Re: Reinventing NATLANGs

Quoting Carsten Becker <carbeck@...>:

> From: "Michael Adams" <abrigon@...>
> Sent: Friday, July 07, 2006 10:39 PM
>
> > Body of literature helps, as seen by Martin Luthers
> > translating
> > the Bible into HochDeutsch, and then with Gutebburgs
> > printers help, spread it around..
>
> Misconcepton here: Luther didn't translate the bible into
> _Hochdeutsch_ but into German in general -- he took features
> from a number of dialects (as far as I know, don't quote me
> on that!) and created some kind of "normalized" German. The
> problem is that the German speaking area is a continuum of
> dialects more or less mutually intelligible, in Luther's
> times this was even more the case than today, though, where
> we have regiolects rather than local dialects due to the
> omnipresence of _Hochdeutsch_. The actually correct term for
> what is commonly known as 'Hochdeutsch' should be
> _Standarddeutsch_, since historically, 'Hochdeutsch' refers
> to the Upper German dialects such as the Bavarian, Frankish
> and Allemanic. Having lived in Saxony and Thuringia, Luther
> thus spoke neither a Lower German nor Upper German dialect
> (which are not mutually intelligible!) but a Middle German
> one, and Middle German is -- well -- a 'middle' thing. As
> for Luther and Hochdeutsch -- by his translation of the
> Bible into German, he levelled the way for what later
> emerged into the current standard.
FWIW, this doesn't rhyme with that we were taught in German class; viz that
Hochdeutsch includes both Mitteldeutsch and Oberdeutsch (the later being
Bavarian, Allemanic, and ilk).

                                                         Andreas