Upper Saxon German

Upper Saxon, known in German as Obersächsisch, is an East Central German dialect historically spoken across much of the modern state of Saxony and in nearby parts of southeastern Saxony-Anhalt and eastern Thuringia. By the early twenty-first century it had largely died out as a distinct system, replaced in daily use by a newer regiolect closer to Standard German, so today it survives mainly as a regional flavor of the standard language rather than a fully separate dialect. Its most recognizable historical feature was the pronunciation of the vowels written o and u as centralized sounds, which speakers of other German dialects often heard as something closer to o umlaut and u umlaut. Despite its decline as a spoken form, Upper Saxon shaped Standard German profoundly, since the modern standard language draws heavily on Upper Saxon vocabulary and grammar, largely because Martin Luther based his Bible translation on this speech in the early 1500s. It belongs to the Indo-European, Germanic, West Germanic, High German, Central German, and East Central German branches.