Danzig German
German dialect
Danzig German (German: Danziger Deutsch) are Northeastern German dialects spoken in Gdańsk, Poland. It forms part of the Low Prussian dialect that was spoken in the region before the mass-expulsion of the speakers following the end of World War II. Nowadays, Danzig German is only passed within families.
History
In the 12th century, a German merchant settlement in the area of today's Long Market of Gdańsk arose, close to a Prussian-Kashubian settlement, creating a language contact between Slavic languages, Baltic languages, and Germanic languages. The settlement attracted more German settlers, mainly from Lower Saxony, Westphalia and Hannover, whose Low German language became the dominating language. As subject of the Teutonic Order the town grew to a German town granted Magdeburg law.
As part of the Hanseatic League, the town acquired a Platt dialect that also derived elements from the Dutch, Prussian, and from local Kashubian and Polish language as well. For example, plûz, zuk, Pomuchel (cod), Kujel (boar) are borrowings from the Polish language.
The city's official communication employed Low German until 1563, when a letter in Low German was sent to Nieuport, while neighboring Elbing and Braunsberg had switched to High German by the middle of the 15th century. With the spread of High German through education, Danzig Platt was spoken only by a small fraction of the city's population. Still, Danzig Platt literature started to evolve at the end of the 18th century.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Danzig German” as german dialect. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q95357930. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1563.
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This entry incorporates text from “Danzig German” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.