World Language Map

Where is Eastern Low German spoken?

Eastern Low German is an Indo-European language, spoken in Germany and the Netherlands. It is marked on the map by a ringed point.

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Where Eastern Low German is spoken

Eastern Low German is spoken in 2 countries: Germany and the Netherlands. The table gives the share of each country’s people who speak it, from Unicode CLDR, where CLDR has a figure.

CountryShare of populationEstimated speakers
Germany12%10,094,292
Netherlands11%1,954,964

Estimated speakers are the CLDR percentage applied to CLDR’s own population figure for the country, so they are rough. A country without a figure may still have speakers: it is listed because the language area, or Glottolog’s record, reaches it.

Eastern Low German has no area on the map because no open area map covers it. The ringed point is the position Glottolog gives for the language.

How many people speak Eastern Low German?

Wikidata holds no speaker count for this language. The table above has rough per-country estimates from Unicode CLDR.

Status: Threatened. Glottolog lists it as threatened: it is still spoken by all generations, but there are signs that the number of speakers is falling.

Where Eastern Low German sits in the language family tree

Glottolog classifies Eastern Low German as follows, from the largest family down to the language itself.

  1. Indo-European
  2. Classical Indo-European
  3. Germanic
  4. Northwest Germanic
  5. West Germanic
  6. North Sea Germanic
  7. Altsächsisch
  8. Middle-Modern Low German
  9. Low German
  10. Greater East Low German
  11. Eastern Low German

Related languages

Other languages in the Greater East Low German group:

More about Eastern Low German

Codes: ISO 639-3 nds, Glottolog nort2627. Glottolog macroarea: Eurasia.

Questions about Eastern Low German

Where is Eastern Low German spoken?

Eastern Low German is spoken in Germany and the Netherlands. Unicode CLDR puts it at 12% of the population of Germany, which is about 10,094,292 people. On the map it is shown as a single point, because no open area map covers it.

Which language family is Eastern Low German in?

Glottolog places Eastern Low German in the Indo-European family, in the branch Classical Indo-European, Germanic, Northwest Germanic, West Germanic, North Sea Germanic, Altsächsisch, Middle-Modern Low German, Low German and Greater East Low German.

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