(Vol. viii., pp. 478. 601.)
If "N. & Q." were the publication in which questions were cursorily
settled, the answer of JAMES SPENCE HARRY (p. 478.) might suffice with
regard to the Query of S. C. P. (p. 413.); but your correspondent E. C. H.,
who seems also {133} to know something about the matter, wishes for German
evidence.
Should your correspondents JAMES S. HARRY and E. C. H. be acquainted (and I
doubt not but they are) with the song, in which a German inquires "What is
his native land?" and having called over some of the principalities, as
Prussia, Suabia, Bavaria, Pomerania, Westphalia, Switzerland, Tyrol, he
cries disdainfully, "No! no! no! my fatherland must be greater:" at last,
despairing, he asks to name him that land, and is answered, "Wherever the
German tongue is heard:"--should JAMES S. HARRY and E. C. H. recollect
these words, they will conceive that such a people must have several
tribes, and each tribe their peculiar dialect, founded on prescribed rules,
and to which individually equal justice is due.
The dialects of the Deutsche Sprache, the German language, are the Ober
Deutsche and Nieder Deutsche, Upper German and Low German: from the former
dialect has, in course of time, proceeded the Hoch Deutsche Sprache, the
High German language, now used exclusively as the book language by the more
educated classes throughout Germany.
The principal dialects of the Ober Deutsche are the following: