Talk:Middle German

Zentraldeutsch
"Zentraldeutsch (rarely)" was used as a German translation for Central German on this page, and on a few other languages' Wikipedias. I removed it, because a Google search for Zentraldeutsch mostly displays Wikipedia pages, and a search for "Zentraldeutsch" without the "rarely" gets little apart from international Wikipedia pages too - I believe this shows it isn't a widely-used enough term to justify its inclusion. Responsible? (talk) 05:53, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Term not recommended
It is important not to give the impression that linguists use the term "Middle German" for all three meanings. In English, linguists don't use it at all these days. As a synonym for "Central German" it is found in older textbooks, but today is only used by Germans who don't know the English term and make their own loan-translation of Mitteldeutsch. To refer to the medieval forms of the language it never has been used in textbooks, and only occurs when non-specialists want an equivalent of "Middle English" and don't understand that the "High" and "Low" are necessary parts of the term. This disambiguation page is important to help readers who come across sloppy writing to understand what is meant, but mustn't appear to recommend the usage, as the term is erroneous in all three senses. Doric Loon (talk) 14:20, 3 September 2022 (UTC)