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From my perspective South of the North sea coast is South ;) I'll agree it's not precise, but both links on the disambiguation page to my eye justifies my use of it, at least in this context. I'm certainly willing to accept that there may well be significant aspects of standard German that incorporates more central and Northern dialects and deviates from the southern Hochdeutsch dialects in ways I have no idea about. I'm sure you know far better than me about that. But the most relevant differences in the context of my comment was the High German consonant shift, the effects of which is one (of several, sure) big change separating Standard German from the other Germanic languages, and which was mostly firmly happening further South than Plattdeutsch/Niederdeutsch/Low German. In that respect at least, standard German orthography is closer to that of South/Hochdeutsch, and it has separated German further from the rest of the Germanic languages. E.g. compare: * Day: dag (Scandinavian, Dutch), Dag (low German languages), Tag Standard and High German. * Ship: skip (Norwegian, Swedish) , skib (Danish), Skip/Schip/Schipp/Schepp (various lower German variants, Frisian), Schiff (Standard and High German) * Apple: eple, Appel, vs. Apfel * two: to (Norwegian, Danish, två (Swedish, Norwegian dialects), twee (Dutch, lower German), zwei (Standard and High German) |