Low German in the context of German dialect

The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, Northern America, Oceania, and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, English, is also the world's most widely spoken language with an estimated 2 billion speakers. All Germanic languages are derived from Proto-Germanic, spoken in Iron Age Scandinavia, Iron Age Northern Germany and along the North Sea and Baltic coasts.

The West Germanic languages include the three most widely spoken Germanic languages: English with around 360–400 million native speakers; German, with over 100 million native speakers; and Dutch, with 24 million native speakers. Other West Germanic languages include Afrikaans, an offshoot of Dutch originating from the Afrikaners of South Africa, with over 7.1 million native speakers; Low German, considered a separate collection of unstandardized dialects, with roughly 4.35–7.15 million native speakers and probably 6.7–10 million people who can understand it (at least 2.2 million in Germany (2016) and 2.15 million in the Netherlands (2003)); Yiddish, once used by approximately 13 million Jews in pre-World War II Europe, now with approximately 1.5 million native speakers; Scots, with 1.5 million native speakers; Limburgish varieties with roughly 1.3 million speakers along the Dutch–Belgian–German border; and the Frisian languages with over 500,000 native speakers in the Netherlands and Germany.

Essen (German pronunciation: [ˈɛsn̩] ) is the central and, after Dortmund, second-largest city of the Ruhr, the largest urban area in Germany. Its population of 574,082 makes it the fourth-largest city of North Rhine-Westphalia after Cologne, Düsseldorf and Dortmund, as well as the tenth-largest city of Germany. Essen lies in the larger Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region, second largest by GDP in the EU, and is part of the cultural area of Rhineland. Due to its central location in the Ruhr, Essen is often regarded as the Ruhr's "secret capital".

Two rivers flow through the city: the Emscher in the north, and in the south the Ruhr River, which is dammed in Essen to form the Lake Baldeney [de] and Lake Kettwig [de] reservoirs. The central and northern boroughs of Essen historically belong to the Low German Westphalian dialects area, and the south of the city to the Low Franconian Bergish area.

Gelsenkirchen (/ˌɡɛlzənˈkɪərxən/, /ˈɡɛlzənkɪərxən/; German: [ˌɡɛlzn̩ˈkɪʁçn̩] ; Westphalian: Gelsenkiärken) is the 25th-most populous city of Germany and the 11th-most populous in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia with 262,528 (2016) inhabitants. On the Emscher River (a tributary of the Rhine), it lies at the centre of the Ruhr area, the largest urban area of Germany, of which it is the fifth-largest city after Dortmund, Essen, Duisburg and Bochum. The Ruhr is located in the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region, the second-biggest metropolitan region by GDP in the European Union. Gelsenkirchen is the fifth-largest city of Westphalia after Dortmund, Bochum, Bielefeld and Münster, and it is one of the southernmost cities in the Low German dialect area. The city is home to the football club Schalke 04, which is named after Gelsenkirchen-Schalke. The club's current stadium Veltins-Arena, however, is located in Gelsenkirchen-Erle [de].

Gelsenkirchen was first documented in 1150, but it remained a tiny village until the 19th century, when the Industrial Revolution led to the economic and population growth of the region. In 1840, when the mining of coal began, 6,000 inhabitants lived in Gelsenkirchen; by 1900 the population had increased to 138,000. In the early 20th century, Gelsenkirchen was the most important coalmining town in Europe. It was called the "city of a thousand fires" for the flames of mine gases flaring at night. In 1928, Gelsenkirchen was merged with the adjoining cities of Buer and Gelsenkirchen-Horst [de]. The city bore the name Gelsenkirchen-Buer, until it was renamed Gelsenkirchen in 1930. The city remained a center of coal mining and oil refining during the Nazi era, so was often a target of Allied bombing raids during World War II: nevertheless, over a third of the city's buildings date from before 1949. There are no longer coalmines in and around Gelsenkirchen; the city is searching for a new economic basis, having been afflicted for decades with one of the country's highest unemployment rates.

Dortmund (German: [ˈdɔʁtmʊnt] ; Westphalian: Düörpm [ˈdyːœɐ̯pm̩]; Latin: Tremonia) is the third-largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia, after Cologne and Düsseldorf, and the ninth-largest city in Germany. With a population of 614,495 inhabitants, it is the largest city (by area and population) of the Ruhr as well as the largest city of Westphalia. It lies on the Emscher and Ruhr rivers (tributaries of the Rhine) in the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Region, the second biggest metropolitan region by GDP in the European Union, and is considered the administrative, commercial, and cultural centre of the eastern Ruhr. Dortmund is the second-largest city in the Low German dialect area, after Hamburg.

Founded around 882, Dortmund became an Imperial Free City. Throughout the 13th to 14th centuries, it was the "chief city" of the Rhine, Westphalia, and the Netherlands Circle of the Hanseatic League. During the Thirty Years' War, the city was destroyed and decreased in significance until the onset of industrialisation. The city then became one of Germany's most important coal, steel, and beer centres; as a consequence, it was one of the most heavily bombed cities in Germany during World War II. The devastating bombing raids of 12 March 1945 destroyed 98% of the buildings in the inner city. Involving more than 1,110 aircraft, the raids were the largest targeting a single city during World War II. Today, around 30% of the city’s buildings date from before the war.

The Lithuanians or Old East Lithuanians (Latin: Letwini; Low German: Lettowen; Old East Slavic: Литъва, Литва; Old Swedish: lättugha; modern Lithuanian: rytiniai senlietuviai) were one of the largest East Baltic tribes, inhabiting present-day Eastern Lithuania in the 5th–13th centuries. Following the Northern Crusades, the ancient Lithuanians began gradually assimilating other neighbouring Baltic tribes, becoming the primary progenitor group of modern Lithuanians.

German dialects are the various traditional local varieties of the German language. Though varied by region, those of the southern half of Germany beneath the Benrath line are dominated by the geographical spread of the High German consonant shift, and the dialect continuum that connects High German to the neighboring varieties of Low Franconian (Dutch) and Low German.

The varieties of German are conventionally grouped into Upper German, Central German and Low German; Upper and Central German form the High German subgroup. Standard German is a standardized form of High German, developed in the early modern period based on a combination of Central German and Upper German varieties.

Old Saxon (Low German: Ooldsass'sche Spraak), also known as Old Low German (Low German: Ooldneddersche Spraak), was a Germanic language and the earliest recorded form of Low German (spoken nowadays in Northern Germany, the northeastern Netherlands, southern Denmark, the Americas and parts of Eastern Europe). It is a West Germanic language, closely related to the Anglo-Frisian languages. It is documented from the 8th century until the 12th century, when it gradually evolved into Middle Low German. It was spoken throughout modern northwestern Germany, primarily in the coastal regions and in the eastern Netherlands by Saxons, a Germanic tribe that inhabited the region of Saxony. It partially shares Anglo-Frisian's (Old Frisian, Old English) Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law which sets it apart from Low Franconian and Irminonic languages, such as Dutch, Luxembourgish and German.

The grammar of Old Saxon was fully inflected with five grammatical cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, and instrumental), three grammatical numbers (singular, plural, and dual), and three grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter). The dual forms occurred in the first and second persons only.

The West Germanic languages constitute the largest of the three branches of the Germanic family of languages (the others being the North Germanic and the extinct East Germanic languages). The West Germanic branch is classically subdivided into three branches: Ingvaeonic, which includes English, Scots, the Low German languages, and the Frisian languages; Istvaeonic, which encompasses Dutch and its close relatives; and Irminonic, which includes German and its close relatives and variants.

English is by far the most widely spoken West Germanic language, with over one billion speakers worldwide. Within Europe, the three most prevalent West Germanic languages are English, German, and Dutch. Frisian, spoken by about 450,000 people, constitutes a fourth distinct variety of West Germanic. The language family also includes Afrikaans, Yiddish, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Hunsrik, and Scots. Additionally, several creoles, patois, and pidgins are based on Dutch, English, or German.

The Frisian languages (/ˈfriːʒən/ FREE-zhən or /ˈfrɪziən/ FRIZ-ee-ən) are a closely related group of West Germanic languages, spoken by about 400,000 Frisian people, who live on the southern fringes of the North Sea in the Netherlands and Germany. The Frisian languages are the closest living language group to the Anglic languages; the two groups make up the Anglo-Frisian languages group and together with the Low German dialects these form the North Sea Germanic languages. Despite the close genetic relationship between English and Frisian, the modern languages are not mutually intelligible. Geographical and historical circumstances have caused the two languages to drift apart linguistically.

Frisian is traditionally divided into three branches often labeled distinct Frisian languages even though the dialects within each branch are not necessarily mutually intelligible. West Frisian is by far the most spoken of the three and is an official language in the Dutch province of Friesland, where it is spoken on the mainland and on two of the West Frisian Islands: Terschelling and Schiermonnikoog. It is also spoken in four villages in the Westerkwartier of the neighbouring province of Groningen. North Frisian, the second branch, is spoken in the northernmost German district of Nordfriesland in the state of Schleswig-Holstein, on the North Frisian mainland and on the North Frisian Islands of Sylt, Föhr, Amrum, and the Halligs. It is also spoken on the islands of Heligoland and Düne in the North Sea. The third Frisian branch, East Frisian, has only one remaining variant, Sater Frisian, spoken in the municipality of Saterland in the Lower Saxon district of Cloppenburg. Surrounded by bogs, the four Saterlandic villages lie just outside the borders of East Frisia, in the Oldenburg Münsterland region. In East Frisia proper, East Frisian Low Saxon is spoken today, which is not a Frisian language, but a variant of Low German/Low Saxon.

Low Saxon (German: Niedersächsisch, Dutch: Nedersaksisch), also known as West Low German (German: Westniederdeutsch) are a group of Low German dialects spoken in parts of the Netherlands, northwestern Germany and southern Denmark (in North Schleswig by parts of the German-speaking minority). It is one of two dialect groups, the other being East Low German.

Kashubian (/kəˈʃuːbiən/) or Cassubian (/kəˈsuːbiən/; endonym: kaszëbsczi jãzëk; Polish: język kaszubski) is a West Slavic language belonging to the Lechitic subgroup.

In Poland, it has been an officially recognized ethnic-minority language since 2005. Approximately 87,600 people use mainly Kashubian at home. It is the only remnant of the Pomeranian language. It is close to standard Polish with influence from Low German and the extinct Polabian (West Slavic) and Old Prussian (West Baltic) languages.

Slovincians, also known as Łeba Kashubians, is a near-extinct ethnic subgroup of the Kashubian people, who originated from the north western Kashubia, located in the Pomeranian Voivodeship, Poland, from the area around the lakes of Łebsko and Gardno. In the aftermath of World War II, Slovincians emigrated en masse to Germany, with the last families emigrating there in the 1980s. They originally spoke the Slovincian language, which went extinct in the early 20th century, as well as Kashubian, Polish, German and Low German.
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The Scheldt (/ʃɛlt, skɛlt/ SHELT, SKELT; French: Escaut [ɛsko] ; Dutch: Schelde [ˈsxɛldə] ) is a 435-kilometre-long (270 mi) river that flows through northern France, western Belgium, and the southwestern part of the Netherlands, with its mouth at the North Sea. Its name is derived from an adjective corresponding to Old English sċeald ("shallow"), Modern English shoal, Low German schol, West Frisian skol, and obsolete Swedish skäll ("thin").

Lübeck (German: [ˈlyːbɛk] ; Low German: Lübęk or Lübeek [ˈlyːbeːk]; Latin: Lubeca), officially the Hanseatic City of Lübeck (German: Hansestadt Lübeck), is a city in Northern Germany. With around 220,000 inhabitants, it is the second-largest city on the German Baltic coast and the second-largest city in the state of Schleswig-Holstein, after its capital of Kiel. It is the 36th-largest city in Germany.

The city lies in the Holsatian part of Schleswig-Holstein, on the mouth of the Trave, which flows into the Bay of Lübeck in the borough of Travemünde, and on the Trave's tributary Wakenitz. The island with the historic old town and the districts north of the Trave are also located in the historical region of Wagria. Lübeck is the southwesternmost city on the Baltic Sea, and the closest point of access to the Baltic from Hamburg. The city lies in the Holsatian dialect area of Low German.

The First Schleswig War (German: Schleswig-Holsteinischer Krieg), also known as the Schleswig-Holstein uprising (German: Schleswig-Holsteinische Erhebung) and the Three Years' War (Danish: Treårskrigen), was a military conflict in southern Denmark and northern Germany rooted in the Schleswig–Holstein question: who should control the Duchies of Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg, which at the time were ruled by the king of Denmark in a personal union. Ultimately, the Danish side proved victorious with the diplomatic support of the great powers, especially Britain and Russia, since the duchies were close to an important Baltic seaway connecting both powers.

While Schleswig had been predominantly Danish with a German elite concentrated in the cities and estates, modernisation brought extensive German influence. German became the language of administration, education, and the church, creating an environment in which it was omnipresent and speaking Danish offered no advantages. Due to top-down pressure, many Danish South Schleswigers gradually adopted German in their daily lives. This linguistic shift led to the extinction of the two Danish South Schleswig dialects, Fjoldemål and Angeldanish – first in favour of Low German, and later High German. Over time, these now Low German-speaking South Schleswigers became fully Germanized, came to identify with the German question, and sought to separate Schleswig, along with Holstein, from Denmark entirely. Therefore, by the outbreak of the war, Schleswig was divided: a Danish-speaking North and a Low German-speaking South, while Holstein and Lauenburg were entirely ethnically German.

The letter Å (å in lower case) represents various (although often similar) sounds in several languages. It is a separate letter in Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, North Frisian, Low Saxon, Transylvanian Saxon, Walloon, Rotuman, Chamorro, Lule Sami, Pite Sami, Skolt Sami, Southern Sami, Ume Sami, Pamirian languages, and Greenlandic alphabets. Additionally, it is part of the alphabets used for some Alemannic and Austro-Bavarian dialects of German.

Though Å is derived from A by adding an overring, it is typically considered a separate letter. It developed as a form of semi-ligature of an A with a smaller o above it to denote a rounding of the long /a/ in Old Danish.

Westphalian or Westfalish (Standard High German: Westfälisch [vɛstˈfɛːlɪʃ] , Standard Dutch: Westfaals [ʋɛstˈfaːls] ) is one of the major dialect groups of Low German. Its most salient feature is its diphthongization (rising diphthongs). For example, speakers say iäten ([ɪɛtn̩]) instead of etten or äten for "to eat". (There is also a difference in the use of consonants within the Westphalian dialects: North of the Wiehengebirge, people tend to use unvoiced consonants, whereas south of the Wiehengebirge they tend to use the voiced equivalents, e.g. Foite > Foide.)

The Westphalian dialect region includes the north-eastern part of North Rhine-Westphalia, i.e. the former Prussian province of Westphalia, without Siegerland and Wittgenstein, but including the southern part of former government district Weser-Ems (e.g. the region around Osnabrück and the landscape of Emsland in modern Lower Saxony).