Northern Low Saxon (in Low Saxon, Nordneddersassisch or Platt) is a Low Saxon dialect.
It is considered to be "Standard Low Saxon" within Germany because it is spoken and understood in a huge central area including most of Lower Saxony, Bremen, Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein.
As such, it covers a great part of the Low Saxon-speaking areas of northern Germany, with the exception of the border regions where Eastphalian and Westphalian are spoken.
But Northern Low Saxon is easily understood by speakers of these dialects.
Hamburgisch, Holsteinisch and Schleswigsch belong to Northern Low Saxon.
There also is a special city-dialect in Bremen.
Characteristics
The most obvious common character in grammar is the forming of the perfect participle. It is formed without a prefix, as in English, Danish, Swedish, Norse and Frisian, but unlike German and Dutch and the Southern Low Saxon Language :
- gahn (to go) : ik bün gahn (I have gone)
- seilen (to sail): he hett seilt (He has sailed)
- koopen (to buy): Wi harrn köfft (We had bought)
- eeten (to eat): Se hebbt eeten (They have eaten)
The diminuitive (-je) (Dutch and Eastern Frisian -tje, Eastphalian -ke, German -chen, Alemannic -le, li) is hardly used. Some examples are Buscherumpje, a fisherman's shirt, or lüttje, a diminutive of lütt, little. Instead the adjective lütt is used, e.g. dat lütte Huus, de lütte Deern, de lütte Jung.
There are a lot of special characteristics in the vocabulary, too, but they are shared partly with other languages and dialects, e.g.:
- Personal pronouns: Ik (like Dutch), du (like German), he (like English), se, dat, wi, ji, se.
- Interrogatives (English/German): Wo, woans (how/wie), wo laat (how late/wie spät), wokeen (who/wer), woneem (where/wo), wokeen sien / wen sien (whose/wessen)
- Adverbs (English/German): laat (late/spät), gau (fast/schnell), suutje (slowly/langsam), vigelinsch (difficult/schwierig)
- Prepositions (English/German): bi (by/bei), achter (behind/hinter), vör (in front of/vor), blangen (between/zwischen)
