Low German
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 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, which is most closely related to Old Frisian and Old English.
The Low German dialects spoken in the Netherlands are mostly referred to as Low Saxon, those spoken in northwestern Germany as either Low German or Low Saxon, and those spoken in northeastern Germany mostly as Low German, not being part of Low Saxon. This is because northwestern Germany and the northeastern Netherlands were the area of settlement of the Saxons, while Low German spread to northeastern Germany through eastward migration of Low German speakers into areas with an originally Slavic-speaking population. This area is known as Germania Slavica, where the former Slavic influence is still visible in the names of settlements and physiogeographical features.
It has been estimated that Low German has approximately 2–5 million speakers in Germany, primarily Northern Germany, and 2.15 million in the Netherlands.
Geographical extent
Inside Europe
Germany
It has been estimated that Low German has approximately two to five million speakers in Germany, primarily in Northern Germany.Variants of Low German are spoken in most parts of Northern Germany, for instance in the states of Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, Hamburg, Bremen, Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Saxony-Anhalt, and Brandenburg. Small portions of northern Hesse and northern Thuringia are traditionally Low Saxon-speaking too. Historically, Low German was also spoken in formerly German parts of Poland, as well as in East Prussia and the Baltic provinces. The Baltic Germans spoke a distinct Low German dialect, which has influenced the vocabulary and phonetics of both Estonian and Latvian. The historical sprachraum of Low German also included contemporary northern Poland, East Prussia, a part of western Lithuania, and the German communities in Estonia and Latvia, most notably their Hanseatic cities. German speakers in this area fled the Red Army or were forcibly expelled after the border changes at the end of World War II.
The language was also formerly spoken in the outer areas of what is now the city-state of Berlin, but in the course of urbanisation and national centralisation in that city, the language has vanished.
Today, there are still speakers outside Germany to be found in the coastal areas of present-day Poland. In the Southern Jutland region of Denmark there may still be some Low German speakers in some German minority communities, but the Low German dialects of Denmark can be considered moribund at this time.
File:Ls-dialects.jpg|thumb|center|650px|Low German-speaking area before the expulsion of almost all Low German- and German-speakers from east of the Oder–Neisse line in 1945. Low German-speaking provinces of Germany east of the Oder, before 1945, were Pomerania with its capital Stettin, where east of the Oder East Pomeranian dialects were spoken, and East Prussia with its capital Königsberg, where Low Prussian dialects were spoken. Danzig was also a Low German-speaking city before 1945, and its former dialect Danzig German is also classified as Low Prussian.
The Netherlands
Dialects of Low German are spoken in the northeastern area of the Netherlands by approximately 1.6 million speakers. These dialects are written with an unstandardized orthography based on Standard Dutch orthography. The position of the language is, according to UNESCO, vulnerable. Between 1995 and 2011 the numbers of parent speakers dropped from 34% in 1995 to 15% in 2011. Numbers of child speakers dropped from 8% to 2% in the same period. According to a 2005 study 53% speak Low Saxon or Low Saxon and Dutch at home and 71% could speak it in the researched area. The total number of speakers is estimated at 1.7 million speakers. There are speakers in the Dutch north and eastern provinces of Groningen, Drenthe, Stellingwerf, Overijssel, Gelderland, Utrecht and Flevoland, in several dialect groups per province.Outside Europe and the Mennonites
There are also immigrant communities where Low German is spoken in the Western hemisphere, including Canada, the United States, Mexico, Belize, Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. In some of these countries, the language is part of the Mennonite religion and culture. There are Mennonite communities in Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Kansas and Minnesota which use Low German in their religious services and communities. These Mennonites are descended from primarily Dutch settlers that had initially settled in the Vistula delta region of Prussia in the 16th and 17th centuries before moving to newly acquired Russian territories in Ukraine in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and then to the Americas in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The types of Low German spoken in these communities and in the Midwest region of the United States have diverged since emigration. The survival of the language is tenuous in many places, and has died out in many places where assimilation has occurred. Members and friends of the Historical Society of North German Settlements in western New York, a community of Lutherans who trace their immigration from Pomerania in the 1840s, hold quarterly "Plattdeutsch lunch" events, where remaining speakers of the language gather to share and preserve the dialect. Mennonite colonies in Paraguay, Belize, and Chihuahua, Mexico, have made Low German a "co-official language" of the community.File:ColegioWitmarsumPR.JPG|thumb|A public school in Witmarsum Colony teaches in the Portuguese language and in Plautdietsch.
East Pomeranian is also spoken in parts of southern and southeastern Brazil, in the latter especially in the state of Espírito Santo, being official in five municipalities, and spoken among its ethnically European migrants elsewhere, primarily in the states of Rio de Janeiro and Rondônia. East Pomeranian-speaking regions of Southern Brazil are often assimilated into the general German Brazilian population and culture, for example celebrating the Oktoberfest, and there can even be a language shift from it to Riograndenser Hunsrückisch in some areas. In Espírito Santo, nevertheless, Pomeranian Brazilians are more often proud of their language, and particular religious traditions and culture, and not uncommonly inheriting the nationalism of their ancestors, being more likely to accept marriages of its members with Brazilians of origins other than a Germanic Central European one than to assimilate with Brazilians of Swiss, Austrian, Czech, and non-East Pomeranian-speaking German and Prussian heritage – that were much more numerous immigrants to both Brazilian regions, by themselves less numerous than the Italian ones.
| Speakers of low German outside Europe |
Nomenclature
The language grouping of Low German is referred to, in the language itself as well as in its umbrella languages of German and Dutch, in several different ways, ranging from official names such as Niederdeutsch and Nederduits to more general characterisations such as "dialect". The proliferation of names or characterisations is due in part to the grouping stretching mainly across two different countries and to it being a collection of varieties rather than a standardised language.There are different uses of the term "Low German":
- A specific name of any West Germanic varieties that neither have taken part in the High German consonant shift nor classify as Low Franconian or Anglo-Frisian; this is the scope discussed in this article.
- A broader term for the closely related, continental West Germanic languages unaffected by the High German consonant shift, nor classifying as Anglo-Frisian, and thus including Low Franconian varieties.
Officially, Low German is called niederdeutsche Sprache or plattdeutsche Sprache, Niederdeutsch or Plattdeutsch in High German by the German authorities, nedderdüütsche Spraak, Nedderdüütsch or Plattdüütsch in Low German by the German authorities and Nedersaksisch by the Dutch authorities. Plattdeutsch, Niederdeutsch and Platduits, Nedersaksisch are seen in linguistic texts from the German and Dutch linguistic communities respectively.
In Danish it is called plattysk, nedertysk or, rarely, lavtysk. Mennonite Low German is called Plautdietsch language.
"Low" refers to the flat plains and coastal area of the northern European lowlands, contrasted with the mountainous areas of central and southern Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, where High German is spoken.
The colloquial term Platt denotes both Low German dialects and any non-standard Western variety of German; this use is chiefly found in northern and western Germany and is not considered to be linguistically correct.
The ISO 639-2 language code for Low German has been nds since May 2000.