Intelligibility of High and Low German to Speakers of Dutch

This paper reports on the intelligibility of Low German and High German for speakers of Dutch. Two aspects are considered. First, we assessed the relative intelligibility of Low and High German for Dutchmen in general. Second, we concentrated on Low German and compared the understanding of listeners from the Dutch-German border area with listeners from other areas in the Netherlands. The results show that Dutchmen understand more High German than Low German and that subjects from the border area understand more Low German than subjects from other parts of the country. A larger amount of previous experience with High German than with Low German seems to explain the first result while phonetic proximity plays an important role in the second result.