Everything about High German totally explained
High German languages (in
German,
Hochdeutsch) are any of the
varieties of
standard German,
Luxembourgish and
Yiddish as well as the local German
dialects
spoken in central and southern
Germany,
Austria,
Liechtenstein,
Switzerland,
Luxembourg and in neighbouring portions of
Belgium,
France (
Alsace and northern
Lorraine),
Italy and
Poland. The language is also spoken diaspora in
Romania (
Transylvania),
Russia, the
United States,
Argentina and
Namibia.
"High" refers to the
mountainous areas of central and southern Germany and the
Alps, as opposed to
Low German spoken along the flat sea coasts of the north. High German can be subdivided into
Upper German and
Central German (
Oberdeutsch, Mitteldeutsch).
The German term
Hochdeutsch is also used loosely, but not by linguists, to mean
standard written German as opposed to dialect, because the standard language developed out of High rather than Low German. This is based on a misunderstanding, and the attempt to rationalize it by suggesting that "high" means "official" doesn't solve the problem. In English, "High German" has never been used to mean "Standard German".
History
High German as used in Southern Germany, Bavaria and Austria was an important basis for the development of standard German.
The historical forms of the language are
Old High German and
Middle High German.
Classification
High German are distinguished from other West Germanic varieties in that they took part in the
High German consonant shift (c. AD 500).
To see this, compare German
Pfanne with
English pan ([pf] to [p]), German
zwei with English
two ([ts] to [t]), German
machen with English
make ([x] to [k]).
In the
High Alemannic dialects, there's a further shift;
Sack (like English "sack") is pronounced [z̥akx] ([k] to [kx]).
Family tree
Note that divisions between subfamilies of Germanic are rarely precisely defined; most form continuous clines, with adjacent
dialects being mutually intelligible and more separated ones not. In particular, there has never been an original "
Proto-High German". For this and other reasons, the idea of representing the relationships between
West Germanic language forms in a tree diagram at all is controversial among linguists; what follows should be used with care in the light of this caveat.
Further Information
Get more info on 'High German'.
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