New High German

The most important characteristic of the period is the development of a standard written German, followed by the standardisation of the spoken language.

[8] The 1641 publication of Justus Georg Schottelius's Teutsche Sprachkunst marks the beginning of the debate about a standardized national language.

[14][7] For the first two hundred years of the period, the linguistic boundary of German remained relatively stable, even where the territory itself changed hands, as in Alsace, a French possession since the Treaty of Westphalia.

[17] At the end of the Second World War the German-speaking populations of Bohemia and the land east of the Oder-Neisse line, which became part of Poland, were forcibly expelled.

Rather, the standard language has selected particular features and these choices have then exerted an influence on individual German dialects.