 middle low german or middle saxon (iso 639-3 code gml) is a language that is the descendant of old saxon and the ancestor of modern low german. it served as the international lingua franca of the hanseatic league. it was spoken from about 1100 to 1600. ==related languages== middle low german is a term used with varying degrees of inclusivity. it is distinguished from middle high german, spoken to the south, which was later replaced by early modern high german. it is sometimes taken to mean the dialect continuum of all the other high medieval continental west germanic dialects, from flanders in the west to the eastern baltic, but it is sometimes seen as separate from western varieties such as middle dutch.d. nicholas, 2009. the northern lands: germanic europe, c. 1270âc.1500. chichester: wiley-blackwell. pp. 180-98. middle low german provided a large number of loanwords to languages spoken around the baltic sea as a result of the activities of hanseatic traders. it is considered the largest single source of loanwords in the north germanic languages, estonian and latvian. ==history== middle low german was the lingua franca of the hanseatic league, spoken all around the north sea and the baltic sea. it used to be thought that the language of lÃ¼beck was dominant enough to become a normative standard (the so-called lÃ¼becker norm) for an emergent spoken and written standard, but more recent work has established that there is no evidence for this and that middle low german was non-standardised.mÃ¤hl, s. (2012). low german texts from late medieval sweden. in l. elmevik and e. h. jahr (eds), contact between low german and scandinavian in the late middle ages: 25 years of research, acta academiae regiae gustavi adolphi, 121. uppsala: kungl. gustav adolfs akademien fÃ¶r svensk folkkultur. 113â22 (at p. 118). traces of the importance of middle low german can be seen by the many loanwords found in the [[scandinavian languages|sc
German_dialects Hanseatic_League History_of_the_German_language Low_German Medieval_languages