Low German or Low Saxon (Plattdüütsch, Nedderdüütsch, Platduuts, Nedderduuts; Standard German: Plattdeutsch or Niederdeutsch; Dutch: Nederduits in the wider sense, see Nomenclature below) is an IngvaeonicWest Germanic language spoken mainly in northern Germany and the eastern part of the Netherlands. It is descended from Old Saxon in its earliest form.
Geographical extent
Low German in Europe
Dialects of Low German are widely spoken in the northeastern area of the Netherlands (Dutch Low Saxon) and are written there with an orthography based on Standard Dutch orthography.
Variants of Low German were widely (and are still to a far lesser extent) 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 States of Estonia and Latvia. 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 (the Berlin dialect itself is a northern outpost of High German). Under the name Low Saxon, there are speakers in the Dutch north-eastern provinces of Groningen, Drenthe, Stellingwerven (part of Friesland), Overijssel and Gelderland, in several dialect groups per province.
German (Deutsch [ˈdɔʏtʃ]) is a West Germanic language that derives most of its vocabulary from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family. A portion of German words are derived from Latin and Greek, and fewer are borrowed from French and English. Languages which are most similar to German include Afrikaans, Dutch, English, the Frisian languages, the continental Scandinavian languages and Luxembourgish. A Germanophone is a speaker of the German language either natively or by preference.
German is the most widely spoken (and official) language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Italian province of South Tyrol (Italian: Alto Adige) and Liechtenstein; it is also an official, but not majority language of Belgium and Luxembourg. With slightly different standardized variants (German, Austrian, and Swiss Standard German), German is a pluricentric language. German is also notable for its broad spectrum of dialects, with many unique varieties existing in Europe and also other parts of the world. Due to the limited intelligibility between certain varieties and Standard German, as well as the lack of an undisputed, scientific difference between a "dialect" and a "language", some German varieties or dialect groups (e.g. Low German/Plautdietsch) are alternatively referred to as "languages" and "dialects".
Low German is a large dialect group spoken mainly in Northern Germany and in Northeastern Netherlands.
Low German may also refer to: