this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2024
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A lot of people seem to get their ideas of what “low” and “high” mean about a language from fantasy novels, and assume that High ~~Elven~~ German would be an ultra-formal, long-windedly prescriptivist variant with extra grammatical cases for encoding degrees of polite deference, whereas Low German would be a guttural argot originally spoken by mercenaries, prostitutes and thieves, and used these days mostly to buy bubatz and döner kebabs.
That's especially funny as the sociolect used to buy döner is actually a High German variant (as immigrants coming to Germany will usually learn Standard German in their language courses and mix that with their mother tounge). All the Bubatz I've bought in my wild youth, I've gotten from Thomases and Michaels who were speaking perfectly good Standard German.
So, what is the correct meaning of "low" and "high"?
Low German is/was spoken in the northern lowlands near the sea, High German is/was spoken in the more mountainous regions in the south. This map shows quite well where the two languages are spoken, even though I think it's more a coincidence than causation that the language border matches the topological border.
Nowadays things have changed of cause, as Standard German is spoken in all of Germany, at least in official contexts. But in colloquial conversations and especially in the rural areas the difference persists.
Ah, so low and high refer to geography.
For me typically "High" means mountains and "Low" means lowlands. It fits well enough for German.