English

Alternative forms

• MLG (abbreviation)

Proper noun

Middle Low German

1. A language that descended from Old Saxon and is the ancestor of modern Low German, spoken from about 1100 to 1600.
   • The encyclopædia of geography, 1837

     The written language is nowhere spoken by the people; it was formed at the period when Luther, rejecting the Middle High and the Middle Low German, adopted in preference the dialect of Misnia or Meissen, which had begun to be written much later.

2. (specifically, rarer) The written standard of this language based on the dialects spoken on the eastern North Sea coast and western Baltic coast, opposed to the spoken dialects which were not used for official and international written communications.

Translations

See also

• Wiktionary's coverage of Middle Low German terms