High German languages

The High German languages or High German dialects (German: Hochdeutsche Dialekte) comprise the varieties of German spoken south of the Benrath and Uerdingen isoglosses in central and southern Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, and Luxembourg as well as in neighboring portions of Belgium (Eupen-Malmedy) and the Netherlands (Southeast Limburg), France (Alsace and northern Lorraine), Italy (South Tyrol), and Poland (Upper Silesia). They are also spoken in diaspora in Romania, Russia, the United States, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Chile, and Namibia.

The High German languages are marked by the High German consonant shift, separating them from Low German and Low Franconian (Dutch) within the continental West Germanic dialect continuum.

Classification

As a technical term, the "high" in High German is a geographical reference to the group of dialects that forms "High German" (i.e. "Highland" German), out of which developed Standard German, Yiddish and Luxembourgish. It refers to the Central Uplands (Mittelgebirge) and Alpine areas of central and southern Germany, it also includes Luxembourg, Austria, Liechtenstein and most of Switzerland. This is opposed to Low German, which is spoken on the lowlands and along the flat sea coasts of the North German Plain.

German

German(s) may refer to:

Places

People

Mythological beings

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West Germanic languages

The West Germanic languages constitute the largest of the three branches of the Germanic family of languages (the other being the North Germanic and the extinct East Germanic languages).

The three most prevalent West Germanic languages are English, German, and Dutch. The family also includes other High and Low German languages, Scots, Afrikaans (a daughter language of Dutch), the Frisian languages, and Yiddish.

History

Origins

The West Germanic languages share many lexemes not existing in North Germanic and/or East Germanic — archaisms as well as common neologisms.

The West Germanic proto-language

Most scholars doubt that there was a Proto-West-Germanic protolanguage common to the West Germanic languages and no others, though a few maintain that Proto-West-Germanic existed. Most agree that after East Germanic broke off (an event usually dated to the 2nd or 1st century BC), the remaining Germanic languages, the Northwest Germanic languages, divided into four main dialects: North Germanic, and the three groups conventionally called "West Germanic", namely

High German consonant shift

In historical linguistics, the High German consonant shift or second Germanic consonant shift is a phonological development (sound change) that took place in the southern parts of the West Germanic dialect continuum in several phases. It probably began between the third and fifth centuries and was almost complete before the earliest written records in High German were produced in the ninth century. The resulting language, Old High German, can be neatly contrasted with the other continental West Germanic languages, which for the most part did not experience the shift, and with Old English, which remained completely unaffected.

General description

The High German consonant shift altered a number of consonants in the Southern German dialects, and thus also in modern Standard German, Yiddish, and Luxembourgish, and so explains why many German words have different consonants from the obviously related words in English, Dutch and the Scandinavian languages. The term is sometimes used to refer to a core group of nine individual consonant modifications. Alternatively, it may encompass other phonological changes that took place in the same period. For the core group, there are three changes, which may be thought of as three successive phases. Each phase affected three consonants, making nine modifications in total: