I'm cross posting this because it might, in a tiny number of situations, have relevence to all German research, especially the last few paragraphs. Jump down the page to ***Main Point*** if you don't want to wade through my preliminary comments.
Background: The Swiss-L list has been having a discussion of the languages of Switzerland for the past few days. I started out to explain what the term High German was originally intended to mean but came across the idea that pronunciation of standard German before 1800 was not 'standard'.
The terms High German (Hochdeutsch) and Low German (Niederdeutch or Plattdeutsch) were originally used to name the two subgroups of West Germanic dialects, (vs the North Germanic group, i.e. the Scandinavian languages). The 'high' in High German was never intended to suggest better or standard. The 'high' refered to altitude. The dialects of High German were called that because they were part of the West Germanic languages/dialects on the south and therefore spoken by people generally living at higher altitudes. High German includes all the variations of Swiss German, standard German, Luxemburgish, Yiddish, Swabian, Hessian, Saxon, Alsatian, Palatine and others. The High German languages underwent a consonant and vowel shift that the Low German dialects did not. Low German includes Dutch, Pommeranian, and others including Frisian and English according to some linguists.
High German dialects are further divided into three groups named Central German, Upper German, and Yiddish. Each of those are dividided into other subgroups.
Standard German developed out of High German. The following is a quote from the Wikipedia article on High German:
The German term Hochdeutsch is also used loosely, but not by linguists, to mean standard written German as opposed to dialect, because the standard language developed out of High rather than Low German. This is based on a misunderstanding, and the attempt to rationalise it by suggesting that "high" means "official" doesn't solve the problem. In English, "High German" has never been used to mean "Standard German".
See
Based on the way the Swiss members of this list used the term 'High German' in the past few days during this discussion, it apparently means standard German in Switzerland.
According to the German language article in Wikipedia, what is now standard German was apparently developing out of several dialects to be understandable to the most Germanic speakers and received a strong endorsement when Martin Luther published his translation of the Bible in sections beginning in 1522.
No, I did not know all of this except I knew that 'high' was not a qualitative part of High German. I spent an hour reading about all of this just now. A cozy thing to do after a cold day outside. There are controversial areas in the classifications and the three articles above disagree on various details but not on where the terms 'high' and 'low' came from.
When I try to help people find out what their ancestors 'real' German surname was, I use my limited knowledge of standard German. Because of variations in how to spell the same sound, I usually look for a sound not a spelling and therefore look for a group of spellings. For example, in one list someone was looking for their ancestor whose name had been spelled Niemeyer, Niemaier, and Nuemaier after coming to the U.S. I pointed out that the spellings represented two groups and possibly a third. They were:
1. Niemeyer, Niemaier, Niemeier, Niemayer etc (vowel sound in first syllable is "ee" as in English feet).
2. Neumeyer, Neumaier, Neumeier, etc (vowel sound in first syllable is 'oy' as in English toy).
3. Neimeyer, Neimaier, etc (vowel in first syllable is 'y' as in English try).
To a standard German speaker, the three initial vowel sounds would never be confused and therefore must be considered three different surnames.
For various reasons, I speculated that the Nuemaier was really Neumaier (and therefore group #2)and found a good candidate for his ancestor in the Southwest Germany emigration database but on his way to Poland with his family many years before coming to the U.S. Everything fits, in my opinion, for the person to then further migrate to the U.S. when he became and adult--including the historical movements at the time.
***Main Point***
I'm thinking that my only tool regarding German surnames has been standard German. But after reading the quote below, it seems like a good book on dialectical pronunciation might help a few people through their Atlantic ocean brick walls. In other words, how did American officials perceive and therefore write their ancestors' surnames (in a census, for example). Knowing how a person's ancestor pronounced his name could give a clue to the region if all one knows is that they came from Germany. This would take some pretty good knowledge and sleuthing and be unfuitful in most cases. Here is the quote from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_language:
"Until about 1800, standard German was almost only a written language. At this time, people in urban northern Germany, who spoke dialects very different from Standard German, learnt it almost like a foreign language and tried to pronounce it as close to the spelling as possible. Prescriptive pronunciation guides used to consider northern German pronunciation to be the standard. However, the actual pronunciation of standard German varies from region to region.
. . . In 1860, grammatical and orthographic rules first appeared in the Duden Handbook. In 1901, this was declared the standard definition of the German language."
I'll have to check with a few linguists who specialize in Germanic dialects to see if my idea is even feasible.
Regards,
Paul from the Northwest U.S. where it rained all day and made for a cold and went day on the job.