Middle Low German
| Middle Low German | |
|---|---|
| Niederdeutsch | |
| Pronunciation | ˈniːdɐˌdɔʏtʃ |
| Spoken in | Southern Baltic littoral, south-eastern North Sea littoral |
| Language extinction | Became extinct, evolving into Modern Low German and being replaced by High German Standard German |
| Language family | Indo-European
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| Writing system | Latin alphabet (Fraktur variant) |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | gml – Low German (generic) |
| Linguasphere | 52-ACB-ca |
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Middle Low German (ISO 639-3 code gml) is a language that is the descendant of Old Saxon and is the ancestor of modern Low German. It served as the international lingua franca of the Hanseatic League. It was spoken from about 1100 to 1600.
[edit] Related languages
Its neighbour languages in the dialect continuum of the West Germanic languages were Middle Dutch to the west and Middle High German to the south, which was later replaced by Early Modern High German.
Middle Low German provided a large number of loanwords to the Nordic languages as a result of the activities of Hanseatic traders. It is considered the largest single source of loanwords in the continental Scandinavian languages and Estonian.
[edit] History
Middle Low German 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.
Traces of the importance of Middle Low German can be seen by the many loanwords found in the Scandinavian, Finnic, and Baltic languages, as well as standard German and English.
In the late Middle Ages, Middle Low German lost its prestige to Early Modern High German, which was first used by elites as a written and, later, a spoken language. Reasons for this loss of prestige include the decline of the Hanseatic League, followed by political heteronomy of Northern Germany and the cultural predominance of Middle and Southern Germany during the Protestant Reformation and Luther's German translation of the Bible.
[edit] Literature
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