Danzig German (german: Danziger Deutsch) are Northeastern German dialects spoken in

Gdańsk Gdańsk ( , also ; ; csb, Gduńsk;Stefan Ramułt, ''Słownik języka pomorskiego, czyli kaszubskiego'', Kraków 1893, Gdańsk 2003, ISBN 83-87408-64-6. , Johann Georg Theodor Grässe, ''Orbis latinus oder Verzeichniss der lateinischen Benen ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...

. It forms part of the Low Prussian dialect that was spoken in the region before the mass-expulsion of the speakers following the end of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. Nowadays, Danzig German is only passed within families. Famous modern speakers are

Günter Grass Günter Wilhelm Grass (born Graß; ; 16 October 1927 – 13 April 2015) was a German novelist, poet, playwright, illustrator, graphic artist, sculptor, and recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature. He was born in the Free City of Da ...

Klaus Kinski Klaus Kinski (, born Klaus Günter Karl Nakszynski 18 October 1926 – 23 November 1991) was a German actor, equally renowned for his intense performance style and notorious for his volatile personality. He appeared in over 130 film roles in a c ...

, and Donald Tusk.

History

In the 12th century, a German merchant settlement in the area of today's Long Market of Gdansk arose, close to a Prussian- Kashubian settlement, creating a language contact between

Slavic languages The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic, spoken during the Ear ...

Baltic languages The Baltic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 4.5 million people mainly in areas extending east and southeast of the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. Together with the Slavic lang ...

, and

Germanic languages The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, Engli ...

. The settlement attracted more German settlers, mainly from

Lower Saxony Lower Saxony (german: Niedersachsen ; nds, Neddersassen; stq, Läichsaksen) is a German state (') in northwestern Germany. It is the second-largest state by land area, with , and fourth-largest in population (8 million in 2021) among the 16 ...

Westphalia Westphalia (; german: Westfalen ; nds, Westfalen ) is a region of northwestern Germany and one of the three historic parts of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It has an area of and 7.9 million inhabitants. The territory of the regio ...

and

Hannover Hanover (; german: Hannover ; nds, Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German States of Germany, state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,932 (2021) inhabitants make it the List of cities in Germany by population, 13th-largest city in Germa ...

, whose

Low German : : : : : (70,000) (30,000) (8,000) , familycolor = Indo-European , fam2 = Germanic , fam3 = West Germanic , fam4 = North Sea Germanic , ancestor = Old Saxon , ancestor2 = Middle L ...

language became the dominating language. As subject of the

Teutonic Order The Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem, commonly known as the Teutonic Order, is a Catholic religious institution founded as a military society in Acre, Kingdom of Jerusalem. It was formed to aid Christians on ...

the town grew to a German town granted

Magdeburg law Magdeburg rights (german: Magdeburger Recht; also called Magdeburg Law) were a set of town privileges first developed by Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor (936–973) and based on the Flemish Law, which regulated the degree of internal autonomy within c ...

. As part of the

Hanseatic League The Hanseatic League (; gml, Hanse, , ; german: label=Modern German, Deutsche Hanse) was a medieval commercial and defensive confederation of merchant guilds and market towns in Central and Northern Europe. Growing from a few North German to ...

, the town acquired a

Platt __NOTOC__ Platt may refer to: Places * Platt, Austria * Platt, Florida, an unincorporated community in DeSoto County, Florida, United States * Platt, Kent, England People * Platt (surname) * Platt baronets, two baronetcies of the United Kin ...

dialect that also derived elements from the Dutch, Prussian, and from local Kashubian and

Polish language Polish (Polish: ''język polski'', , ''polszczyzna'' or simply ''polski'', ) is a West Slavic language of the Lechitic group written in the Latin script. It is spoken primarily in Poland and serves as the native language of the Poles. In a ...

as well. For example, , , (cod), (boar) are borrowings from the

. The city's official communication employed Low German until 1563, when a letter in Low German was sent to Nieuport, while neighboring Elbing and

Braunsberg Braniewo () (german: Braunsberg in Ostpreußen, la, Brunsberga, Old Prussian: ''Brus'', lt, Prūsa), is a town in northern Poland, in Warmia, in the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship, with a population of 16,907 as of June 2021. It is the capital of ...

had switched to High German by the middle of the 15th century. With the spread of High German through education, Danzig Platt was spoken only by a small fraction of the city's population. Still, Danzig Platt literature started to evolve at the end of the 18th century. After having switched to High German, the major part of the town came to speak . When Danzig became loyal to Poland along with Royal Prussia, German was maintained as the town's language.

Linguistic properties

Danzig Platt deviated significantly from North German

. While

has the pronunciations ("to make"), ("to sleep"), ("to say"), , in Danzig Platt the pronunciations are , , , .Walter Petter, "Vom Danziger Deutsch". In: Danziger Hauskalender 1950

Danzig Missingsch

Typical of Danzig

Missingsch () is a type of Low-German-coloured dialect or sociolect of German. It is characterised by Low-German-type structures and the presence of numerous calques and loanwords from Low German in High German. Description A more technical definition o ...

apocope In phonology, apocope () is the loss (elision) of a word-final vowel. In a broader sense, it can refer to the loss of any final sound (including consonants) from a word. Etymology ''Apocope'' comes from the Greek () from () "cutting off", from ...

of a final 'e' as in (cat) or (street), and the unrounding of the front rounded vowels and so that (door) is pronounced instead of High German , and (sons) instead of . Danzig Missingsch employs spirantization of initial "g" to "j" in e.g. (walked) instead of High German . Typical for Danzig Missingsch is the widespread use of the diminutive , such as ("what is the matter?")- Danzig German typically deviates in employing grammatical feminine gender for certain words that are masculine in High German, such as ( - "the wheat") and instead of ("the tobacco"), and neuter gender for other words that are masculine in High German, such as , .

Literature

References

{{Reflist German dialects History of Gdańsk Low German City colloquials