Dewsbury.
_High Dutch and Low Dutch_ (Vol. viii., p. 478.).--Nieder Deutsch, or
rather Neder Duitsch, is the proper name of the Dutch language; at least it
is that which the people of Holland give to it. Low German does not
necessarily mean a vulgar patois. It is essentially as different a language
from High German, or rather more so, as Spanish is from Portuguese. I
believe German purists would point out Holstein, Hanover, Brunswick (not
Dresden), as the places where German is most classically spoken. I wish one
of your German (not Anglo-German) readers would set us right on this point.
The term Dutch, as applied to the language of Holland as distinguished from
that of German, is a comparative modernism in English. High Dutch and Low
Dutch used to be the distinction; and when Coverdale's _Translation of the
Bible_ is said to have been "compared with the Douche," German, and not
what we now call Dutch, is meant. Deutsch, in short, or Teutsch, is the
generic name for the language of the Teutones, for whom Germani, or
Ger-maenner, was not a national appellation, but one which merely betokened
their warlike character.