Note 1 — LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
Reading edition
Footnote 1:
(return)
The word "Middle" is used here as a geographical term. German philologists arrange the dialects into two main groups—High (South) and Low (North), and prefix to each the terms Old, Middle and New to distinguish epochs in the growth of each. According to this nomenclature, Old = Early, Middle = Late-Mediæval, New = Modern. The word Middle is unfortunate, as it may designate either age or locality. It designates both locality and age in the text above—i.e., the late-mediæval form of Middle Germany. In full, it should be "Middle-Middle." The Meissen dialect, it may be added, was the one adopted by Luther, and is the basis of all modern book-German. (See Rückert's Gesch. der neuhochd. Sprache, pp. 168-178.)