Low German

From FrathWiki
Jump to navigationJump to search
Low German
Nedersaksisch Plattdüütsch
Spoken in: Germany, Netherlands, Denamrk (Norddütschland)
Conworld: Real world
Total speakers: unknown
Genealogical classification: Indo-European
Germanic
West Germanic
     German
Low German
Basic word order: SVO, OVS/V2
Morphological type: inflecting
Morphosyntactic alignment: nominative-accusative
Writing system:
Created by:
unknown 1800-Present C.E.

History and Stages

Difference between High and Low German

High German differs from other West German languages such as Low German, English, and Dutch in that High German when through the High German Consonant Shift. The High German Consonant Shift (or HGCS) is the sound shift where;

  1. Non-geminated voicless stops became fricatives,
  2. Geminated, nasal-adjacent and liquid-adjacent voiceless stops became affricates,
  3. Voiced stops became voiceless stops, and finally
  4. All interdental fricatives (/ð/ and /θ/) became the dental stop and/or Alveolar stop // and /d/.

The last stage was shared by Low German and Dutch.

Orthography

Because there is no standard dialect of Low German, there is no standard orthography. It can often differ by region.

Grammar

Gender and Number

There are three genders in Low German: Neuter, Masculine, and Feminine. There are two numbers as well: Singular and Plural.

Articles

The Masculine and Feminine genders take the article de. The Neuter form takes the article dat. The plural for all this is de. This makes it very close to its cousin of Dutch which has a similar pattern (save het instead of dat.)

The Indefinite article is the same for all, it is een, en, and 'n.

Nouns

Adjectives and Adverbs

Adjectives

Adverbs

Conjunctions

Preposition

Verbs

Present

Future

Past

Present Perfect

Imperative

Sources and Further Readings