Low German - Poland's Linguistic Heritage

Graphic system

All of the graphic systems that were used to write down Low German dialects used on Polish lands, were a modified Latin alphabet (also the Gothic minuscule). Influences of standard High German, and of more standardized varieties of Low German from Western Germany can be observed. Furthermore, some of the dialects were preserved primarily in notes made by researchers. They used various graphic systems that were created on the basis of phonetic transcription, and rich in diacritics.

Illustration: Low German text printed in Gothic shrift (the text taken from: Shakespeare 1877: 39

Shakespeare 1877 / komentarz/comment/r /
Shakespeare, William 1877. De lostgen Wiewer von Windsor. Liegnitz: Nehring.

ISO Code

ISO 639-3: Low German - nds, Mennonites' Plautdietsch - pdt; Middle Low German (including the lingua franca variety of the Hanseatic League) - gml.
The Library of Congress MARC 21 standard - NDS.
ISO-639-2: nds.
SIL (14th ed. of The Ethnologue): sxn; presently The Ethnologue uses nds.

The Linguascale (classification developed by L’Observatoire Linguistique) uses several codes for the German varieties used in the past in the present territory of Poland:
- 52-ACB-cg (New-Marchian, Pomeranian from the region of Stettin/Szczecin),
- 52-ACB-ch (most of Pomerania and Prussia),
- 52-ACB-cia (the fragment of Prussia most to the east).
Moreover, the language varieties of the German diaspora:
- 52-ACB-hd (Plautdietsch of Mennonites),
- 52-ACB-hpa (the variety from Esprito Santo, Brazil).

Annotations, attachments, bibliography