Talk:Low German

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And now to something completely different. Ina Müller, German music comedian, writer and tv host who publishes/performs both in High German and her native language Low German, has published several books in Low German and, recently, a music album that is sung exclusively in Low German. Should one include her in the "writers" list? Should one add a "musicians" list? Here's a link to Ina Müller: http://www.inamueller.de/cm_standard_1.3.1/site/modules/index.php?area=platt -- 188.101.91.37 (talk) 08:41, 23 August 2010 (UTC) -- There IS a musicians' list. Sorry for being so inattentive. Should one add her? -- 188.101.91.37 (talk) 09:21, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

I'd say: go ahead. She's definitely the most relevant (relevance in the sense of popular demand) of the recent Low Saxon artists. --::Slomox:: >< 13:53, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

The Colloquial term Platt

"The colloquial term "Platt" denotes both Low German dialects and any non-standard variety of German; this use is chiefly found in northern and western Germany and is considered not to be linguistically correct.[3]"

I find this to be very troubling, as at least in the 5 northern Bundesländer where Platt (Low German proper) is still spoken and by most if not all considered a separate language, it solely and only refers to the "Low German language" and non other "variety of German". Even the local High German dialects which use a good bit of the Platt phonology and plattdütsch loan-words are not by any means considered Plattdütsch by the local people. On the other hand I'm not an Englishman and may simply misunderstand the wording. So if I am mistaken please fill me in but if not I'd ask to remove this bit or find a better reference, since the given seems to be based on a questionnaire where people who do not speak Low German proper any more - if ever (the areas being as south as Stuttgart, where Schwäbisch is the very single and dominant dialect and no Low German was ever spoken) - had to choose one of two options.193.174.122.76 (talk) 12:12, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree. Plattdeutsch is synonymous with Niederdeutsch - Low German. There will always be somebody who uses a term differently, but a variant usage here is not widespread enough to be mentioned; at present the wording suggests two meanings with equal status. This should be changed. --Doric Loon (talk) 13:18, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

"Plattdeutsch" may be sysnonymous with "Low German", but "Platt" on its own is not, and is applied to a number of Central German dialects - Hunsrücker Platt and Westerwälder Platt, for example, both of which are a long way south of the Benrath Line! I agree the current wording is misleading (Bayrisch is never Platt) and could do with clarification, but the point is not fundamentally wrong. I haven't got time to source this at the moment, by my hunch is that, apart from Low German proper, it's used only for the Rhine and Mosel Franconian dialects, i.e. West Central German. --Pfold (talk) 15:46, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

The Atlas zur Deutschen Alltagssprache map is correct, but it only provides a very limited view on the complex reality. It refers to situations like the questions Sprecht ihr zuhause Standarddeutsch? (Do you speak Standard German at home?) and the answer Nein, wir sprechen zuhause [...] (No, we speak [...] at home.) where the given answers for [...] were Dialekt, Mundart and Platt (the first two are synonyms both meaning dialect). Platt means something like our local tongue in the blue dot area on the map. In the western portion of this area along the Rhine and south of it the regular term is Platt (some people use the term Plattdeutsch interchangeable, but the much more common term is the short Platt). It really only denotes our local tongue and they usually do not connect an identity to it. In the north it's a bit different. The north calls it's language Plattdeutsch and Platt is a shorthand term. And the north is well aware that Plattdeutsch is an entity of its own connected with an identity.

It's hard to explain, because it deals with much implied semantics.

Perhaps the difference can be illustrated like this: If you ask a Plattdeutsch person from Münsterland whether people in Hamburg or in Mecklenburg or in Eastern Frisia speak Plattdeutsch he'll answer "Yes". Perhaps he'll add "but it's different from our Plattdeutsch", but he'll unhesitantly accept that it's "Plattdeutsch", that it's the same language. If you ask a person from Saarbrücken whether people in Cologne, Mainz or Aachen speak "Platt" he'll most likely say "No, they speak something else there". That's what I mean with identity.

The northerners are well aware, that "Plattdeutsch" is spoken in a wide area that reaches far beyond the own home while the westerners' point of view is really a point: the own home town and it's close surroundings. --::Slomox:: >< 19:54, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Low German speakers speak "platt"

The official High-German word might be "niederdeutsch" or "plattdeutsch" for Low-German speech, but a Low-German speaker would say "(Ek or) Ik segg det uff platt" English: I say this in platt - and NOT "I say this in plattdeutsch." moin moin(71.137.202.103 (talk) 00:30, 9 August 2011 (UTC))

If one uses the word "uff" one's not a speaker of Low German/Low Saxon but of one of the Rhenish varieties who indeed often refer to their language as "Platt", although they are linguistically separate from the language described in this article. In the language described in this article "Plattdüütsch" is the common term and "Platt" is a shorthand of the common term. --::Slomox:: >< 08:25, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

For the sake of clearness: While some varieties of contemporary German in Germany refer to themselves as Platt, they never refer to themselves as Plattdeutsch. For the contemporary Saxon language (the 'Low German' in this article) however the term is Plattdeutsch about which Slomox already spoke above. At least that's their usage in media.Dakhart (talk) 15:28, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

"Differences"/Dealing with sourceless stuff.

First something off the differences-topic. I know it has been discussed, I know it has no point, but I find the criteria given for the language debate stupid. They're wholly political or "it's a language if enough people use it and it's never used anywhere" (with triple the speakers that let's say Lithuanian has) and the idea of denying a language because there is no "national standard" is odd, when there is grammar and lexicon which differs from any adjacent dialects yet is highly consistent within the Low German ones, much much more than the grammar and vocabulary in the High German ones. This said, we're at the point which wonders me. I've read a good deal of Low German texts from between 1600 and 1900. The language has not changed since 1900. I found them vastly to be the same, sometimes even being indiscernible as to where they come from - especially the Low Saxon dialects. They all use the same conjugations for all the verbs, all nouns have the same genders - with differences from the German dialects which in themselves uses the same genders - the same endings, the same stuff. Yet the article states that there is an "immense" diversion. Maybe I am just blind but I cannot find a source for that in the article. Especially in Germany I find the dialects to be grammatically identical and mutually intelligible, if not in the first ten seconds. (Whilst the High German are a harder challenge for each other.) So - I'm relatively new to Wikipedia - what am I to do with this unreferenced claim which contrasts my equally unreferenced perception? Clearly I don't want it to be left standing just because somebody was quicker than me, saying random things. Yet of course somebody's wrath will come over me when I just erase it. So I ask anyone to provide source for or against it (or both so it can be weighed (or just against it)) and maybe a general advice on how to work with unreferenced parts, which sometimes form whole articles in Wikipedia.Dakhart (talk) 18:48, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

So...I deleted it anyway. With regards to the old version I doubt that anybody will find it incorrect or objectable. The arguments WERE "it's not used for anything important" and thus (my opinion of course) don't really deserve more than a summary. If somebody wants to rebuild them into their former status, please use less biased text. Despite all, even if you rebuild them, I think the tenor of the section should in any case be: 1. Linguistics has no "uni sono" opinion. 2. Since the former statuses of this language were proper "langauges" the would-be dialectal status (with regards to the rest of the article) probably stems from language decline due to "language occupation" and chic of Luther-German. 3. De jure it's a language, basta. Anything beyond that (linguistics and law), scholary or not, is irrelevant for a sophisticated language classification and should - if anything - only be mentioned edgeways.Dakhart (talk) 19:16, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Edit 4.7.11.

1. Changed name to be more fit to the content.

2. There were no "these criteria" left in the text so I removed that bit.

3. I'm aware that the sentence about the status in Germany (regional language) is probably not what the former author intended, but I could not decipher at all what he meant. Either because it was an extremely rare construction or it was wrong grammar. Do not revert without discussion. Please.Dakhart (talk) 19:38, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

First bit - varieties vs. language

The focus of the article is the language Low German which is the common modern name for the Saxon language. The article further explains why the usage of 'Low German' for other things is in decline. No matter how accurate, when the first sentence talks about language varieties, it is not the same impression as if it would talk about a language. "Language varieties" in not an accurate term, language is. There are no different Low German languages in Germany and Netherland, there is just Low German, its diverse dialects and an incountable bunch of Missingsch falseness in them. This, however, doesn't make Low German a collection of "varieties" all of a sudden. The article is about a West Germanic language. And that what it should say from the beginning. If it deals with something else aside from the language, then put it in the second sentence.Dakhart (talk) 17:25, 27 July 2011 (UTC)