The Low German dialects, as we have seen, stand nearest to the English
and Frisian languages, owing to the total absence of the consonantal
shifting which characterizes High German, as well as to other
peculiarities of sounds and inflections, e.g. the loss of the nasals
_m_ and _n_ before the spirants _f_, _s_ and _p_. Cf. Old Saxon _fif_
(five), _us_ (us), _kup_ (cf. uncouth). The boundary-line between Low
and High German, the so-called _Benrather Linie_, may roughly be
indicated by the following place-names, on the understanding, however,
that the Ripuarian dialect (see below) is to be classed with High
German: Montjoie (French border-town), Eupen, Aachen, Benrath,
Dusseldorf, north of Siegen, Cassel, Heiligenstadt, Harzgerode, to the
Elbe south of Magdeburg; this river forms the boundary as far as
Wittenberg, whence the line passes to Lubben on the Spree, Furstenwald
on the Oder and Birnbaum near the river Warthe. Beyond this point the
Low Germans have Slavs as their neighbours. Compared with the
conditions in the 13th century, it appears that Low German has lost
ground; down to the 14th and 15th centuries several towns, such as
Mansfeld, Eisleben, Merseburg, Halle, Dessau and Wittenberg, spoke Low
German.
Low German falls into two divisions, a western division, namely, Low
Franconian, the parent, as we have already said, of Flemish and Dutch,
and an eastern division, Low Saxon (_Plattdeutsch_, or, as it is often
simply called, Low German). The chief characteristic of the division
is to be sought in the ending of the first and third person plural of
the present indicative of verbs, this being in the former case _-en_,
in the latter _-et_. Inasmuch as the south-eastern part of Low
Franconian--inclusive of Gelderland and Cleves--shifts final _k_ to
_ch_ (e.g. _ich_, _mich_, _auch_, _-lich_), it must obviously be
separated from the rest, and in this respect be grouped with High
German. Low Saxon is usually divided into Westphalian (to the west of
the Weser) and Low Saxon proper, between Weser and Elbe. The
south-eastern part of the latter has the verbal ending -en and further
shows the peculiarity that the personal pronoun has the same form in
the dative and accusative (_mik_, _dick_), whereas the remainder, as
well as the Westphalian, has _mi_, _di_ in the dative, and _mi_, _di_
or _mik_, _dik_ in the accusative. To these Low German dialects must
also be added those spoken east of the Elbe on what was originally
Slavonic territory; they have the ending _-en_ in the first and third
person plural of verbs.[8]