Editing Plautdietsch (section)

==Status==
Plautdietsch is primarily a spoken language, and does not have an official orthography. However, there have been attempts to create a written form of the language. One of the main issues facing the development of an official orthography is the variation in pronunciation among various speech communities. Another hindrance to the unification of the language is the fact that most Plautdietsch speaking people are not found in one geographical region, being spread across North America (Canada, the United States, Mexico), Central America and South America. Noteworthy attempts at an orthography include those done by Fast (1982), Reimer (1982), Reimer et al. (1983), Epp (1996), Loewen (1996, 1998), and Heinrichs et al. (2001).<ref name=":2">{{Cite book |title=Verbal complementation in Mennonite ''Plautdietsch'': A constructional, corpus-based approach |last=Cox, Christopher Douglas |year=2008 |publisher=University of Alberta |location=Edmonton, Alberta |page=incl. 28 |doi=10.7939/r3-e73f-xr73 |url=https://era.library.ualberta.ca/items/6311a97a-4dd1-41a0-8800-81a501e22d0b}} [a master thesis]</ref> Despite the absence of an official orthography, there are quite a few written texts in the Plautdietsch language.{{sfnp|Burns|2016}}{{page needed|date=July 2023}}<ref name=":2" /> A significant example is the Bible, whose New Testament was published in 1987 and the complete version subsequently published in 2005. It shares grammatical and lexical similarities with other varieties of Low German, and in general it is intelligible to other Low German speakers after some acquaintance. On the other hand, it has several developments and sound shifts not found in any other Low German dialect.