for Jerry and others:

Re: the differences between German, Plattdeutsch, Dutch and Flemish.
Plattdeutsch is considered to be not a dialect of German (as e.g. Bavarian) but a language of its own. It is not a well known fact that there are two languages officially admitted for usage in the German Parliament: German and Plattdeutsch (other minorities languages like, e.g., Danish, are not admitted). Plattdeutsch is not Dutch, but more similar to Dutch than it is to German. The boundaries, however, are vague. When I listen to Plattdeutsch I have a small chance of following the conversation though I'd prefer a Scottish highlander's dialect for ease of understanding. Of Dutch, I understand nothing. The Plattdeutsch speaking people, however, understand their immediate Dutch neighbours easily though their difficulties in understanding Dutch increase with increasing distance of the Dutch speaker from the German border. As far as I know, they do not understand Flemish though their immediate Dutch neighbours do.
Wolfgang