517: Linguistics and Colonialism May 8, 2016

Continuing from yesterday's post, the sound shift occurred between the 5th and 8th centuries that separated Low and High German was not the first major consonant shift, nor was it the only one at the time. What we now know as Germany now was fragmented linguistically and politically into small states up until after the Renaissance. It was partly for this reason that Germany did not colonize the Americas, and tried to later catch up to its rivals which had had more centralized governments by colonizing Africa and attempting to conquer Europe in the World Wars. Only when Martin Luther translated the bible and sold printed versions all over Germany that the language became standardized.