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Pommersch is a group of East Low German dialects. It is named after Pommern, the German name for Pomerania, and is therefore sometimes known in English as Pomeranian. However, it should not be confused with the West Slavic Pomeranian language (known as Pomoranisch in German). Pommersch is also sometimes known as pommersch Platt in German.

The territory south of the Baltic Sea was known as Magna Germania and in 98 AD described by Tacitus and later historians and geographers with a number of eastern Germanic tribes.

By the early middle-ages land which for the first time was named Pomerania in a Holy Roman Empire document in 1046, was largely populated by people referred to as West Slavic Pomeranians who spoke the Pomeranian language. During the Middle Ages, German colonists from western parts of German empire began settling in Pomerania as part of the medieval Ostsiedlung. Most native Pomeranians gradually became Germanized. The Low German Language of the Hanseatic League was used throughout the territories surrounding the Baltic Sea. The East Low German language of the colonists were influenced by the local Pomeranian and Polabian languages, creating Pommersch.

Beginning in 1945, Germans east of the Oder-Neisse Line were expelled to western Germany after World War II. Most of the Pommersch dialects have largely died out in the following decades as the expellees were assimilated into their new homes, although Pommersch dialects are still spoken in Hither Pomerania, part of the German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

Pommersch dialects formerly or currently spoken in Pomerania include:

• Westpommersch or Mecklenburgisch-Pommersch, a dialect of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania
• Westmittelpommersch and Ostmittelpommersch, dialects of Mark-Brandenburgisch
• East Pomeranian (Ostpommersch, now extinct)
  • Westpreußisch (in West Prussia)
  • Westhinterpommersch (in western Further Pomerania)
  • Osthinterpommersch (in eastern Further Pomerania)
  • Bublitzisch (in Bublitz, now Bobolice, Poland)
  • Pommerellisch (in Pomerelia)

The German dialects of Pomerania are compiled in the Pommersche Wörterbuch ("Pomeranian Dictionary"), a dictionary of the German dialects spoken within the Province of Pomerania's borders in 1936.

Pomeranian dialects of East Low German are also spoken in Brazil (see Pomerode, Santa Catarina, and Santa Maria de Jetibá, Espírito Santo).

This article incorporates text translated from the corresponding German Wikipedia article as of September 28, 2006.