This process of Germanisation began in earnest in the late seventeenth century, after the demise of the Hanseatic League and thus the erosion of its Middle-Saxon-speaking power.

While there have been many varieties of Missingsch throughout Northern Germany, those of larger cities are best known, such as those of Hamburg, Bielefeld, Bremen, Flensburg and Danzig.

The name Missingsch refers to the city of Meissen (Meißen), which lies outside the traditional Saxon-speaking region (although the state in which it is situated at one time acquired the misleading name Saxony, originally the name of what is now Northern Germany).

Its Low German/Low Saxon influences are not restricted to its phonology but involve morphological and syntactic structures (sentence construction) and its lexicon (vocabulary) as well.

It is a type of German variety with the minimally qualifying characteristic of a clearly noticeable Low German/Low Saxon substratum.

Typical Berlinerisch is thus technically a Missingsch group with an additional Western Slavic (probably Old Lower Sorbian) substratum, since before Saxon and Low Franconian[citation needed] colonisation the area was Slavic-speaking.