History
The Upper Saxon dialect evolved as a new variety in the course of the medieval German Ostsiedlung (eastern settlement) from about 1100 onwards. Settlers descending from the stem duchy of Saxony speaking Old Saxon, but also from Thuringia, moved into the Margraviate of Meissen beyond the Elbe and Saale rivers then populated by Polabian Slavs. The importance of the Upper Saxon chancery German rose with establishment of the Saxon electorate. In the context of the Bible translation by Martin Luther, it played a large part in the development of the Early New High German language as a standard variety.
Spoken by leading communists descending from the Central German industrial area like Walter Ulbricht, Sächseln was commonly perceived as the colloquial language of East Germany by West German citizens and up to today is a subject of numerous stereotype jokes.
Read more about this topic: Upper Saxon German
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who are also creating their own time refuse to accept.... For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“Indeed, the Englishman’s history of New England commences only when it ceases to be New France.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)