German words from Low German

They're not all words from Low German if some of them were borrowed in 1400.

I imagine the confusion arises because "Low German" is, in the minds of non-linguists, an imprecise term. Some people group Dutch Low Saxon + German Low German, some people group DLS + GLG + Plautdietsch, you seem to group GLG + Middle Low German, someone else might group DLS + GLG + Plautdietsch + MLG. But as a linguistic work, we can't use non-linguists' conceptualizations of these lects. After all, some non-linguists group some or all of the preceding lects into "German" (which in turn may or may not include Middle High German); they would probably expect a list of e.g. English words derived from German to include words derived from Low German. I don't know of any practical way Wiktionary could cater to such people, except the way we already do, which is that we have linguistically-based categories which people can, on their own computers, combine any way they want.

Tangentially, I note that it isn't even necessarily the case that all words derived from modern Low German varieties derive from Middle Low German: in some cases, a Low German variety borrowed a word from another language (e.g. Polish) in the post-MLG period.

Okay. These seem to be "international" problems that I wasn't aware of. From a traditional German dialectologist point of view, Low German means those dialects of continental West Germanic that have not undergone the consonant shift -- with the exception of Low Franconian, although the very traditional view would also include Low Franconian in Low German. (Nota bene that there is a 18th or 19th century grammar of Dutch with the name of "Nederduytsche Spraakkunst".) Low German writers of High German used Low German words in High German texts. And whether they did that in 1550 or 1650 doesn't make much of a difference in my opinion. But okay... I've been adding quite a few etymologies marking words of Low German origin as from German Low German ( {{etym|nds-de|de}} ). How should I proceed in the future? Only use this tag when the word is attested in High German after 1600? And otherwise Middle Low German? Could we at least add an info to the lists saying "see also: words from German Low German" and "see also: words from Middle Low German"?

Btw, I do "admit" that I'm not a professional linguist. But this is the normal definition of Low German. Of course, also excluding Frisian which I forgot above.

How can I group Middle Low German and German Low German together? Middle Low German is an earlier form of Low German, which later may have split into DLS and GLG.

The point is that Low German has been spoken in northern Germany from the earliest days to the present. Over time words have made their way from the various dialects of Low German (because there has never been Low German as one language) into High German and later standard German. All of these are from Low German, in my point of view.

I'm not saying that there's no difference between Middle Low German and modern Low German, but nearly all Low German words in standard German date back to 15th ~ 17th century (the time when Low German adopted standard German). We're arbitrarily splitting them into two groups, just because one is attested a few decades earlier than the other.

I mean: Low German[s] adopted standard German... of course...

I mean: Low German[s] adopted standard German... of course...

Yes, if a word was borrowed before 1600, it was borrowed from Middle Low German, and if it was borrowed after that, it was borrowed from German Low German. Compare how béabhar derives from Middle English while gairdín derives from English, and how trousers derives from Middle Irish while keen derives from Irish.

We could add {{also}}s to the tops of Category:German terms derived from Middle Low German, Category:German terms derived from German Low German, Category:German terms derived from Dutch Low Saxon and potentially Category:German terms derived from Plautdietsch, linking them all to each other, and then do likewise for "Dutch terms derived from..." and all the other categories. Assuming we wouldn't have to modify the {{also}}s once they were placed, that wouldn't be the maintenance nightmare it might seem to be at first glance. (In any case, it'd be less of a maintenance nightmare than trying to conflate MLG and GLG, in my estimation.)

All right. I also see that making a theoretical distinction between Middle Low German and German Low German does make sense (at least in general). In this regard, my recommendation to add all MLG words to GLG was maybe not constructive.

I still think it would be best to make a new category "German words from Low German" which would contain all those words (MLG, GLG, Dutch Low Saxon [if there are any], Plautdietsch [about which, admittedly, I know little to nothing], and the like). Meaning that all these words would be in two categories (their original category and the new one).

But nevermind. Let's do it with the thing. Would you do that? Or should I try? I'm not an expert on these templates.