WurdBendur wrote:
There's more than a little difference between constructing an artificial language and selecting words or usages from a number of closely-related dialects for the purpose of mutual understanding. The latter is more along the lines of careful diction.
The process of creating modern German went much deeper. The grammar had to been created. The German dialects differ in their grammatical structure significantly: My home dialect e.g. works with two cases: One case used for the Nominative and for the Accusative, the other case combines Genitive and Dative. Other German dialects combine Dative and Accusative (like modern English). The whole system of the Conjunctive has been created along the line of the Latin grammar and can not been found in any of the German dialects (the most German still struggle with the Conjunctive, especially with Conjunctive II). You also find hardly in any German dialect a Future II or a Passive. The most dialects work just with an Indicative, three or even two cases and one form for the Perfect, the Presents and the future.
The mind-blowing complexity of modern German can be only explained from the adoption of a Latin grammar on the top of Germanic languages.
WurdBendur wrote:
And certainly Martin Luther's translation of the Bible had a significant influence on which dialect words and expressions became more common, but you have to remember that they were selected from an existing base of German dialects, which were divided as many other languages were at the time. With increased ease of communication, a few dialects inevitably tend to overwhelm the others.
This is going on within the dialects in Germany, were eg. the Frankfurt dialect becomes more-and-more dominate above other dialects of this region. But the promotion of the modern German was project of the elites how needed a fully employed language for administrative and culture needs. Something the dialects could not serve well.
WurdBendur wrote:
And the fact that some words and structures were taken from Latin is no more to the point than the fact that we use Japanese terms when translating manga. It's called borrowing, and all languages do it as most translators try to be true to the source, not to mention the borrowing of new ideas for which there are no native words (and Christianity is full of such concepts that non-Christians don't necessarily already have or need). Christian culture is where most of these borrowed concepts come from, but of course most were borrowed long before anyone would have bothered to construct an "artificial" German.
But you you don't the need of translating such stuff prior the late 15th century when slowly the Roman Law became dominate and the administration was in need of translating the term of the Ius Commune into German.