Word old in germany

Old High German
Region	Central Europe
Era	Early Middle Ages
Language family	Indo-European Germanic West Germanic Old High German
Writing system	Runic, Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-2	goh
ISO 639-3	goh
Glottolog	oldh1241
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Old High German (OHG; German: Althochdeutsch (Ahd.)) is the earliest stage of the German language, conventionally covering the period from around 500/750 to 1050.
There is no standardised or supra-regional form of German at this period, and Old High German is an umbrella term for the group of continental West Germanic dialects which underwent the set of consonantal changes called the Second Sound Shift.

At the start of this period, the main dialect areas belonged to largely independent tribal kingdoms, but by 788 the conquests of Charlemagne had brought all OHG dialect areas into a single polity. The period also saw the development of a stable linguistic border between German and Gallo-Romance, later French.

The surviving OHG texts were all written in monastic scriptoria and, as a result, the overwhelming majority of them are religious in nature or, when secular, belong to the Latinate literary culture of Christianity. The earliest written texts in Old High German, glosses and interlinear translations for Latin texts, appear in the latter half of the 8th century. The importance of the church in the production of texts and the extensive missionary activity of the period have left their mark on the OHG vocabulary, with many new loans and new coinages to represent the Latin vocabulary of the church.

OHG largely preserves the synthetic inflectional system inherited from its ancestral Germanic forms, but the end of the period is marked by sound changes which disrupt these patterns of inflection, leading to the more analytic grammar of Middle High German. In syntax, the most important change was the development of new periphrastic tenses to express the future and passive.

Periodisation[edit]

Old High German is generally dated, following Willhelm Scherer, from around 750 to around 1050.^[1][2] The start of this period sees the beginning of the OHG written tradition, at first with only glosses, but with substantial translations and original compositions by the 9th century.^[2] However the fact that the defining feature of Old High German, the Second Sound Shift, may have started as early as the 6th century and is complete by 750, means that some take the 6th century to be the start of the period.^[a] Alternatively, terms such as Voralthochdeutsch («pre-OHG»)^[3] or vorliterarisches Althochdeutsch («pre-literary OHG»)^[4] are sometimes used for the period before 750.^[b] Regardless of terminology, all recognize a distinction between a pre-literary period and the start of a continuous tradition of written texts around the middle of the 8th century.^[5]

Differing approaches are taken, too, to the position of Langobardic. Langobardic is an Elbe Germanic and thus Upper German dialect, and it shows early evidence for the Second Sound Shift. For this reason, some scholars treat Langobardic as part of Old High German,^[6] but with no surviving texts — just individual words and names in Latin texts — and the speakers starting to abandon the language by the 8th century,^[7] others exclude Langobardic from discussion of OHG.^[8] As Heidermanns observes, this exclusion is based solely on the external circumstances of preservation and not on the internal features of the language.^[8]

The end of the period is less controversial. The sound changes reflected in spelling during the 11th century led to the remodelling of the entire system of noun and adjective declensions.^[9] There is also a hundred-year «dearth of continuous texts» after the death of Notker Labeo in 1022.^[5] The mid-11th century is widely accepted as marking the transition to Middle High German.^[10]

Territory[edit]

Old High German comprises the dialects of these groups which underwent the Second Sound Shift during the 6th Century, namely all of Elbe Germanic and most of the Weser-Rhine Germanic dialects.

The Franks in the western part of Francia (Neustria and western Austrasia) gradually adopted Gallo-Romance by the beginning of the OHG period, with the linguistic boundary later stabilised approximately along the course of the Meuse and Moselle in the east, and the northern boundary probably a little further south than the current boundary between French and Dutch.^[11] North of this line, the Franks retained their language, but it was not affected by the Second Sound Shift, which thus separated the Old Dutch varieties from the more easterly Franconian dialects which formed part of Old High German.^[12]

In the south, the Lombards, who had settled in Northern Italy, maintained their dialect until their conquest by Charlemagne in 774. After this the Germanic-speaking population, who were by then almost certainly bilingual, gradually switched to the Romance language of the native population, so that Langobardic had died out by the end of the OHG period.^[7]

At the beginning of the period, no Germanic language was spoken east of a line from Kieler Förde to the rivers Elbe and Saale, earlier Germanic speakers in the Northern part of the area having been displaced by the Slavs. This area did not become German-speaking until the German eastward expansion («Ostkolonisation») of the early 12th century, though there was some attempt at conquest and missionary work under the Ottonians.^[13]

The Alemannic polity was conquered by Clovis I in 496, and in the last twenty years of the 8th century Charlemagne subdued the Saxons, the Frisians, the Bavarians, and the Lombards, bringing all continental Germanic-speaking peoples under Frankish rule. While this led to some degree of Frankish linguistic influence, the language of both the administration and the Church was Latin, and this unification did not therefore lead to any development of a supra-regional variety of Frankish nor a standardized Old High German; the individual dialects retained their identity.

Dialects[edit]

There was no standard or supra-regional variety of Old High German—every text is written in a particular dialect, or in some cases a mixture of dialects. Broadly speaking, the main dialect divisions of Old High German seem to have been similar to those of later periods—they are based on established territorial groupings and the effects of the Second Sound Shift, which have remained influential until the present day. But because the direct evidence for Old High German consists solely of manuscripts produced in a few major ecclesiastical centres, there is no isogloss information of the sort on which modern dialect maps are based. For this reason the dialects may be termed «monastery dialects» (German Klosterdialekte).^[14]

The main dialects, with their bishoprics and monasteries:^[15]

• Central German
  • East Franconian: Fulda, Bamberg, Würzburg
  • Middle Franconian: Trier, Echternach, Cologne
  • Rhine Franconian: Lorsch, Speyer, Worms, Mainz, Frankfurt
  • South Rhine Franconian: Wissembourg
• Upper German
  • Alemannic: Murbach, Reichenau, Sankt Gallen, Strasbourg
  • Bavarian: Freising, Passau, Regensburg, Augsburg, Ebersberg, Wessobrunn, Benediktbeuern, Tegernsee, Salzburg, Mondsee

In addition, there are two poorly attested dialects:

• Thuringian is attested only in four runic inscriptions and some possible glosses.^[16]
• Langobardic was the dialect of the Lombards who invaded Northern Italy in the 6th century, and little evidence of it remains apart from names and individual words in Latin texts, and a few runic inscriptions. It declined after the conquest of the Lombard Kingdom by the Franks in 774. It is classified as Upper German on the basis of evidence of the Second Sound Shift.^[17]

The continued existence of a West Frankish dialect in the Western, Romanized part of Francia is uncertain. Claims that this might have been the language of the Carolingian court or that it is attested in the Ludwigslied, whose presence in a French manuscript suggests bilingualism, are controversial.^[15][16]

Literacy[edit]

Old High German literacy is a product of the monasteries, notably at St. Gallen, Reichenau Island and Fulda. Its origins lie in the establishment of the German church by Saint Boniface in the mid-8th century, and it was further encouraged during the Carolingian Renaissance in the 9th.
The dedication to the preservation of Old High German epic poetry among the scholars of the Carolingian Renaissance was significantly greater than could be suspected from the meagre survivals we have today (less than 200 lines in total between the Hildebrandslied and the Muspilli). Einhard tells how Charlemagne himself ordered that the epic lays should be collected for posterity.^[18] It was the neglect or religious zeal of later generations that led to the loss of these records. Thus, it was Charlemagne’s weak successor, Louis the Pious, who destroyed his father’s collection of epic poetry on account of its pagan content.^[19]

Rabanus Maurus, a student of Alcuin’s and abbot at Fulda from 822, was an important advocate of the cultivation of German literacy. Among his students were Walafrid Strabo and Otfrid of Weissenburg.

Towards the end of the Old High German period, Notker Labeo (d. 1022) was among the greatest stylists in the language, and developed a systematic orthography.^[20]

Writing system[edit]

While there are a few runic inscriptions from the pre-OHG period,^[21] all other OHG texts are written with the Latin alphabet, which, however, was ill-suited for representing some of the sounds of OHG. This led to considerable variations in spelling conventions, as individual scribes and scriptoria had to develop their own solutions to these problems.^[22] Otfrid von Weissenburg, in one of the prefaces to his Evangelienbuch, offers comments on and examples of some of the issues which arise in adapting the Latin alphabet for German: «…sic etiam in multis dictis scriptio est propter litterarum aut congeriem aut incognitam sonoritatem difficilis.» («…so also, in many expressions, spelling is difficult because of the piling up of letters or their unfamiliar sound.»)^[23] The careful orthographies of the OHG Isidor or Notker show a similar awareness.^[22]

Phonology[edit]

The charts show the vowel and consonant systems of the East Franconian dialect in the 9th century. This is the dialect of the monastery of Fulda, and specifically of the Old High German Tatian. Dictionaries and grammars of OHG often use the spellings of the Tatian as a substitute for genuine standardised spellings, and these have the advantage of being recognizably close to the Middle High German forms of words, particularly with respect to the consonants.^[24]

Vowels[edit]

Old High German had six phonemic short vowels and five phonemic long vowels. Both occurred in stressed and unstressed syllables. In addition, there were six diphthongs.^[25]

	front	central	back
short	long	short	long	short	long
close	i	iː		u	uː
mid	e, ɛ	eː		o	oː
open		a	aː
	Diphthongs
	ie		uo
	iu		io
	ei		ou

Notes:

1. Vowel length was indicated in the manuscripts inconsistently (though modern handbooks are consistent). Vowel letter doubling, a circumflex, or an acute accent was generally used to indicate a long vowel.^[26]
2. The short high and mid vowels may have been articulated lower than their long counterparts as in Modern German. This cannot be established from written sources.
3. All back vowels likely had front-vowel allophones as a result of umlaut.^[27] The front-vowel allophones likely became full phonemes in Middle High German. In the Old High German period, there existed [e] (possibly a mid-close vowel) from the umlaut of /a/ and /e/^{[clarification needed]} but it probably was not phonemicized until the end of the period. Manuscripts occasionally distinguish two /e/ sounds. Generally, modern grammars and dictionaries use ⟨ë⟩ for the mid vowel and ⟨e⟩ for the mid-close vowel.

Reduction of unstressed vowels[edit]

By the mid 11th century the many different vowels found in unstressed syllables had almost all been reduced to ⟨e⟩ /ə/.^[28]

Examples:

Old High German	Middle High German	New High German	English
mahhôn	machen	machen	to make, do
taga	tage	Tage	days
demu	dem(e)	dem	to the

(The New High German forms of these words are broadly the same as in Middle High German.)

Consonants[edit]

The main difference between Old High German and the West Germanic dialects from which it developed is that the former underwent the Second Sound Shift. The result of the sound change has been that the consonantal system of German is different from all other West Germanic languages, including English and Low German.

	Bilabial	Labiodental	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal/Velar	Glottal
Plosive	p b			t d	c, k /k/ g /ɡ/
Affricate	pf /p͡f/			z /t͡s/
Nasal	m			n	ng /ŋ/
Fricative		f, v /f/ /v/	th /θ/	s, ȥ /s̠/, /s/	h, ch /x/	h
Approximant	w, uu /w/				j, i /j/
Liquid				r, l

1. There is wide variation in the consonant systems of the Old High German dialects, which arise mainly from the differing extent to which they are affected by the High German Sound Shift. Precise information about the articulation of consonants is impossible to establish.
2. In the plosive and fricative series, if there are two consonants in a cell, the first is fortis and the second lenis. The voicing of lenis consonants varied between dialects.
3. Old High German distinguished long and short consonants. Double-consonant spellings indicate not a preceding short vowel, as they do in Modern German, but true consonant gemination. Double consonants found in Old High German include pp, bb, tt, dd, ck (for /k:/), gg, ff, ss, hh, zz, mm, nn, ll, rr.
4. /θ/ changes to /d/ in all dialects during the 9th century. The status in the Old High German Tatian (c. 830), as is reflected in modern Old High German dictionaries and glossaries, is that th is found in initial position and d in other positions.
5. It is not clear whether Old High German /x/ had acquired a palatalized allophone [ç] after front vowels, as is the case in Modern German.
6. A curly-tailed z (ȥ) is sometimes used in modern grammars and dictionaries to indicate the alveolar fricative that arose from Common Germanic t in the High German consonant shift. That distinguishes it from the alveolar affricate, which represented as z. The distinction has no counterpart in the original manuscripts, except in the Old High German Isidor, which uses tz for the affricate.
7. The original Germanic fricative s was in writing usually clearly distinguished from the younger fricative z that evolved from the High German consonant shift. The sounds of both letters seem not to have merged before the 13th century. Since s later came to be pronounced /ʃ/ before other consonants (as in Stein /ʃtaɪn/, Speer /ʃpeːɐ/, Schmerz /ʃmɛrts/ (original smerz) or the southwestern pronunciation of words like Ast /aʃt/), it seems safe to assume that the actual pronunciation of Germanic s was somewhere between [s] and [ʃ], most likely about [s̠], in all Old High German until late Middle High German. A word like swaz, «whatever», would thus never have been [swas] but rather [s̠was], later (13th century) [ʃwas], [ʃvas].

Phonological developments[edit]

This list has the sound changes that transformed Common West Germanic into Old High German but not the Late OHG changes that affected Middle High German:

• /ɣ/, /β/ > /ɡ/, /b/ in all positions (/ð/ > /d/ already took place in West Germanic. Most but not all High German areas are subject to the change.
  • PG *sibi «sieve» > OHG sib (cf. Old English sife), PG *gestra «yesterday» > OHG gestaron (cf. OE ġeostran, ġ being a fricative /ʝ/ )
• High German consonant shift: Inherited voiceless plosives are lenited into fricatives and affricates, and voiced fricatives are hardened into plosives and in some cases devoiced.
  • Ungeminated post-vocalic /p/, /t/, /k/ spirantize intervocalically to /ff/, /ȥȥ/, /xx/ and elsewhere to /f/, /ȥ/, /x/. Cluster /tr/ is exempt. Compare Old English slǣpan to Old High German slāfan.
  • Word-initially, after a resonant and when geminated, the same consonants affricatized to /pf/, /tȥ/ and /kx/, OE tam: OHG zam.
    • Spread of /k/ > /kx/ is geographically very limited and is not reflected in Modern Standard German.
  • /b/, /d/ and /ɡ/ are devoiced.
    • In Standard German, that applies to /d/ in all positions but to /b/ and /ɡ/ only when they are geminated. PG *brugjo > *bruggo > brucca, but *leugan > leggen.
• /eː/ (*ē²) and /oː/ are diphthongized into /ie/ and /uo/, respectively.
• Proto-Germanic /ai/ became /ei/ except before /r/, /h/, /w/ and word-finally, when it monophthongizes into ê, which is also the reflex of unstressed /ai/.
  • Similarly, /au/ > /ô/ before /r/, /h/ and all dentals; otherwise, /au/ > /ou/. PG *dauþaz «death» > OHG tôd, but *haubudą «head» > houbit.
    • /h/ refers there only to inherited /h/ from PIE *k, not to the result of the consonant shift /x/, which is sometimes written as h.
• /eu/ merges with /iu/ under i-umlaut and u-umlaut but elsewhere is /io/ (earlier /eo/). In Upper German varieties, it also becomes /iu/ before labials and velars.
• /θ/ fortifies to /d/ in all German dialects.
• Initial /w/ and /h/ before another consonant are dropped.

Morphology[edit]

Nouns[edit]

Verbs[edit]

Tense[edit]

Germanic had a simple two-tense system, with forms for a present and preterite. These were inherited by Old High German, but in addition OHG developed three periphrastic tenses: the perfect, pluperfect and future.

The periphrastic past tenses were formed by combining the present or preterite of an auxiliary verb (wësan, habēn) with the past participle. Initially the past participle retained its original function as an adjective and showed case and gender endings — for intransitive verbs the nominative, for transitive verbs the accusative.^[29] For example:

After thie thö argangana warun ahtu taga (Tatian, 7,1)
«When eight days had passed», literally «After that then gone-by were eight days»
Latin: Et postquam consummati sunt dies octo (Luke 2:21)^[30]

phīgboum habeta sum giflanzotan (Tatian 102,2)
«There was a fig tree that some man had planted», literally «Fig-tree had certain (or someone) planted»

Latin: arborem fici habebat quidam plantatam (Luke 13:6)^[31][32]

In time, however, these endings fell out of use and the participle came to be seen no longer as an adjective but as part of the verb, as in Modern German. This development is taken to be arising from a need to render Medieval Latin forms,^[33] but parallels in other Germanic languages (particularly Gothic, where the Biblical texts were translated from Greek, not Latin) raise the possibility that it was an independent development.^[34][35]

Germanic also had no future tense, but again OHG created periphrastic forms, using an auxiliary verb skulan (Modern German sollen) and the infinitive, or werden and the present participle:

Thu scalt beran einan alawaltenden (Otfrid’s Evangelienbuch I, 5,23)
«You shall bear an almighty one»

Inti nu uuirdist thu suigenti’ (Tatian 2,9)
«And now you will start to fall silent»
Latin: Et ecce eris tacens (Luke 1:20)^[36]

The present tense continued to be used alongside these new forms to indicate future time (as it still is in Modern German).

Conjugation[edit]

The following is a sample conjugation of a strong verb, nëman «to take».

nëman

	Indicative	Optative	Imperative
Present	1st sg	nimu	nëme	—
2nd sg	nimis (-ist)	nëmēs (-ēst)	nim
3rd sg	nimit	nëme	—
1st pl	nëmemēs (-ēn)	nëmemēs (-ēn)	nëmamēs, -emēs (-ēn)
2nd pl	nëmet	nëmēt	nëmet
3rd pl	nëmant	nëmēn	—
Past	1st sg	nam	nāmi	—
2nd sg	nāmi	nāmīs (-īst)	—
3rd sg	nam	nāmi	—
1st pl	nāmumēs (-un)	nāmīmēs (-īn)	—
2nd pl	nāmut	nāmīt	—
3rd pl	nāmun	nāmīn	—
Gerund	Genitive	nëmannes
Dative	nëmanne
Participle	Present	nëmanti (-enti)
Past	ginoman

Personal pronouns^[37][edit]

Number	Person	Gender	Nominative	Genitive	Dative	Accusative
Singular	1.		ih	mīn	mir	mih
2.		dū	dīn	dir	dih
3.	Masculine	(h)er	(sīn)	imu, imo	inan, in
Feminine	siu; sī, si	ira, iru	iro	sia
Neuter	iz	es, is	imu, imo	iz
Plural	1.		wir	unsēr	uns	unsih
2.		ir	iuwēr	iu	iuwih
3.	Masculine	sie	iro	im, in	sie
Feminine	sio	iro	im, in	sio
Neuter	siu	iro	im, in	siu

Syntax[edit]

Any description of OHG syntax faces a fundamental problem: texts translated from or based on a Latin original will be syntactically influenced by their source,^[38] while the verse works may show patterns that are determined by the needs of rhyme and metre, or that represent literary archaisms.^[39] Nonetheless, the basic word order rules are broadly those of Modern Standard German.^[40]

Two differences from the modern language are the possibility of omitting a subject pronoun and lack of definite and indefinite articles. Both features are exemplified in the start of the 8th century Alemannic creed from St Gall:^[41] kilaubu in got vater almahticun (Modern German, Ich glaube an Gott den allmächtigen Vater; English «I believe in God the almighty father»).^[42]

By the end of the OHG period, however, use of a subject pronoun has become obligatory, while the definite article has developed from the original demonstrative pronoun (der, diu, daz)^[43] and the numeral ein («one») has come into use as an indefinite article.^[44] These developments are generally seen as mechanisms to compensate for the loss of morphological distinctions which resulted from the weakening of unstressed vowels in the endings of nouns and verbs (see above).^[c][d]

Texts[edit]

The early part of the period saw considerable missionary activity, and by 800 the whole of the Frankish Empire had, in principle, been Christianized. All the manuscripts which contain Old High German texts were written in ecclesiastical scriptoria by scribes whose main task was writing in Latin rather than German. Consequently, the majority of Old High German texts are religious in nature and show strong influence of ecclesiastical Latin on the vocabulary. In fact, most surviving prose texts are translations of Latin originals. Even secular works such as the Hildebrandslied are often preserved only because they were written on spare sheets in religious codices.

The earliest Old High German text is generally taken to be the Abrogans, a Latin–Old High German glossary variously dated between 750 and 780, probably from Reichenau. The 8th century Merseburg Incantations are the only remnant of pre-Christian German literature. The earliest texts not dependent on Latin originals would seem to be the Hildebrandslied and the Wessobrunn Prayer, both recorded in manuscripts of the early 9th century, though the texts are assumed to derive from earlier copies.

The Bavarian Muspilli is the sole survivor of what must have been a vast oral tradition. Other important works are the Evangelienbuch (Gospel harmony) of Otfrid von Weissenburg, the short but splendid Ludwigslied and the 9th century Georgslied. The boundary to Early Middle High German (from c. 1050) is not clear-cut.

An example of Early Middle High German literature is the Annolied.

Example texts[edit]

The Lord’s Prayer is given in four Old High German dialects below. Because these are translations of a liturgical text, they are best not regarded as examples of idiomatic language, but they do show dialect variation very clearly.

Lord’s Prayer

Latin version (From Tatian)[45]	Alemannic, 8th century The St Gall Paternoster[46]	South Rhine Franconian, 9th century Weissenburg Catechism[47]	East Franconian, c. 830 Old High German Tatian[45]	Bavarian, early 9th century Freisinger Paternoster[47]
Pater noster, qui in caelis es, sanctificetur nomen tuum, adveniat regnum tuum, fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo, et in terra, panem nostrum cotidianum da nobis hodie, et dimitte nobis debita nostra, sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris, et ne inducas nos in temptationem, sed libera nos a malo.	Fater unseer, thu pist in himile, uuihi namun dinan, qhueme rihhi diin, uuerde uuillo diin, so in himile sosa in erdu. prooth unseer emezzihic kip uns hiutu, oblaz uns sculdi unsero, so uuir oblazem uns skuldikem, enti ni unsih firleiti in khorunka, uzzer losi unsih fona ubile.	Fater unsēr, thu in himilom bist, giuuīhit sī namo thīn. quaeme rīchi thīn. uuerdhe uuilleo thīn, sama sō in himile endi in erthu. Brooth unseraz emezzīgaz gib uns hiutu. endi farlāz uns sculdhi unsero, sama sō uuir farlāzzēm scolōm unserēm. endi ni gileidi unsih in costunga. auh arlōsi unsih fona ubile.	Fater unser, thū thār bist in himile, sī geheilagōt thīn namo, queme thīn rīhhi, sī thīn uuillo, sō her in himile ist, sō sī her in erdu, unsar brōt tagalīhhaz gib uns hiutu, inti furlāz uns unsara sculdi sō uuir furlāzemēs unsarēn sculdīgōn, inti ni gileitēst unsih in costunga, ūzouh arlōsi unsih fon ubile.	Fater unser, du pist in himilum. Kauuihit si namo din. Piqhueme rihhi din, Uuesa din uuillo, sama so in himile est, sama in erdu. Pilipi unsraz emizzigaz kip uns eogauuanna. Enti flaz uns unsro sculdi, sama so uuir flazzames unsrem scolom. Enti ni princ unsih in chorunka. Uzzan kaneri unsih fona allem sunton.

See also[edit]

• Old High German literature
• Middle High German
• Old High German declension

Notes[edit]

Citations[edit]

Sources[edit]

Grammars[edit]

Dialects[edit]

External links[edit]

• Althochdeutsche Texte im Internet (8.–10. Jahrhundert) — links to a range of online texts
• Modern English-Old High German dictionary

Vocabulary Old High German

The vocabulary contains 1258 meaning-word pairs («entries»)
corresponding to core LWT meanings from the recipient language
Old High German. The corresponding text chapter was published in the
book Loanwords in the World’s Languages. The language page Old High German
contains a list of all loanwords arranged by
donor languoid.

Old High German
Spoken in	south of the so-called » Benrath Line »
speaker	since about 1050 none
Linguistic classification	Indo-European Germanic West Germanic Old High German
Language codes
ISO 639 -1	—
ISO 639 -2	goh
ISO 639-3	goh

As Old High German or Old High German (abbreviated Ahd. ) Is the oldest written form of German that has been used between 750 and 1050. Your previous language level , Pre-Old High German , is only documented by a few runic inscriptions and proper names in Latin texts.

The word “German” appears for the first time in a document from the year 786 in the Middle Latin form theodiscus . In a church assembly in England the resolutions “ tam latine quam theodisce ” were read out, that is “both Latin and in the vernacular” (this vernacular was, of course, Old English ). The Old High German form of the word is only documented much later: In the copy of an ancient language textbook in Latin, probably made in the second quarter of the 9th century, there was an entry of a monk who apparently did not use the Latin word galeola (crockery in the shape of a helmet) understood. He must have asked a confrere the meaning of this word and added the meaning in the language of the people. For his note he used the Old High German early form » diutisce gellit » («in German ‘bowl'»).

Territorial delimitation and division

Old High German is not a uniform language, as the term suggests, but the name for a group of West Germanic languages that were spoken south of the so-called » Benrath Line » (which today runs from Düsseldorf — Benrath approximately in a west-east direction). These dialects differ from the other West Germanic languages ​​by the implementation of the second (or standard German) sound shift . The dialects north of the “Benrath Line”, that is, in the area of ​​the north German lowlands and in the area of ​​today’s Netherlands , did not carry out the second sound shift. To distinguish them from Old High German, these dialects are grouped under the name Old Saxon (also: Old Low German ). Middle and New Low German developed from Old Saxon . However, the Old Low Franconian , from which today’s Dutch later emerged, did not take part in the second sound shift, which means that this part of Franconian does not belong to Old High German.

Since Old High German was a group of closely related dialects and there was no uniform written language in the early Middle Ages , the text that has been handed down can be assigned to the individual Old High German languages, so that one often speaks more appropriately of (Old) South Rhine Franconian , Old Bavarian , Old Alemannic , etc. These West Germanic varieties with the second sound shift, however, show a different proximity to one another, which is the reason for the later differences between Upper , Middle and Low German . For example, Stefan Sonderegger writes that with regard to the spatial-linguistic-geographical structure, Old High German should be understood as follows:

Old high German traditions and written form

The Latin alphabet was adopted in Old High German for the German language. On the one hand, there were surpluses of graphemes such as <v> and <f> and, on the other hand, “uncovered” German phonemes such as diphthongs , affricates (such as / pf /, / ts /, / tʃ /), and consonants such as / ç / < ch> and / ʃ / <sch>, which did not exist in Latin. In Old High German, the grapheme <f> was mainly used for the phoneme / f /, so that here it is fihu (cattle), filu (a lot), fior (four), firwizan (to refer) and folch (people), while in Middle High German The grapheme <v> was predominantly used for the same phoneme, but here it is called vinsternis (darkness), vrouwe (woman), vriunt (friend) and vinden (to find). These uncertainties, which still affect spellings like «Vogel» or «Vogt», can be traced back to the grapheme excesses described in Latin.

The oldest surviving Old High German text is the Abrogans , a Latin-Old High German glossary. In general, the Old High German tradition consists largely of spiritual texts ( prayers , baptismal vows, Bible translation ); only a few secular poems ( Hildebrandslied , Ludwigslied ) or other language certificates (inscriptions, magic spells ) are found. The Würzburg mark description or the Strasbourg oath of 842 belong to public law, but these are only passed down in the form of a copy by a Romance-speaking copyist from the 10th and 11th centuries.

The so-called » Old High German Tatian » is a translation of the Gospel Harmony by the Syrian-Christian apologist Tatianus (2nd century) into Old High German. He is bilingual (Latin-German); the only surviving manuscript is now in St. Gallen. Alongside the Old High German Isidor, the Old High German Tatian is the second major translation achievement from the time of Charlemagne.

In connection with the political situation, the written form in general and the production of German-language texts in particular decreased in the 10th century; a renewed use of German-language writing and literature can be observed from around 1050. Since the written tradition of the 11th century differs significantly from the older tradition in phonetic terms, the language is called Middle High German from around 1050 onwards . Notker’s death in St. Gallen 1022 is often defined as the end point of Old High German text production .

Characteristics of language and grammar

Old High German is a synthetic language .

umlaut

The Old High German primary umlaut is typical of Old High German and important for the understanding of certain forms in later language levels of German (such as the weak verbs that are written back ) . The sounds / i / and / j / in the following syllable cause / a / to be changed to / e /.

Final syllables

Characteristic of the Old High German language are the endings, which are still full of vowels (see Latin ).

Example of vowel-like endings

Old High German	New High German
mahhôn	do
day	Days
demo	the
perga	mountains

The weakening of the final syllables in Middle High German from 1050 is the main criterion for the delimitation of the two language levels.

Nouns

The noun has four cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative) and remnants of a fifth ( instrumental ) are still present. A distinction is made between a strong (vowelic) and a weak (consonantic) declination .

Declination of weak nouns

number	case	masculine	feminine	neutral
Singular	Nom.	han o	tongue a	hërz a
Acc.	han on, -un	zung ūn	hërz a
Date	han en, -in	zung ūn	hërz en, -in
Gene.
Plural	Nom.	han on, -un	zung ūn	hërz un, -on
Acc.
Date	han ōm, -ōn	zung ōm, -ōn	hërz ōm, -ōn
Gene.	han ōno	zung ōno	hërz ōno
meaning	Rooster	tongue	heart

Further examples of masculine nouns are stërno (star), namo (name), forasago (prophet), for feminine nouns quëna (woman), sunna (sun) and for neutral ouga (eye), ōra (ear).

Personal pronouns

Declination of personal pronouns in Old High German

number	person	genus	Nominative	accusative	dative	Genitive
Singular	1.	ih	mih	me	mīn
2.	you	dih	to you	dīn
3.	Masculine	(h) he	inan, in	imu, imo	(sīn)
Feminine	siu; sī, si	sia	iro	ira, iru
neuter	iz	imu, imo	it is
Plural	1.	we	unsih	us	our
2.	ir	iuwih	iu	iuwēr
3.	Masculine	she	iro	in, in
Feminine	sio
neuter	siu

• The form of politeness corresponds to the 2nd person plural.
• Next to our and iuwer there are also unsar and iuwar , and next to iuwar and iuwih there are also iwar and iwih .
• In Otfrid also the genitive dual 1st person finds: Unker (or uncher , as Unkar or unchar shown).

Demonstrative pronouns

In the Old High German period, however, one still speaks of the demonstrative pronoun , because the specific article as a grammatical phenomenon did not develop from the demonstrative pronoun until late Old High German.

Certain articles in Old High German

case	Singular	Plural
male	neutrally	Female	male	neutrally	Female
Nominative	of the	daȥ	diu	dē, dea, dia, die	diu, (dei?)	deo, dio
accusative	the	dea, dia (the)
dative	dëmu, -o	dëru, -o	the the
Genitive	of	dëra, (dëru, -o)	dëru	dëra

Nominative and accusative are quite arbitrary in the plural and differ from dialect to dialect, so that an explicit separation of which of these forms expressly describes the accusative and which the nominative is not possible. In addition, on the basis of this list, one can already see a slow collapse of the various forms. While there are still many quite irregular forms in the nominative and accusative plural, the dative and genitive, both in the singular and in the plural, are relatively regular.

Verbs

A distinction is also made between strong (vowel) and weak conjugation in verbs. The number of weak verbs was always higher than that of strong verbs, but the second group was significantly more extensive in Old High German than it is today. In addition to these two groups, there are the past tense , verbs that have a present tense meaning with their original past tense form.

Strong verbs

In the case of strong verbs, in Old High German there is a change in the vowel in the basic morphem , which carries the lexical meaning of the word. The inflection (inflection) of the words is indicated by inflectional morphemes (endings). There are seven different ablaut series in Old High German, the seventh not being based on an ablaut , but rather on reduplication .

Ablaut series of strong verbs

Ablaut series	infinitive	Present	preterite	Plural	participle
I.	a	ī + consonant (neither h nor w )	ī	egg	i	i
I.	b	ī + h or w	ē
II.	a	io + consonant (neither h nor dental )	iu	ou	u	O
II.	b	io + h or Dental	O
III.	a	i + nasal or consonant	i	a	u	u
III.	b	e + liquid or consonant	O
IV.	e + Nasal or Liquid	i	a	—	O
V.	e + consonant	i	a	—	e
VI.	a + consonant	a	uo	uo	a
VII.	ā, a, ei, ou, uo or ō	ie	ie	like Inf.

Examples in reconstructed and unified Old High German:

Ablaut series Ia

r ī tan — r ī tu — r ei t — r i tun — gir i tan (nhd. riding, driving)

Ablaut series Ib

z ī han — z ī hu — z ē h — z i gun — giz i gan (nhd. accuse, draw)

Ablaut series II.a

b io gan — b iu gu — b ou g — b u gun — gib o gan (nhd. bend)

Ablaut series II.b

b io tan — b iu tu — b ō t — b u tun — gib o tan (nhd. offer)

Ablaut series III.a.

b i ntan — b i ntu — b a nt — b u ntun — gib u ntan (nhd. to bind)

Ablaut series III.b.

w e rfan — w i rfu — w a rf — w u rfun — giw o rfan (nhd. throw)

Ablaut series IV.

n e man — n i mu — n a m — n ā mun — gin o man (nhd. to take)

Ablaut series V.

g e ban — g i bu — g a b — g ā bun — gig e ban (nhd. to give)

Ablaut series VI.

f a ran — f a ru — f uo r — f uo run — gif a ran (nhd. drive)

Ablaut series VII.

r ā tan — r ā tu — r ie t — r ie tun — gir ā tan (nhd. guess)

Inflected forms of strong verbs using the example werf an (infinitive)

mode	number	person	pronoun	Present	preterite
indicative	Singular	1.	ih	throw u	threw
2.	you	throw is / throw is	litter i
3.	he, siu, iz	throw it	threw
Plural	1.	we	throw emēs (throw ēn )	throw over (throw over )
2.	ir	throw et	litter ut
3.	you, siu	throw ent	throw un
conjunctive	Singular	1.	ih	throw e	litter i
2.	you	throw ēs / throw ēst	wurf īs / wurf īst
3.	he, siu, iz	throw e	litter i
Plural	1.	we	werf ēm (throw emēs )	litter īm (litter īmēs )
2.	ir	throw eT	throw īt
3.	you, siu	throw ēn	throw īn
imperative	Singular	2.		throw
Plural	throw et
participle	throw anti / throw enti	gi worf at

Example: werfan — werfu — threw — wurfun — giworfan (nhd. Throw) according to the ablaut series III. b

Weak verbs

The weak verbs of Old High German can be morphologically and semantically divided into three groups via their endings:

Verbs with the ending -jan- with a causative meaning (to do something, to bring about) are elementary for understanding the weak verbs with back umlaut that are very common in Middle High German and are still partially present today , as the / j / in the ending is the primary umlaut described above effected in the present tense.

Forms of weak verbs with the ending -jan- with a causative meaning and for denominative formations using the example of * taljan → ahd. Cells ‘(counting, er, counting), saying, speaking’.

mode	number	person	pronoun	Present	preterite
indicative	Singular	1.	ih	cell u	cell it a
2.	you	cell is	cell it os
3.	he, siu, iz	cell it	cell it a
Plural	1.	we	cell umēs	cell it around
2.	ir	zell et	cell it ut
3.	you, siu	cell ent	cell it un
conjunctive	Singular	1.	ih	zel e	zel it i
2.	you	cell ēst	zel it īs
3.	he, siu, iz	zel e	zel it i
Plural	1.	we	zel ēm	zel it īm
2.	ir	zel ēt	zel it īt
3.	you, siu	zel ēn	zel it īn
imperative	Singular	2.		zel
Plural	zell et

Forms of weak verbs with the ending -ōn with an instrumental meaning (using something) using the example of mahhо̄n ‘make’

mode	number	person	pronoun	Present	preterite
indicative	Singular	1.	ih	mahh om	mahh ot a
2.	you	mahh os	mahh ot os
3.	he, siu, iz	mahh ot	mahh ot a
Plural	1.	we	mahh omēs	mahh ot um
2.	ir	mahh ot	mahh ot ut
3.	you, siu	mahh ont	mahh ot un
conjunctive	Singular	1.	ih	mahh o	mahh ot i
2.	you	mahh о̄s	mahh ot īs
3.	he, siu, iz	mahh o	mahh ot i
Plural	1.	we	mahh о̄m	mahh ot īm
2.	ir	mahh о̄t	mahh ot īt
3.	you, siu	mahh о̄n	mahh ot īn
imperative	Singular	2.		mahh o
Plural	mahh ot

Forms of weak verbs with the ending -ēn with a durative meaning (to perform, to be) using the example of sagēn ‘say’

mode	number	person	pronoun	Present	preterite
indicative	Singular	1.	ih	tell em	say et a
2.	you	say it	say et os
3.	he, siu, iz	say et	say et a
Plural	1.	we	say emes	Tell et order
2.	ir	say et	say et ut
3.	you, siu	say ent	Tell et un
conjunctive	Singular	1.	ih	say e	say et i
2.	you	say ēs	say et īs
3.	he, siu, iz	say e	say et i
Plural	1.	we	say ēm	say et im
2.	ir	say ēt	say et īt
3.	you, siu	say ēn	say et īn
imperative	Singular	2.		say e
Plural	say et

Special verbs

The Old High German verb sīn ‘ to be’ is referred to as the verb noun substantivum because it can stand on its own and describes the existence of something. It is one of the root verbs that have no connecting vowel between stem and inflection morphemes. These verbs are also known as athematic (without connective or subject vowels). The special thing about sīn is that its paradigm is suppletive, i.e. is formed from different verb stems ( idg. * H₁es- ‘exist’, * bʰueh₂- ‘grow, flourish’ and * h₂ues- ‘linger, live, stay overnight’). In the present subjunctive there is still the sīn, which goes back to * h₁es- (the indicative forms starting with b , on the other hand, go back to * bʰueh₂- ), but in the past tense it is given by the strong verb wesan (nhd. Was , would ; see also nhd. Essence ), which is formed after the fifth ablaut row.

Present forms of the verbum substantivum : sīn ‘ to be’

number	person	pronoun	indicative	conjunctive
Singular	1.	ih	bim, am	sī
2.	you	are	sīs, sīst
3.	he, siu, ez	is	sī
Plural	1.	we	birum, birun	sīn
2.	ir	birut	sīt
3.	she, sio, siu	sint	sīn

Tense

In Germanic there were only two tenses: the past tense for the past and the present tense for the non-past (present, future). With the onset of writing and translations from Latin into German, the development of German equivalents for Latin tenses such as perfect , past perfect , future I and future II in Old High German began. At least approaches to having and being perfect can already be made out in Old High German. The development was continued in Middle High German .

pronunciation

The reconstruction of the pronunciation of Old High German is based on a comparison of the traditional texts with the pronunciation of today’s German, German dialects and related languages. This results in the following pronunciation rules:

• Vowels are always to be read briefly, unless they are expressly indicated as long vowels by an overline or circumflex . Only in New High German are vowels spoken long in open syllables .
• The diphthongs ei, ou, uo, ua, ie, ia, io and iu are spoken as diphthongs and are emphasized on the first component. It should be noted that the letter <v> sometimes has the sound value u.
• The stress is always on the root, even if any of the following syllables contain a long vowel.
• The sound values ​​of most consonant letters correspond to those of today’s German. Since the final hardening only took place in Middle High German, <b>, <d> and <g> are spoken voiced differently than in modern German .
• The graph <th> was spoken in early Old High German as a voiced dental fricative [ð] (like <th> in English the ), but from around 830 onwards one can read [d].
• <c> — just like the more frequently occurring <k> — is spoken as [k], even when it appears in connection with <s> — i.e. as <sc>.
• <z> is ​​ambiguous and partly stands for [ts], partly for the voiceless [s].
• <h> is initially spoken as [h], internally and finally as [x].
• <st> is also spoken in the wording [st] (not like today [ʃt]).
• <ng> is spoken [ng] (not [ŋ]).
• <qu> is spoken like in today’s German [kv].
• <uu> (which is often transcribed as <w>) is pronounced like the English half-vowel [ w ] ( water ).

See also

• Old high German literature
• German language history

literature

• Eberhard Gottlieb Graff : Old high German vocabulary or dictionary of the old high German language. I-VI. Berlin 1834–1842, reprint Hildesheim 1963.
• Hans Ferdinand Massmann : Complete alphabetical index to the old high German linguistic treasure of EG Graff. Berlin 1846, reprint Hildesheim 1963.
• Rolf Bergmann u. a. (Ed.): Old High German.

1. Grammar. Glosses. Texts. Winter, Heidelberg 1987, ISBN 3-533-03877-7 .
2. Words and names. Research history. Winter, Heidelberg 1987, ISBN 3-533-03940-4 .

• Wilhelm Braune : Old High German grammar. Halle / Saale 1886; 3rd edition ibid. 1925 (last edition; continued under Karl Helm, Walther Mitzka , Hans Eggers and Ingo Reiffenstein ) = collection of short grammars of Germanic dialects A, 5; newer edition z. B. Niemeyer, Tübingen 2004, ISBN 3-484-10861-4 .
• Axel Lindqvist: Studies on word formation and choice of words in Old High German with special regard to the nominia actionis. In: [Paul and Braunes] contributions to the history of the German language and literature. Volume 60, 1936, pp. 1-132.
• Eckhard Meineke, Judith Schwerdt: Introduction to Old High German (= UTB 2167). Schöningh, Paderborn u. a. 2001, ISBN 3-8252-2167-9 .
• Horst Dieter Schlosser : Old High German Literature. 2nd edition, Berlin 2004.
• Richard Schrodt : Old High German Grammar II. Syntax. Niemeyer, Tübingen 2004, ISBN 3-484-10862-2 .
• Rudolf Schützeichel : Old High German Dictionary. Niemeyer, Tübingen 1969; newer edition 1995, ISBN 3-484-10636-0 .
• Rudolf Schützeichel (Ed.): Old High German and Old Saxon Gloss Vocabulary. Edited with the participation of numerous scientists from home and abroad and on behalf of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen. 12 volumes, Tübingen 2004.
• Stefan Sonderegger : Old High German Language and Literature. An introduction to the oldest German. Presentation and grammar. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin [a. a.] 1987, ISBN 3-11-004559-1 .
• Bergmann, Pauly, Moulin: Old and Middle High German. Workbook on the grammar of the older German language levels and on the history of the German language. 7th edition, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-525-20836-6 .
• Jochen Splett: Old High German Dictionary. Analysis of the word family structures of Old High German, at the same time laying the groundwork for a future structural history of the German vocabulary, I.1 – II. Berlin / New York 1993, ISBN 3-11-012462-9 .
• Taylor Starck, John C. Wells : Old High German Glossary Dictionary (including the glossary index started by Taylor Starck). Heidelberg (1972–) 1990.
• Elias Steinmeyer , Eduard Sievers : The old high German glosses. IV, Berlin 1879-1922; Reprinted Dublin and Zurich 1969.
• Rosemarie Lühr : The Beginnings of Old High German. In: NOWELE 66, 1 (2013), pp. 101–125. ( Full text )
• Andreas Nievergelt: Old High German in runic script. Cryptographic vernacular pen glosses . 2nd edition, Stuttgart 2018, ISBN 978-3-777-62640-6 .

Web links

• Online dictionary , Wikiling: Old High German (and other ancient languages)
• Old high German dictionary
• Old High German in the World Loanword Database
• Old High German in the International Dictionary Series. Archived from the original on April 8, 2014 ; accessed on March 17, 2016 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jochen A. Bär: A short history of the German language .
2. ^ Map based on: Meineke, Eckhard and Schwerdt, Judith, Introduction to Old High German, Paderborn / Zurich 2001, p. 209.
3. ↑ Stefan Sonderegger: Old High German Language and Literature , page 4
4. ↑ Oscar Schade: Old German Dictionary . Halle, 1866, page 664.
5. ↑ Adalbert Jeitteles: KA Hahns Old High German Grammar along with some reading pieces and a glossary 3rd edition, Prague, 1870, page 36 f.
6. ↑ Otfrid von Weißenburg, Gospel Book, Book III, Chapter 22, Verse 32
7. ↑ Adalbert Jeitteles: KA Hahn’s Old High German Grammar along with some reading pieces and a glossary 3rd edition. Prague 1870, page 37.
8. ↑ Ludwig M. Eichinger : Inflection in the noun phrase. In: Dependenz und Valenz. 2nd half volume, Ed .: Vilmos Ágel u. a. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2006, p. 1059.
9. ^ Rolf Bergmann, Claudine Moulin, Nikolaus Ruge: Old and Middle High German . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-8252-3534-5 , pp. 171ff.
10. ^ Rolf Bergmann, Claudine Moulin, Nikolaus Ruge: Old and Middle High German — Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2011, p. 173.

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