Low German is most closely related to Frisian and English, with which it forms the North Sea Germanic group of the West Germanic languages. Like Dutch, it has historically been spoken north of the Benrath and Uerdingen isoglosses, while forms of High German (of which Standard German is a standardized example) have historically been spoken south of those lines. Like Frisian, English, Dutch and the North Germanic languages, Low German has not undergone the High German consonant shift, as opposed to Standard High German, which is based on High German dialects. Low German evolved from Old Saxon (Old Low German), which is most closely related to Old Frisian and Old English (Anglo-Saxon). The Low German dialects ...
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Northern Germany
Northern Germany (, ) is a linguistic, geographic, socio-cultural and historic region in the northern part of Germany which includes the coastal states of Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Lower Saxony and the two city-states Hamburg and Bremen. It contrasts with Southern Germany, Western Germany, and Eastern Germany. Language Northern Germany generally refers to the ''Sprachraum'' area north of the Uerdingen line, Uerdingen and Benrath line isoglosses, where Low German dialects are spoken. These comprise the West Low German, Low Saxon dialects in the west (including the Westphalian language area up to the Rhineland), the East Low German region along the Baltic Sea, Baltic coast with Western Pomerania, the Altmark and northern Brandenburg, as well as the North Low German dialects. Although from the 19th century onwards, the use of Standard German was strongly promoted especially by the Kingdom of Prussia, Prussian administration, Low German dialects are still prese ...
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Schleswig-Holstein
Schleswig-Holstein (; ; ; ; ; occasionally in English ''Sleswick-Holsatia'') is the Northern Germany, northernmost of the 16 states of Germany, comprising most of the historical Duchy of Holstein and the southern part of the former Duchy of Schleswig. Its capital city is Kiel; other notable cities are Lübeck and Flensburg. It covers an area of , making it the 5th smallest German federal state by area (including the city-states). Historically, the name can also refer to a larger region, containing both present-day Schleswig-Holstein and the former South Jutland County (Northern Schleswig; now part of the Region of Southern Denmark) in Denmark. Schleswig, named South Jutland at the time, was under Danish control during the Viking Age, but in the 12th century it became a duchy within Denmark due to infighting in the Danish Royal House. It bordered Holstein, which was a part of the Holy Roman Empire. Beginning in 1460, the King of Denmark ruled both Schleswig and Holstein as the ...
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Danish Language
Danish (, ; , ) is a North Germanic languages, North Germanic language from the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family spoken by about six million people, principally in and around Denmark. Communities of Danish speakers are also found in Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and the northern Germany, German region of Southern Schleswig, where it has minority language status. Minor Danish-speaking communities are also found in Norway, Sweden, the United States, Canada, Brazil, and Argentina. Along with the other North Germanic languages, Danish is a descendant of Old Norse, the common language of the Germanic peoples who lived in Scandinavia during the Viking Age, Viking Era. Danish, together with Swedish, derives from the ''East Norse'' dialect group, while the Middle Norwegian language (before the influence of Danish) and Bokmål, Norwegian Bokmål are classified as ''West Norse'' along with Faroese language, Faroese and Icelandic language, Icelandic. A more recent c ...
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Dutch Language
Dutch ( ) is a West Germanic languages, West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, spoken by about 25 million people as a first language and 5 million as a second language and is the List of languages by total number of speakers, third most spoken Germanic language. In Europe, Dutch is the native language of most of the population of the Netherlands and Flanders (which includes 60% of the population of Belgium). "1% of the EU population claims to speak Dutch well enough in order to have a conversation." (page 153). Dutch was one of the official languages of South Africa until 1925, when it was replaced by Afrikaans, a separate but partially Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible daughter language of Dutch. Afrikaans, depending on the definition used, may be considered a sister language, spoken, to some degree, by at least 16 million people, mainly in South Africa and Namibia, and evolving from Cape Dutch dialects. In South America, Dutch is the native l ...
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High German Languages
The High German languages (, i.e. ''High German dialects''), or simply High German ( ) – not to be confused with Standard High German which is commonly also called "High German" – comprise the varieties of German spoken south of the Benrath and Uerdingen isoglosses, i.e., in central and southern Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Luxembourg, and eastern Belgium, as well as in neighbouring portions of France (Alsace and northern Lorraine), Italy (South Tyrol), the Czech Republic (Bohemia), and Poland ( Upper Silesia). They are also spoken in diasporas in Romania, Russia, Canada, the United States, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Chile, and Namibia. High German is marked by the High German consonant shift, separating it from Low German (Low Saxon) and Low Franconian (including Dutch) within the continental West Germanic dialect continuum. "Low" and "high" refer to the lowland and highland geographies typically found in the two areas. Classification As a technica ...
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Standard German
Standard High German (SHG), less precisely Standard German or High German (, , or, in Switzerland, ), is the umbrella term for the standard language, standardized varieties of the German language, which are used in formal contexts and for communication between different dialect areas. German is a Pluricentric language, pluricentric Abstand and ausbau languages#Roofing, Dachsprache with currently three codified (or standardised) specific national varieties: German Standard German, Austrian German#Standard Austrian German, Austrian Standard German and Swiss Standard German. Regarding the spelling and punctuation, a recommended standard is published by the Council for German Orthography which represents the governments of all majority and minority German-speaking countries and dependencies. Adherence is obligatory for government institutions, including schools. Although there is no official standards body regulating pronunciation, there is a long-standing ''de facto'' standard pronu ...
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Dutch Low Saxon
Dutch Low Saxon ( or ''Nederlaands Nedersaksies''; ) are Low Saxon dialects from the Low German language that are spoken in the northeastern Netherlands and are mostly, but not exclusively, written with local, unstandardised orthographies based on Standard Dutch orthography. The UNESCO Atlas of endangered languages lists the language as vulnerable. The percentage of speakers among parents dropped from 34% in 1995 to 15% in 2011. The percentage of speakers among their children dropped from 8% to 2% in the same period. According to a 2005 study 53% indicated to speak Low Saxon or Low Saxon and Dutch at home and 71% they could speak Low Saxon in the researched area, accounting for a total of 1.6 million speakers at home and 2.15 million total, ranging from "reasonably" to "very well" in terms of proficiency. The Netherlands recognizes Dutch Low Saxon as a regional language under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Classification The classification of Dutch ...
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East Low German
East Low German () is a group of Low German dialects spoken in north-eastern Germany as well as by minorities in northern Poland. Together with West Low German dialects, it forms a dialect continuum of the Low German language. Before 1945, the dialect was spoken along the entire then-German-settled Baltic Coast from Mecklenburg, through Pomerania, West Prussia into certain villages of the East Prussian Klaipėda Region. East Pomeranian, Central Pomeranian and West Pomeranian should not be confused with the West Slavic Pomeranian language (). Related languages East Low German belongs to the dialect continuum of the West Germanic languages. It developed from the older Middle Low German. In the West it fades into West Low German. The distinction is usually made referring to the plural endings of the verbs: East Low German endings are based on the old first person ending: -e(n), whereas West Low German endings are based on the old second person ending: -(e)t. The categorizat ...
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Low Saxon
Low Saxon (), also known as West Low German () are a group of Low German dialects spoken in parts of the Netherlands, northwestern Germany and southern Denmark (in North Schleswig by parts of the German-speaking minority). It is one of two dialect groups, the other being East Low German. Extent The language area comprises the North German states of Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia (the Westphalian part), Bremen, Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein and Saxony-Anhalt (the northwestern areas around Magdeburg) as well as the northeast of the Netherlands (i.e. Dutch Low Saxon, spoken in Groningen, Drenthe, Overijssel, northern Gelderland and Urk) and the Schleswigsch dialect spoken by the North Schleswig Germans in the southernmost part of Denmark. In the south the Benrath line and Uerdingen line isoglosses form the border with the area, where West Central German variants of High German are spoken. List of dialects Germany *West Low German ** Westphalian, including the region a ...
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Middle Low German
Middle Low German is a developmental stage of Low German. It developed from the Old Saxon language in the Middle Ages and has been documented in writing since about 1225–34 (). During the Hanseatic period (from about 1300 to about 1600), Middle Low German was the leading written language in the north of Central Europe and served as a lingua franca in the northern half of Europe. It was used parallel to medieval Latin also for purposes of diplomacy and for deeds. Terminology While ''Middle Low German'' (MLG) is a scholarly term developed in hindsight, speakers in their time referred to the language mainly as (Saxon) or (the Saxon language). In contrast to Latin as the primary written language, speakers also referred to discourse in Saxon as speaking/writing , i.e. 'clearly, intelligibly'. This contains the same root as 'German' (cf., High German: , Dutch ( archaically ''N(i)ederduytsche'' to mean the contemporary version of the Dutch language) both from Proto-Germanic ...
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Old Saxon
Old Saxon (), also known as Old Low German (), was a Germanic language and the earliest recorded form of Low German (spoken nowadays in Northern Germany, the northeastern Netherlands, southern Denmark, the Americas and parts of Eastern Europe). It is a West Germanic language, closely related to the Anglo-Frisian languages. It is documented from the 8th century until the 12th century, when it gradually evolved into Middle Low German. It was spoken throughout modern northwestern Germany, primarily in the coastal regions and in the eastern Netherlands by Saxons, a Germanic tribe that inhabited the region of Saxony. It partially shares Anglo-Frisian's ( Old Frisian, Old English) Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law which sets it apart from Low Franconian and Irminonic languages, such as Dutch, Luxembourgish and German. The grammar of Old Saxon was fully inflected with five grammatical cases ( nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, and instrumental), three grammati ...
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North Sea Germanic
North Sea Germanic, also known as Ingvaeonic ( ), is a subgrouping of West Germanic languages that consists of Old Frisian, Old English language, Old English, and Old Saxon, and their descendants. These languages share a number of commonalities, such as a single plural ending for all persons of the verb, the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law, common changes to the Germanic vowel ''*a'', a plural form ''-as'', and a number of other features which make scholars believe they form a distinct group within West Germanic. It is debated whether the shared features of North Sea Germanic are inherited from a common proto-language or formed via later contact and influence. Additionally, the membership of the group is sometimes debated. Some scholars exclude Low German for lacking a number of features associated with North Sea Germanic. Other scholars include Dutch for sharing some features with the group. Name The name Ingvaeonic derives from ancient Roman sources such as Tacitus, who describ ...
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