Settlers descending from the stem duchies of Saxony, Franconia, and Bavaria, as well as Thuringia and Flanders, moved into the Margravate of Meissen between the Elbe and Saale rivers,[4] formerly populated by Polabian Slavs.

[5] Due to the influence and prestige of the Electorate of Saxony during the Baroque era (17th to 18th century), and especially its role as a focal point of artists and scientists, the language of the Upper Saxon elite (but not of its ordinary people) was considered the exemplary variant of German during that period.

The literary theorist Johann Christoph Gottsched (1700–1766), who spent most of his adult life in Leipzig, considered Saxony's upper-class speech as the guiding form of standard German.

One motive of the parents of German national poet Johann Wolfgang Goethe (a native of Frankfurt) to send him to study in Leipzig was to adopt a more sophisticated language.

In 1783, philosopher Johann Erich Biester, residing in the Prussian capital of Berlin, rated the "unpleasant singsong" and "highly peculiar confusion of b and p, of d and t"—even among upper-class speakers—"very crude".

Final -er is pronounced [oˤ] (or similarly, depending on the subdialect), which speakers of other German dialects tend to hear as [oː]; e.g. [ˈheːo̯ˤ] 'higher' (Standard [ˈhøːɐ̯] höher) is misheard as if written hä(h)er.

[citation needed] The Upper Saxon varieties outside the Ore Mountains can be easily recognized by the supposed "softening" (lenition) of the voiceless stop consonants /p/, /t/ and /k/.