New High German
Encyclopedia
New High German is the term used for the most recent period in the history of the German language
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

. It is a translation of the German Neuhochdeutsch (Nhd). It includes all of the modern High German dialects
High German languages
The High German languages or the High German dialects are any of the varieties of standard German, Luxembourgish and Yiddish, as well as the local German dialects spoken in central and southern Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Luxembourg and in neighboring portions of Belgium and the...

 since the Baroque period, but is often used as a synonym for Standard German
Standard German
Standard German is the standard variety of the German language used as a written language, in formal contexts, and for communication between different dialect areas...

.

The German term was originally coined in 1848 by Jakob Grimm for the period from 1500 to the present day, following on from Middle High German
Middle High German
Middle High German , abbreviated MHG , is the term used for the period in the history of the German language between 1050 and 1350. It is preceded by Old High German and followed by Early New High German...

 (Mittelhochdeutsch). However, Wilhelm Scherer
Wilhelm Scherer
Wilhelm Scherer , German philologist and historian of literature.-Life:...

 redefined it as the period from 1650, introducing a new term Frühneuhochdeutsch (Early New High German
Early New High German
Early New High German is a term for the period in the history of the German language, generally defined, following Wilhelm Scherer, as the period 1350 to 1650.Alternative periodisations take the period to begin later; e.g...

) for the period 1350-1650, and this is the most widely adopted periodisation of German. In this sense, the beginning of New High German is marked by the "first German novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

", Grimmelshausen
Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen
Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen was a German author.-Biography:Grimmelshausen was born at Gelnhausen. At the age of ten he was kidnapped by Hessian soldiery, and in their midst tasted the adventures of military life in the Thirty Years' War...

's Simplicius Simplicissimus.

The New High German period is characterised by the codification of German grammar
Grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...

 and the development of a standard language in both writing and speech. Unlike earlier periods, there have been few major changes in phonology
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...

 or morphology
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...

. Rather, the standard language has selected particular features and these choices have then exerted an influence on individual German dialects.

Sources

Jakob Grimm Deutsches Wörterbuch
Deutsches Wörterbuch
Das Deutsche Wörterbuch / Deutsches Wörterbuch is one of the most important dictionaries of the German language...

: Definition of neuhochdeutsch

Jakob Grimm, Geschichte der deutschen Sprache (Leipzig 1848)

Wilhelm Scherer
Wilhelm Scherer
Wilhelm Scherer , German philologist and historian of literature.-Life:...

, Zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache (Berlin 1868)

C.J.Wells, German. A Linguistic History to 1945 Oxford 1987. ISBN 0-19-815809-2
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