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( Standard German)
Standard German (German Hochdeutsch) is the standard variety of the German language used as a written language, in formal contexts, and for communication between different dialect areas. Since German is a pluricentric language, there are different varieties of Standard German. Standard German has originated not as a traditional dialect of a specific region, but as a written language, developed over a process of several hundred years, in which writers tried to write in a way that was understood in the largest area. Until about 1800 Standard German was almost entirely a written language. In this time, people in northern Germany, who spoke Low Saxon dialects very different from Standard German, learnt it almost like a foreign language. Later the Northern pronunciation was considered standard and spread southward; in some regions (such as around Hanover) the local dialect completely died out. It is thus the spread of Standard German as a language taught at school that defines the German Sprachraum, i.e. a political decision rather than a direct consequence of dialect geography, allowing areas with dialects of very limited mutual comprehensibility to participate in the same cultural sphere (literature, and more recently mass media). In German linguistics, only the traditional regional varieties of German are called dialects, not the different varieties of standard German. The latter are known as Umgangssprachen and on the territory of Germany have begun to replace the traditional dialects from the 19th century. They constitute a mixture of old dialectal elements with Standard German. In German, Standard German is usually called Hochdeutsch, a somewhat misleading term since it collides with the linguistic term High German. Hoch "high" in the term for the standard language refers to "high" in a cultural or educational sense, while in the linguistic term it simply refers to the Geography of Germany, High German of the Southern uplands and the Alps contrasting with Low German spoken in the lowlands stretching towards the North Sea. To avoid this confusion, some refer to Standard German as Standarddeutsch 'standard German', deutsche Standardsprache 'German standard language', or if the context of the German language is clear, simply Standardsprache 'standard language'. Traditionally, though, the language spoken in the high mountainous areas of southern Germany is referred to as Oberdeutsch 'Upper German', while Hochdeutsch remains the common term for the standard language.
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