EDNote: if I receive any further refinements on the high v. low German
geographical distribution, I'll save them and post them together in a
single "issue" sometime Friday. ~SB
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It is interesting to learn, in my advanced years, that the linguistic
face of German speaking Europe has been so drastically changed. When
I was in graduate school, Low German (roughtly defined as German
apech areas whose language had not undergone the second, or High
German consonant shift, and pertained to the north. Thus Theodor
Storm, whose fine novel _Der Schimmelreiter_ , (I cite in High
German, not in (Platt') I admired) was a speaker of Low German.
On the other hand, High German (including Hoch Deutsch, as well as
the more extreem Ober Deutsch) is spoken in the south. In using
the terms north and south, I do not confine myself to just the
territory of Germany. An exchange as striking as this reversal
of the speech forms of north and south German, can almost be
compared in its "cataclysmic effect to the reversal of the
magnetic poles.
Hans (!)