Low German

Low Saxon (also called Plattdeutsch, Plattdüütsch or Low German) is a name for the regional language varieties of the Low Saxon-Low Franconian languages spoken mainly in northern Germany, and eastern Netherlands. Also, there are some speakers in the coastal areas of Poland, and immigrant communities in several places of the world, for instance in Canada. In the Southern Jutland region of Denmark there may still be some Low German speakers in some German minority communities, but the Low German and North Frisian dialects of Denmark ought to be considered moribund, if not extinct, at this time.

The ISO 639-2 language code for Low German is nds since May 2000.

Disambiguation

There are three different uses of the term “Low German”:

A specific name of any West Germanic varieties that have neither 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 entire West Germanic language family unaffected by the High German consonant shift, thus including Low Franconian varieties such as Dutch; for this use, see Low Saxon-Low Franconian languages.
A non-specific term for any non-standard variety of German; this use is only found in Germany and is considered not to be linguistic.

Many people in Northern Germany are unaware that Low German does not abruptly stop at the German-Dutch border but continues on into the Eastern Netherlands. Among those who are aware of it, a measure of estrangement (especially Dutch versus German influences and Dutch versus German based spelling), besides alleged sensitivities remaining from the German occupation in World War II, is often used as an argument in favor of ignoring the dialects of the Netherlands. The general attitude among Low German speakers in the Netherlands, however, is that the Dutch Low Saxon varieties belong to a continuum with the Low German varieties of Northern Germany, many Low German speakers in the Netherlands are willing and happy to participate in activities organized on the German side of the border, and Dutchmen have won prizes in Low German literature contests in Germany.

Official status

Since 1999, Low German has been recognised by Germany as a regional language according to the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.

Low German is not standardized. In Germany, however, Northern Low Saxon serves as a common intelligible language in TV and Wireless programmes.

Classification and related languages

Low German is a part of the West Germanic dialect continuum.

To the West, it fades to the Low Franconian languages which distinguish two plural verbal endings, opposed to a common verbal plural ending in Low German.

To the South, it fades to the High German dialects of Central German that have been affected by the High German consonant shift. The division is usually drawn at the Benrath line that traces the maken – machen isogloss.

To the East, it is neighboured by the Kashubian language (the only remnant of the Pomeranian language) and, since increased Polonization of Pomerania, also by the Polish language.

To the North and Northwest, it is neighboured by the Danish language and by the Frisian language. Note that in Germany, Low German has replaced the Frisian in many regions. The Saterland Frisian is the only remnant of East Frisian language and is, outside East Frisia surrounded by Low German, as are the few remaining North Frisian varieties, and the Low German dialects of those regions have Frisian influences on account of Frisian substrates.

Some classify the northern dialects of Low German together with English, Scots and Frisian as the North Sea Germanic or Ingvaeonic languages. However, most exclude Low German from that group often called Anglo-Frisian languages because some distinctive features of that group of languages are only partially observed in Low German, for instance the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law (some dialects have us, os for ‘us’ whereas others have uns, ons), and because other distinctive features do not occur in Low German at all, for instance the palatalization of /k/ (compare palatalized forms such as English cheese, Frisian tsiis to non-palatalized forms such as Low German Kees or Kaise, Dutch kaas, German Käse).

Varieties of Low German

In Germany

West Low Saxon
East Low Saxon
- Mecklenburgisch-Pommersch
- Brandenburgisch
- East Pomeranian
- Low Prussian
- Plautdietsch (Mennonite Low Saxon, used also in many other countries)

In the Netherlands

The Dutch Low Saxon varieties, which are also defined as Dutch dialects, consist of:

Elsewhere

There are several Low-German-speaking communities outside Europe. Mennonite communities use their Plautdietsch everywhere they live, especially in Russia, Ukraine, Central Asia, Germany and the Americas. Furthermore, there are communities in the Midwest of the United States, some of them with their own dialects that developed from dialects imported from Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony in the 19th century. There may be some remaining speakers or speaker communities in Northern Poland and in Southern Denmark, where the Low German language is at best moribund.

History

Old Saxon

Old Saxon, also known as Old Low German, is a West Germanic language. It is documented from the 9th century until the 12th century, when it evolved into Middle Saxon. It was spoken on the north-west coast of Germany and in Denmark by Saxon peoples. It is closely related to Old Anglo-Frisian (Old Frisian, Old English), partially participating in the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law.

Only a few texts survive, predominantly in baptismal vows the Saxons were required to perform at the behest of Charlemagne. The only literary text preserved is Heliand.

Middle Saxon

The Middle Saxon language is an ancestor of the modern Low Saxon. It was spoken from about 1100 to 1500, splitting into West Low Saxon and East Low Saxon. The neighbour languages within the dialect continuum of the West Germanic languages were Middle Dutch in the West and Middle High German in the South, later substituted by Early New High German. Middle Saxon was the lingua franca of the Hanseatic League, spoken all around the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. Based on the language of Lübeck, a standardized written language was developing, though it was never codified.

Contemporary

After mass education in Germany in the 19th and 20th century the slow decline which the Low Saxon was experiencing since the end of the Hanseatic league turned into a free fall. Today efforts are made in Germany to protect the Low Saxon as a regional language, nowadays various Low Saxon dialects are understood by 10 million people, and native to about 3 million people all around northern Germany, most of these speakers are located in rural villages and are often senior citizens.

Sound Change

Low German has commonality with the English language, the Scandinavian languages and Frisian in that it has not been influenced by the High German consonant shift except for old having shifted to /d/. Therefore a lot of Low German words sound similar to their English counterparts.

For instance: water , later , bit , dish , ship , pull , good , clock , sail , he , storm , wind , grass , hold , old .

The table below shows the relationship between English and Low German consonants which were unaffected by the High German consonant shift and gives the modern German counterparts, which were affected by the sound shift.

Low Saxon-Low Franconian	High German	Low German	Dutch	English	German
k	ch	maken	maken	to make	machen
k	kch	Kcharl	Karl	Charles	Karl
d	t	Dag	dag	day	Tag
t	ss	eten	eten	eat	essen
t	z (/ts/)	teihn	tien	ten	zehn
t	tz, z (/ts/)	sitten	zitten	sit	sitzen
p	f, ff	Schipp	schip	ship	Schiff
p	pf	Peper	peper	pepper	Pfeffer
v, w, f (/v/)	b	Wief, Wiewer	wijf, wijven ¹	wife, wives	Weib, Weiber ²

¹ The correct translation for "wife" in Dutch is "vrouw", using wijf against a human is considered derogative, and comparable to "bitch.

² The correct translation for "wife" in German is "Ehefrau" or "Frau"; using "Weib" against a human is considered archaic and derogative.

Grammar

Generally speaking, Low German grammar shows similarities with the grammars of Dutch, Frisian, English and Scots, but the dialects of Northern Germany share some features (especially lexical and syntactic features) with German dialects.

Nouns

Low German declension has only three morphologically marked noun cases, where accusative and dative together constitute an objective case.

Example case marking: *Boom* (tree), *Bloom* (flower), *Land* (land)
	Masculine		Feminine		Neuter
	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
Nominative	een Boom, de Boom	Bööm, de Bööm	een Bloom, de Bloom	Blomen, de Blomen	een Land, dat Land	Lannen, de Lannen
Genitive	vun een/den Boom, den Boom sien	vun (de) Bööm, (de) Bööm ehr	vun een/de Bloom, de Bloom ehr	vun (de) Blomen, (de) Blomen ehr	vun (dat) Land, (dat) Land sien	vun (de) Lannen, (de) Lannen ehr
Objective	een Boom, den Boom	Bööm, de Bööm	een Bloom, de Bloom	Blomen, de Blomen	een Land, dat Land	Lannen, de Lannen

In most modern dialects, marking differences are minimal between the nominative case and the objective case, and it tends to affect only masculine nouns in the singular.Thus case marking in Low German is simpler than in German.

Verbs

In Low German verbs are conjugated for person, number and tense. Verb conjugation for person is only differentiated in the singular. There are five tenses in Low German: Present tense, Preterite, Perfect, Past Perfect, and Future.

Example verb conjugation: slapen - to sleep
	Present		Preterite		Perfect
	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
1st Person	ich slaap	wi slaapt/slapen	ik sleep	wi slepen	ik hebb slapen	wi hebbt/hebben slapen
2nd Person	du slöppst	ji slaapt/slapen	du sleepst	ji slepen	du hest slapen	ji hebbt/hebben slapen
3rd Person	he, se, dat slöppt	se slaapt/slapen	he, se, dat sleep	se slepen	he, se, dat hett slapen	se hebbt/hebben slapen

Unlike Dutch, German and southern Low German, the northern dialects form the participle without the prefix ge-, like the Scandinavian languages and English. Compare to the German past participle geschlafen. This past participle is formed with the auxiliary verb hebben 'to have'. It should be noted that e- is used instead of ge- in most Southern (below Groningen in the Netherlands) dialects, though often not when the past participle ends with -en or in a few often used words like west (been).

The reason for the two conjugations shown in the plural is regional: dialects in the central area use -t while the dialects in East Frisia and the dialects in Mecklenberg and further east use -en. The -en suffix is of Dutch influence.

Syntax

The syntax on the other hand is more like German syntax, though there are some differences.

Writing system

Low German is written using the Latin alphabet. There is no true standard orthography, only several locally more or less accepted orthographic guidelines, those in the Netherlands mostly based on Dutch orthography, and those in Germany mostly based on German orthography. This diversity—being the result of centuries of official neglect and suppression—has a very fragmenting and thus weakening effect on the language as a whole, since it has created barriers that do not exist on the spoken level. Interregional and international communication is severely hampered by this. Having been created by persons with little or no phonological understanding, most of these systems aim at representing the phonetic (allophonic) output rather than underlying (phonemic) representations, thus call for superfluous and confusing detail. Furthermore, many writers follow guidelines only roughly. This adds numerous idiosyncratic and often inconsistent ways of spelling to the already existing great orthographic diversity.

Trivia

The Low German (specifically german Platt) greeting formula Moin and its duplication MoinMoin gave the name for the WikiWiki MoinMoin Project http://moin.sourceforge.net/

There are plans to create a computer vocabulary for Low German in order to translate Desktop environments such as KDE and GNOME. ^*

Resources

There is a lot of information about Low German to be found online. A selection of these links can be found on this page, which will provide a good frame work to understand the history, current situation and features of the language.

Information:

What is Low Saxon? An introduction article to Low German;
Ethnologue report for Low Saxon (kind of unprecise, but Ethnologue are not planning an update any time soon)
List of links, provided by the Lowlands List;
Streektaal.net, information in and about various Low German dialects;
Nu is de Welt platt! All known resources in and about Low German;
Niederdeutsch/Plattdeutsch in Westfalen, by Olaf Bordasch;
Mönsterlänner Plat, by Klaus-Werner Kahl;
Tizárrio's Veluywse websyde, by Tizáriio Ilaino;
Plattdeutsch heute, by

Organizations:

Van Deinse Instituut (Twente, the Netherlands)
IJsselacademie (Overijssel and Veluwe, the Netherlands)
Staring Instituut (Achterhoek, the Netherlands)
Oostfreeske Taal (Eastern Friesland, Germany)
Drentse Taol (Drenthe, the Netherlands)
Stichting Stellingwarver Schrieversronte (Friesland, the Netherlands)
SONT (General, the Netherlands)
Institut für niederdeutsche Sprache e.V. (General, Germany)

If your organisation isn't listed here, feel free to add it.

Writers:

Gertrud Everding (Northern Low Saxon - Hamburg, Germany)
Marlou Lessing (Northern Low Saxon - Hamburg, Germany)
Clara Kramer-Freudenthal (Northern Low Saxon - Norderstedt, Germany)
Johan Veenstra (Stellingwarfs - Friesland, the Netherlands)

Musicians:

Skik (Drents/Dutch - Drenthe, the Netherlands)
Jan Cornelius (East Frisian - Ostfriesland, Germany)
Törf (Gronings - Groningen, the Netherlands)
Eltje Doddema (Veenkoloniaals - Groningen, the Netherlands)
Boh foi toch (Achterhoeks - Gelderland, the Netherlands)

Unorganized links:

http://www.plattmaster.de/
http://www.platt-online.de/
http://www.zfn-ratzeburg.de/
http://www.radiobremen.de/nachrichten/platt/

Low Saxon

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