In German linguistics, the Benrath line (German: Benrather Linie), jokingly also called the Weißwurstäquator, is an isogloss, or bundle of isoglosses, marking the border between the Northern Low German dialects and the High and Central German dialects in the south. The Line runs from Benrath (part of Düsseldorf) to East Germany in the area of Berlin and Magdeburg. The Weißwurstäquator (literally: white sausage equator) is a humorous term describing an imaginary border running through Germany that divides the country into the Southern part in which Weißwurst is consumed and the Northern part, in which these sausages are neither eaten nor considered edible. ... An isogloss is the geographical boundary of a certain linguistic feature, e. ... Subdivisions East Low German Low Franconian Low Saxon Low German (in Low German, Platt(düütsch) or Nedderdüütsch) is any of a variety of West Germanic languages spoken in northern Germany and the Netherlands. ... Subdivisions Central German Upper German High German (in German, Hochdeutsch) is any of several German dialects spoken in Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, and Luxembourg (as well as in neighbouring portions of Belgium, France (Alsace), Italy, Poland, and Romania (Transylvania) and in some areas of former colonial settlement, for example in... Central German (in German: Mitteldeutsch) is a group of German dialects spread from the Rhineland to Thuringia, south of Low German and north of Upper German. ... Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia. ... The German Democratic Republic (GDR) (German: Deutsche Demokratische Republik), also commonly known as East Germany, was a communist state that existed from 1949 to 1990 in the former Soviet occupation zone of Germany. ...   Berlin? (pronounced: , German ) is the capital of Germany and its largest city, with 3,426,000 inhabitants (as of January 2005); down from 4. ... Magdeburg, the capital city of the Bundesland of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, lies on the Elbe river. ...

In the course of the High German consonant shift (3rd to 9th centuries AD), in the first three phases of which the Low German dialects did not participate, the West Germanic languages were separated along this line. The group of languages south of the line developed into High German – while the other West Germanic languages (English, Dutch, Frisian, and Low German) developed separately. In historical linguistics, the High German consonant shift or Second Germanic consonant shift (German: hochdeutsche or zweite germanische Lautverschiebung) was a phonological development (sound change) which took place in the southern dialects of German in several phases, probably beginning between the 3rd and 5th centuries AD, and was almost complete... West Germanic is the largest branch of the Germanic family of languages, including such languages as English, Dutch, and German. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Frisian is a Germanic language, or group of closely related languages, spoken by around half a million members of an ethnic group living on the southern fringes of the North Sea in the Netherlands and Germany. ... Subdivisions East Low German Low Franconian Low Saxon Low German (in Low German, Platt(düütsch) or Nedderdüütsch) is any of a variety of West Germanic languages spoken in northern Germany and the Netherlands. ...

The Benrath line is also known as the "Maken-machen line", as it marks the boundary between maken in the Low German dialects and machen in the High German ones (both mean "to make").

Since the beginning of the 1990s the eastern end of the Benrath line has moved northwards, so the predominant dialect in Saxony-Anhalt has become an East Central German Thuringian-Upper Saxon dialect, heavily influenced by Standard German. Until the Second World War, in the North, by far the majority of areas spoke East Low Saxon dialects. With an area of 20,447 km² and a population of 2. ... The Free State of Thuringia (German Freistaat Thüringen) lies in central Germany and is among the smaller of the countrys sixteen Bundesländer (federal states), with an area of 16,200 sq. ... German (called Deutsch in German; in German the term germanisch is equivalent to English Germanic), is a member of the western group of Germanic languages and is one of the worlds major languages. ... Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km into the air. ...

External links

• Varieties of German
• Maps of the Benrath line