Inside Europe Germany . The name in Low German is . It has been estimated that Low German has approximately two to five million speakers (depending on the definition of 'native speaker') in Germany, primarily in Northern Germany. 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. Small portions of northern
Hesse and northern
Thuringia are traditionally Low Saxon-speaking too. Historically, Low German was also spoken in formerly German parts of
Poland (e.g., Pomerania and
Silesia), as well as in
East Prussia and the Baltic provinces (modern
Estonia and
Latvia). The
Baltic Germans spoke a distinct Low German dialect, which has influenced the vocabulary and phonetics of both Estonian and Latvian. 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. 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 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). 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). In the Southern
Jutland region of Denmark there may still be some Low German speakers in some
German minority communities, but the Low German dialects of
Denmark can be considered
moribund at this time. from east of the
Oder–Neisse line in 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.
Danzig (now
Gdańsk, Poland) was also a Low German-speaking city before 1945, and its former dialect
Danzig German is also classified as
Low Prussian.
The Netherlands Dialects of Low German are spoken in the northeastern area of the Netherlands (
Dutch Low Saxon) by approximately 1.6 million speakers. Between 1995 and 2011 the numbers of parent speakers dropped from 34% in 1995 to 15% in 2011. Numbers of child speakers dropped from 8% to 2% in the same period. According to a 2005 study 53% speak Low Saxon or Low Saxon and Dutch at home and 71% could speak it in the researched area. There are speakers in the Dutch north and eastern provinces of
Groningen,
Drenthe,
Stellingwerf (part of
Friesland),
Overijssel,
Gelderland,
Utrecht and
Flevoland, in several dialect groups per province.
Outside Europe and the Mennonites There are also immigrant communities where Low German is spoken in the Western hemisphere, including Canada, the United States, Mexico, Belize, Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. In some of these countries, the language is part of the
Mennonite religion and culture. There are Mennonite communities in
Ontario,
Saskatchewan,
Alberta,
British Columbia,
Manitoba,
Kansas and
Minnesota which use Low German in their religious services and communities. These Mennonites are descended from primarily Dutch settlers that had initially settled in the
Vistula delta region of
Prussia in the 16th and 17th centuries before moving to newly acquired Russian territories in Ukraine in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and then to the
Americas in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The types of Low German spoken in these communities and in the
Midwest region of the United States have diverged since emigration. The survival of the language is tenuous in many places, and has died out in many places where assimilation has occurred. Members and friends of the Historical Society of North German Settlements in western New York (
Bergholz, New York), a community of Lutherans who trace their immigration from Pomerania in the 1840s, hold quarterly "Plattdeutsch lunch" events, where remaining speakers of the language gather to share and preserve the dialect. Mennonite colonies in Paraguay, Belize, and
Chihuahua, Mexico, have made Low German a "co-official language" of the community. (
Paraná,
Southern Brazil) teaches in the
Portuguese language and in
Plautdietsch.
East Pomeranian is also spoken in parts of
southern and
southeastern Brazil, in the latter especially in the state of
Espírito Santo, being official in five municipalities, and spoken among its
ethnically European migrants elsewhere, primarily in the states of
Rio de Janeiro and
Rondônia. East Pomeranian-speaking regions of Southern Brazil are often assimilated into the general
German Brazilian population and culture, for example celebrating the , and there can even be a language shift from it to in some areas. In Espírito Santo, nevertheless, Pomeranian Brazilians are more often proud of their language, and particular religious traditions and culture, and not uncommonly inheriting the nationalism of their ancestors, being more likely to accept marriages of its members with Brazilians of origins other than a Germanic Central European one than to assimilate with Brazilians of
Swiss,
Austrian,
Czech, and non-East Pomeranian-speaking German and Prussian heritage – that were much more numerous immigrants to both Brazilian regions (and whose language almost faded out in the latter, due to assimilation and internal migration), by themselves less numerous than the
Italian ones (with only Venetian communities in areas of highly Venetian presence conserving
Talian, and other Italian languages and dialects fading out elsewhere). ==Nomenclature==