Is Standard German an artificial language?
Middle Low Saxon variant:
Unse Vader in dem Hemmel.
Dyn Name werde gehilliget.
Dyn Ryke kame, Dyn Wille geschee´
Up Erden alse im Hemmel.
Unse dagelike Brod giff uns huden.
Und vorgiff uns unse Schulde.
Alse wy unsen Schuldeners vorgèuen.
Unde vore uns nicht in Vorsokinge.
Sunder vorlose uns van dem Ouel.
Wente dyne is dat Ryke unde de Krafft
Unde de Herlicheit in Ewicheit.Amen
www.archive.org/stream/cu31924026570758/cu31924026570758_djvu.txt
Back in the day they called it 'Diets'. The linguistic horizon indeed stretched farther than just the Low Lands. I'm just not quite sure how far in the Plattdüütsch region is was still considered the 'same language' in the XVIIth century.
Anyway, there are some Germans living near the Dutch border who live more with the Netherlands, but the Plattdüütsch area is nowadays the most aimed toward Standard High German.
We still musn't forget the linguistic perception of the past of course.
<<to be perfectly honest you could quite resonably call Dutch a German dialect too>>
English too
<<Yeah. What's up with Brennus? LOL!>>
I still have a feeling he's here among us
"It is not a hazard if it is in the catholic Germany that the local dialects are the most spoken."
You mean, "it's not by chance that local dialects abound in catholic Germany"
The Al-Dietse Beweging of course never became really popular, and it's out-dated now Germany is a true federation. ;-) I have indeed heard about it.
The Aldietse Beweging was a pan-nationalist movement in the secular section of the Flemish Movement and among Dutch nationalists. It stopped existing by the 1900s. It was also a problem forming a state with Catholics, Calvinists and Lutherans.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Aldietsterritorium.png
Nowadays there is a party in Groningen, Drenthe and Friesland, de Partij van het Noorden, who seek for more autonomy within the Netherlands and also seek more cooperation with the German state of Niedersachsen.
There is Front National in France.
In France, the politic problematics of the "Front National" concern more interior subjects than exterior ones (i've never heard that this party would want to make again increase France until Rhine river).
N-SA is not to be compared with Front National, but with a very small extreme right party that is internally divided on its turn. Marginal nutters as I've stated previously. In fact, they're as rare as these French we seek to restore the Latin Rhine border. Only one person of the N-SA I've seen expressing this dream on a political forum, taken seriously by no one. I even think he's the one who made that map.
I even think that only a minority of the N-SA'ers on their turn seek to restore the whole Netherlands (which were there by feudalism and hereditary rule only) of before 1568.
You can compare Front National with a bigger party like Vlaams Belang (actually you can't, VB is pro-Zionist), who only seek Flemish independance and with a minority who seeks a political union between Flanders and the Netherlands. Also these people are marginal, but not rare.
<<
<<to be perfectly honest you could quite resonably call Dutch a German dialect too>>
English too
>>
According to Shuimo, even languages such as Hindi, Greek, Russian, Spanish, Sanskrit, Hittite, Hungarian, Finnish, Basque, and Etruscan are all just dialects of German.
It wasn't the Front National that annexed Flemish land from down the Somme and over to Lille and Flemish places now officially in expansionist Walloonia.
It was the other French Fascists - mainstream French government political Imperialism - has unleashed on French Basqueland, Switzerland, Luxemburg, Brittany, Flanders, German speaking Belgium, French Catalania French Flanders, Elssass and Lotheringen, Savoy, Corsica, Andorra, Saarland, Monaco and don't forget Algeria was claimed an integral part of France.
French Imperialism is a greater Fascism then the great-satan demonized Vlaams-blokes could ever dream of being and it still goes on and on today.
Problem I still have with French mentality is lack of self-criticism due to the nationalism still mainstream. Germans have got over that. Still, it used to be way worse. I can call France a 'civilized' country in the end very still.