The German Language

[abaris]

I also took a class in Medieval literature in my masters program and I recall the professor told us that old English is closer to modern English than Medieval English is. Does that hold true with German also?

Middle High German is understandable, most of all readable, with some getting used to. But that's the language of the famous medieval poets, not of the commoners. And the authorities still wrote their documents largely in Latin.

It was only with Martin Luther, his bible translation and the printing press that something like a universal German language surfaced. And still there are too many dialects to count. Some of them barely understandable to me.