Westphalian is one of the major dialect groups of West Low German. Its most salient feature is the diphthongization (rising diphthongs). For example, we get iEten instead of E:ten for eat. (There is also a difference in the use of consonants within the Westphalian dialects: North of the Wiehengebirge, people tend to speak hard consonants, south of the Wiehengebirge they speak soft consonants, e.g. Foite <-> Foide.) The Westphalian dialect region includes the north-eastern part of North Rhine-Westphalia, i.e. the former Prussian province of Westphalia excluding the Siegerland, and the region around Osnabrück. West Low German is a group of Plattdüütsch dialects spoken in Northwest Germany and East Netherlands. ... North Rhine-Westphalia (German: Nordrhein-Westfalen or short: NRW) is - in population and economic output - the largest Federal State of Germany. ... The coat of arms of the Kingdom of Prussia, 1701-1918 The word Prussia (German: Preußen or Preussen, Polish: Prusy, Lithuanian: Prusai, Latin: Borussia) has had various (often contradictory) meanings: The land of the Baltic Prussians (in what is now parts of southern Lithuania, the Kaliningrad exclave of Russia and... The Siegerland is a region of Germany covering the old district of Siegen (now part of the district of Siegen-Wittgenstein in North Rhine-Westphalia) and the upper part of the district of Altenkirchen, belonging to the Rhineland-Palatinate adjoining it to the west. ... Osnabrück is a city in Lower Saxony, Germany, some 80km NNE of Dortmund, 45km NE of Münster, and some 100km due West of Hanover. ...
The common ancestor of all languages comprising this branch is Proto-Germanic, spoken in approximately the latter mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age Northern Europe.
The Gothic language was written in the Gothic alphabet developed by Bishop Ulfilas for his translation of the Bible in the 4th century.
The linguistic contact of the Viking settlers of the Danelaw with the Anglo-Saxons left traces in the English language, and is suspected to have facilitated the collapse of Old English grammar that resulted in Middle English from the 12th century.
To the North and Northwest, it is neighboured by the Danish language and by the Frisian language.
The Saterland Frisian is the only remnant of East Frisian language and is, outside East Frisia surrounded by Low German, as are the few remaining North Frisian varieties, and the Low German dialects of those regions have Frisian influences on account of Frisian substrates.
The neighbour languages within the dialect continuum of the West Germanic languages were Middle Dutch in the West and Middle High German in the South, later substituted by Early New High German.
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