Middle Low German
From Free net encyclopedia
The Middle Low German (technically Middle Saxon) language is an ancestor of the modern Low German. It was spoken from about 1100 to 1500, descending from Old Saxon. It split off into West Low German and East Low German.
Related languages
The neighbour languages within the dialect continuum of the Low German languages were Middle Dutch in the West and Middle High German in the South, later substituted by Early Modern High German.
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 loans found in the Scandinavian languages and in the Baltic languages, but also in standard German or in English.
In the late Middle Ages, Middle Low German lost its prestige to Early Modern High German which the elites began to use first as a written language and later as a spoken language. Reasons for the loss of prestige of Low German were the decline of the Hanseatic League that was followed by political heteronomy of Northern Germany, but also the cultural predominance of Middle and Southern Germany for instance through the Protestant Reformation.