23 Facts About Low German

1.

Low German or Low Saxon is a West Germanic language variety spoken mainly in Northern Germany and the northeastern part of the Netherlands.

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2.

Low German is most closely related to Frisian and English, with which it forms the North Sea Germanic group of the West Germanic languages.

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3.

Low German evolved from Old Saxon, which is most closely related to Old Frisian and Old English .

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4.

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.

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5.

The historical Sprachraum of Low German included contemporary northern Poland, East Prussia, a part of western Lithuania, and the German communities in Estonia and Latvia, most notably their Hanseatic cities.

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6.

Dialects of Low German are spoken in the northeastern area of the Netherlands and are written there with an unstandardized orthography based on Standard Dutch orthography.

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7.

The types of Low German spoken in these communities and in the Midwest region of the United States have diverged since emigration.

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8.

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 Niederdeutsche and Nederduits to more general characterisations such as "dialect".

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9.

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

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10.

Low German varieties have a common verbal plural ending, whereas Low Franconian varieties have a different form for the second person plural.

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11.

Saterland Frisian is the only remnant of East Frisian language and is surrounded by Low German, as are the few remaining North Frisian varieties, and the Low German dialects of those regions have influences from Frisian substrates.

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12.

Question of whether today's Low German should be considered a separate language or a dialect of German or even Dutch has been a point of contention.

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13.

In contrast, Old Saxon and Middle Low German are generally considered separate languages in their own rights.

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14.

Low German has been recognized by the Netherlands and by Germany as a regional language according to the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.

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15.

Old Saxon, known as Old Low German, is a West Germanic language.

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16.

Middle Low German language is an ancestor of modern Low German.

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17.

Middle Low German was the lingua franca of the Hanseatic League, spoken all around the North Sea and the Baltic Sea.

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18.

On one hand, proponents of Low German advocated that since it had a strong cultural and historical value and was the native language of students in northern Germany, it had a place in the classroom.

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19.

Groth's publications demonstrated that Low German was a valuable language in its own right, and he was able to convince others that Low German was suitable for literary arts and was a national treasure worth keeping.

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20.

Various Low German dialects are understood by 10 million people, but many fewer are native speakers.

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21.

Open-source software has been translated into Low German; this used to be coordinated via a page on SourceForge, but as of 2015, the most active project is that of KDE.

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22.

Forms of Low German's adjectives are distinct from other closely related languages such as German and English.

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23.

In 2020, a group of Dutch and German Low German Wikipedians took Hahn's principles and used them to create the Nysassiske Skryvwyse, which is aimed to cover all dialects on both sides of the Dutch-German border.

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