Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland) was also a Low German-speaking city before 1945. Low German-speaking provinces of Germany east of the Oder, before 1945, were Pomerania with its capital Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland), where east of the Oder East Pomeranian dialects were spoken, and East Prussia with its capital Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia), where Low Prussian dialects were spoken. Low German-speaking area before the expulsion of almost all German-speakers from east of the Oder–Neisse line in 1945. In the Southern Jutland region of Denmark there may still be some Low German speakers in some German minority communities, but the Low German and North Frisian dialects of Denmark can be considered moribund at this time.
Today, there are still speakers outside Germany to be found in the coastal areas of present-day Poland (minority of ethnic German East Pomeranian speakers who were not expelled from Pomerania, as well as the regions around Braniewo). The language was also formerly spoken in the outer areas of what is now the city-state of Berlin, but in the course of urbanisation and national centralisation in that city, the language has vanished (the Berlin dialect itself is a northern outpost of High German, though it has some Low German features). German speakers in this area fled the Red Army or were forcibly expelled after the border changes at the end of World War II. The historical Sprachraum of Low German also included contemporary northern Poland, East Prussia (the modern Kaliningrad Oblast of Russia), a part of western Lithuania, and the German communities in Estonia and Latvia, most notably their Hanseatic cities. The Baltic Germans spoke a distinct Low German dialect, which has influenced the vocabulary and phonetics of both Estonian and Latvian. Historically, Low German was also spoken in formerly German parts of Poland as well as in East Prussia and the Baltic provinces (modern Estonia and Latvia). Small portions of northern Hesse and northern Thuringia are traditionally Low Saxon-speaking too. Variants of Low German are spoken in most parts of Northern Germany, for instance in the states of Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, Hamburg, Bremen, Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Saxony-Anhalt, and Brandenburg. It has been estimated that Low German has approximately 2 to 5 million speakers (depending on the definition of 'native speaker') in Germany, primarily in Northern Germany. It has been estimated that Low German has approximately 2.2–5 million speakers in Germany, primarily Northern Germany, and 2.15 million in the Netherlands. This is because northwestern Germany and the northeastern Netherlands were the area of settlement of the Saxons ( Old Saxony), while Low German spread to northeastern Germany through eastward migration of Low German speakers into areas with a Slavic-speaking population ( Germania Slavica). The Low German dialects spoken in the Netherlands are mostly referred to as Low Saxon, those spoken in northwestern Germany ( Lower Saxony, Westphalia, Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, Bremen, and Saxony-Anhalt west of the Elbe) as either Low German or Low Saxon, and those spoken in northeastern Germany ( Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Brandenburg, and Saxony-Anhalt east of the Elbe) mostly as Low German. Low German evolved from Old Saxon (Old Low German), which is most closely related to Old Frisian and Old English (Anglo-Saxon). Like Frisian, English, Dutch and the North Germanic languages, Low German has not undergone the High German consonant shift, as opposed to Standard High German, which is based on High German dialects. Like Dutch, it is spoken north of the Benrath and Uerdingen isoglosses, while ( Standard) High German is spoken south of those lines. Low German is most closely related to Frisian and English, with which it forms the North Sea Germanic group of the West Germanic languages. The dialect of Plautdietsch is also spoken in the Russian Mennonite diaspora worldwide. Low German or Low Saxon (in the language itself: Plattdüütsch, Nedersaksies and other names German: Plattdeutsch, pronounced ( listen)) is a West Germanic language variety spoken mainly in Northern Germany and the northeastern part of the Netherlands. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Present day Low German language area in Europe.