Old High German (OHG; german: Althochdeutsch (Ahd.)) is the earliest stage of the
German language
German ( ) is a West Germanic languages, West Germanic language mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and Official language, official or co-official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and the Ita ...
, conventionally covering the period from around 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
Charlemagne ( , ) or Charles the Great ( la, Carolus Magnus; german: Karl der Große; 2 April 747 – 28 January 814), a member of the Carolingian dynasty, was King of the Franks from 768, King of the Lombards from 774, and the first Holy ...
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
The Gallo-Romance branch of the Romance languages includes in the narrowest sense the Langues d'oïl and Franco-Provençal. However, other definitions are far broader, variously encompassing the Occitano-Romance, Gallo-Italic, and Rhaeto-Roman ...
, later
French.
The surviving OHG texts were all written in monastic
scriptoria
Scriptorium (), literally "a place for writing", is commonly used to refer to a room in medieval European monasteries devoted to the writing, copying and illuminating of manuscripts commonly handled by monastic scribes.
However, lay scribes and ...
and, as a result, the overwhelming majority of them are religious in nature or, when secular, belong to the
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
ate literary culture of
Christianity
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global pop ...
. The earliest written texts in Old High German,
glosses
A gloss is a brief notation, especially a marginal one or an interlinear one, of the meaning of a word or wording in a text. It may be in the language of the text or in the reader's language if that is different.
A collection of glosses is a ''g ...
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
In finance, a loan is the lending of money by one or more individuals, organizations, or other entities to other individuals, organizations, etc. The recipient (i.e., the borrower) incurs a debt and is usually liable to pay interest on that de ...
and new coinages to represent the Latin vocabulary of the church.
OHG largely preserves the
synthetic inflection
In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and defin ...
al 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
Middle High German (MHG; german: Mittelhochdeutsch (Mhd.)) is the term for the form of German spoken in the High Middle Ages. It is conventionally dated between 1050 and 1350, developing from Old High German and into Early New High German. Hig ...
. In syntax, the most important change was the development of new
periphrastic tenses to express the
future and
passive
Passive may refer to:
* Passive voice, a grammatical voice common in many languages, see also Pseudopassive
* Passive language, a language from which an interpreter works
* Passivity (behavior), the condition of submitting to the influence of o ...
.
Periodisation
Old High German is generally dated, following Willhelm Scherer, from around 750 to around 1050. 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. 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. Alternatively, terms such as ("pre-OHG") or ("pre-literary OHG") are sometimes used for the period before 750. 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.
Differing approaches are taken, too, to the position of
Langobardic
Lombardic or Langobardic is an extinct West Germanic language that was spoken by the Lombards (), the Germanic people who settled in Italy in the sixth century. It was already declining by the seventh century because the invaders quickly adopted ...
. Langobardic is an
Elbe Germanic
Elbe Germanic, also called Irminonic or Erminonic, is a term introduced by the German linguist Friedrich Maurer (1898–1984) in his book, ''Nordgermanen und Alemanen'', to describe the unattested proto-language, or dialectal grouping, ancest ...
and thus
Upper German
Upper German (german: Oberdeutsch ) is a family of High German dialects spoken primarily in the southern German-speaking area ().
History
In the Old High German time, only Alemannic and Bairisch are grouped as Upper German. In the Middle High ...
dialect, and it shows early evidence for the Second Sound Shift. For this reason, some scholars treat Langobardic as part of Old High German, 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, others exclude Langobardic from discussion of OHG. As Heidermanns observes, this exclusion is based solely on the external circumstances of preservation and not on the internal features of the language.
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
declension
In linguistics, declension (verb: ''to decline'') is the changing of the form of a word, generally to express its syntactic function in the sentence, by way of some inflection. Declensions may apply to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and ...
s. There is also a hundred-year "dearth of continuous texts" after the death of
Notker Labeo
Notker Labeo (c. 950 – 28 June 1022), also known as Notker the German ( la, Notcerus Teutonicus) or Notker III, was a Benedictine monk and the first commentator on Aristotle active in the Middle Ages. "Labeo" means "the thick-lipped one". Late ...
in 1022. The mid-11th century is widely accepted as marking the transition to
Middle High German
Middle High German (MHG; german: Mittelhochdeutsch (Mhd.)) is the term for the form of German spoken in the High Middle Ages. It is conventionally dated between 1050 and 1350, developing from Old High German and into Early New High German. Hig ...
.
Territory
![OldHighGermanlanguagearea962](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/OldHighGermanlanguagearea962.png)
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
Francia, also called the Kingdom of the Franks ( la, Regnum Francorum), Frankish Kingdom, Frankland or Frankish Empire ( la, Imperium Francorum), was the largest post-Roman barbarian kingdom in Western Europe. It was ruled by the Franks dur ...
(
Neustria
Neustria was the western part of the Kingdom of the Franks.
Neustria included the land between the Loire and the Silva Carbonaria, approximately the north of present-day France, with Paris, Orléans, Tours, Soissons as its main cities. It late ...
and western
Austrasia) gradually adopted
Gallo-Romance
The Gallo-Romance branch of the Romance languages includes in the narrowest sense the Langues d'oïl and Franco-Provençal. However, other definitions are far broader, variously encompassing the Occitano-Romance, Gallo-Italic, and Rhaeto-Roman ...
by the beginning of the OHG period, with the linguistic boundary later stabilised approximately along the course of the
Meuse
The Meuse ( , , , ; wa, Moûze ) or Maas ( , ; li, Maos or ) is a major European river, rising in France and flowing through Belgium and the Netherlands before draining into the North Sea from the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta. It has a t ...
and
Moselle in the east, and the northern boundary probably a little further south than the current boundary between
French and
Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
. 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.
In the south, the
Lombards
The Lombards () or Langobards ( la, Langobardi) were a Germanic people who ruled most of the Italian Peninsula from 568 to 774.
The medieval Lombard historian Paul the Deacon wrote in the '' History of the Lombards'' (written between 787 an ...
, who had settled in
Northern Italy
Northern Italy ( it, Italia settentrionale, it, Nord Italia, label=none, it, Alta Italia, label=none or just it, Nord, label=none) is a geographical and cultural region in the northern part of Italy. It consists of eight administrative regions ...
, maintained their dialect until their conquest by
Charlemagne
Charlemagne ( , ) or Charles the Great ( la, Carolus Magnus; german: Karl der Große; 2 April 747 – 28 January 814), a member of the Carolingian dynasty, was King of the Franks from 768, King of the Lombards from 774, and the first Holy ...
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.
At the beginning of the period, no Germanic language was spoken east of a line from
Kieler Förde
Kieler Förde is an approximately long inlet of the Baltic Sea on the eastern side of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. Formed by glacial movement during the last ice age, it divides Danish Wold peninsula from Wagria. Like the other inlets of fö ...
to the rivers
Elbe
The Elbe (; cs, Labe ; nds, Ilv or ''Elv''; Upper and dsb, Łobjo) is one of the major rivers of Central Europe. It rises in the Giant Mountains of the northern Czech Republic before traversing much of Bohemia (western half of the Czech Re ...
and
Saale
The Saale (), also known as the Saxon Saale (german: Sächsische Saale) and Thuringian Saale (german: Thüringische Saale), is a river in Germany and a left-bank tributary of the Elbe. It is not to be confused with the smaller Franconian 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
The Ottonian dynasty (german: Ottonen) was a Saxon dynasty of German monarchs (919–1024), named after three of its kings and Holy Roman Emperors named Otto, especially its first Emperor Otto I. It is also known as the Saxon dynasty after the ...
.
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
![The Old High German monastery dialects and their main scriptoria](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/The_Old_High_German_monastery_dialects_and_their_main_scriptoria.jpg)
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
manuscript
A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand – or, once practical typewriters became available, typewritten – as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced in ...
s 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'').
The main dialects, with their
bishoprics
In church governance, a diocese or bishopric is the ecclesiastical district under the jurisdiction of a bishop.
History
In the later organization of the Roman Empire, the increasingly subdivided provinces were administratively associat ...
and
monasteries
A monastery is a building or complex of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of monastics, monks or nuns, whether living in communities or alone (hermits). A monastery generally includes a place reserved for prayer which ...
:
*
Central German
**
East Franconian
East Franconian (german: Ostfränkisch) or Mainfränkisch, usually referred to as Franconian (') in German, is a dialect which is spoken in Franconia, the northern part of the federal state of Bavaria and other areas in Germany around Nuremberg, ...
:
Fulda,
Bamberg,
Würzburg
Würzburg (; Main-Franconian: ) is a city in the region of Franconia in the north of the German state of Bavaria. Würzburg is the administrative seat of the ''Regierungsbezirk'' Lower Franconia. It spans the banks of the Main River.
Würzburg is ...
**
Middle Franconian
West Central German (german: Westmitteldeutsch) belongs to the Central, High German dialect family of German. Its dialects are Franconian and comprise the parts of the Rhinelandic continuum located south of the Benrath line isogloss, including ...
:
Trier
Trier ( , ; lb, Tréier ), formerly known in English as Trèves ( ;) and Triers (see also names in other languages), is a city on the banks of the Moselle in Germany. It lies in a valley between low vine-covered hills of red sandstone in the ...
,
Echternach
Echternach ( lb, Iechternach or (locally) ) is a commune with town status in the canton of Echternach, which is part of the district of Grevenmacher, in eastern Luxembourg. Echternach lies near the border with Germany, and is the oldest town in ...
,
Cologne
Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 millio ...
**
Rhine Franconian
__NOTOC__
Rhenish Franconian or Rhine Franconian (german: Rheinfränkisch ) is a dialect chain of West Central German. It comprises the varieties of German spoken across the western regions of the states of Saarland, Rhineland-Palatinate, nor ...
:
Lorsch
Lorsch is a town in the Bergstraße district in Hessen, Germany, 60 km south of Frankfurt. Lorsch is well known for the Lorsch Abbey, which has been named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
Geography
Location
Lorsch lies about 5 km wes ...
,
Speyer
Speyer (, older spelling ''Speier'', French: ''Spire,'' historical English: ''Spires''; pfl, Schbaija) is a city in Rhineland-Palatinate in Germany with approximately 50,000 inhabitants. Located on the left bank of the river Rhine, Speyer li ...
,
Worms Worms may refer to:
*Worm, an invertebrate animal with a tube-like body and no limbs
Places
*Worms, Germany
Worms () is a city in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, situated on the Upper Rhine about south-southwest of Frankfurt am Main. It had ...
,
Mainz
Mainz () is the capital and largest city of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.
Mainz is on the left bank of the Rhine, opposite to the place that the Main (river), Main joins the Rhine. Downstream of the confluence, the Rhine flows to the north-we ...
,
Frankfurt
Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...
**
South Rhine Franconian
South is one of the cardinal directions or compass points. The direction is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to both east and west.
Etymology
The word ''south'' comes from Old English ''sūþ'', from earlier Proto-Germanic ''*sunþaz ...
:
Wissembourg
Wissembourg (; South Franconian: ''Weisseburch'' ; German: ''Weißenburg'' ) is a commune in the Bas-Rhin department in Grand Est in northeastern France.
It is situated on the little river Lauter close to the border between France and Germany a ...
*
Upper German
Upper German (german: Oberdeutsch ) is a family of High German dialects spoken primarily in the southern German-speaking area ().
History
In the Old High German time, only Alemannic and Bairisch are grouped as Upper German. In the Middle High ...
**
Alemannic Alemannic (''Alamannic'') or Alamanni may refer to:
* Alemannic German, a dialect family in the Upper German branch of the German languages and its speakers
* Alemanni, a confederation of Suebian Germanic tribes in the Roman period
* Alamanni (surna ...
:
Murbach
Murbach is a commune in the Haut-Rhin department in Grand Est in north-eastern France.
Murbach Abbey is located near Murbach.
See also
* Communes of the Haut-Rhin département
The following is a list of the 366 communes of the French dep ...
,
Reichenau,
Sankt Gallen,
Strasbourg
Strasbourg (, , ; german: Straßburg ; gsw, label=Bas Rhin Alsatian, Strossburi , gsw, label=Haut Rhin Alsatian, Strossburig ) is the prefecture and largest city of the Grand Est region of eastern France and the official seat of the Eu ...
**
Bavarian:
Freising
Freising () is a university town in Bavaria, Germany, and the capital of the Freising ''Landkreis'' (district), with a population of about 50,000.
Location
Freising is the oldest town between Regensburg and Bolzano, and is located on the ...
,
Passau,
Regensburg,
Augsburg
Augsburg (; bar , Augschburg , links=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swabian_German , label=Swabian German, , ) is a city in Swabia, Bavaria, Germany, around west of Bavarian capital Munich. It is a university town and regional seat of the ...
,
Ebersberg
Ebersberg is the seat of the similarly named Ebersberg ''Landkreis'' (district) in the Oberbayern ''Regierungsbezirk'' (administrative region) in Bavaria, southern Germany. The ''Ebersberger Forst'' (forest) is one of Germany’s largest continu ...
,
Wessobrunn
Wessobrunn is a Municipalities of Germany, municipality in the district of Weilheim-Schongau in Bavaria in Germany.
Paterzell airfield
Paterzell airfield is located in Wessobrunn. ,
Benediktbeuern
Benediktbeuern (Central Bavarian: ''Benediktbeiern'') is a municipality in the district of Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen in Bavaria, Germany, 2 kilometers, or 1.25 miles from Bichl. The village has 3,602 residents as of 31 December 2019.
The medieval ...
,
Tegernsee
Tegernsee is a town in the Miesbach district of Bavaria, Germany. It is located on the shore of Lake Tegernsee, which is 747 m (2,451 ft) above sea level. A spa town, it is surrounded by an alpine landscape of Upper Bavaria, and has an ...
,
Salzburg
Salzburg (, ; literally "Salt-Castle"; bar, Soizbuag, label=Bavarian language, Austro-Bavarian) is the List of cities and towns in Austria, fourth-largest city in Austria. In 2020, it had a population of 156,872.
The town is on the site of the ...
,
Mondsee
In addition, there are two poorly attested dialects:
*
Thuringian
Thuringian is an East Central German dialect group spoken in much of the modern German Free State of Thuringia north of the Rennsteig ridge, southwestern Saxony-Anhalt and adjacent territories of Hesse and Bavaria. It is close to Upper Saxon sp ...
is attested only in four runic inscriptions and some possible glosses.
*
Langobardic
Lombardic or Langobardic is an extinct West Germanic language that was spoken by the Lombards (), the Germanic people who settled in Italy in the sixth century. It was already declining by the seventh century because the invaders quickly adopted ...
was the dialect of the
Lombards
The Lombards () or Langobards ( la, Langobardi) were a Germanic people who ruled most of the Italian Peninsula from 568 to 774.
The medieval Lombard historian Paul the Deacon wrote in the '' History of the Lombards'' (written between 787 an ...
who invaded
Northern Italy
Northern Italy ( it, Italia settentrionale, it, Nord Italia, label=none, it, Alta Italia, label=none or just it, Nord, label=none) is a geographical and cultural region in the northern part of Italy. It consists of eight administrative regions ...
in the 6th century, and little evidence of it remains apart from names and individual words in
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
texts, and a few runic inscriptions. It declined after the conquest of the
Lombard Kingdom
The Kingdom of the Lombards ( la, Regnum Langobardorum; it, Regno dei Longobardi; lmo, Regn di Lombard) also known as the Lombard Kingdom; later the Kingdom of (all) Italy ( la, Regnum totius Italiae), was an early medieval state established ...
by the Franks in 774. It is classified as Upper German on the basis of evidence of the Second Sound Shift.
The continued existence of a
West Frankish
In medieval history, West Francia (Medieval Latin: ) or the Kingdom of the West Franks () refers to the western part of the Frankish Empire established by Charlemagne. It represents the earliest stage of the Kingdom of France, lasting from about ...
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
The ''Ludwigslied'' (in English, ''Lay'' or ''Song of Ludwig'') is an Old High German (OHG) poem of 59 rhyming couplets, celebrating the victory of the Frankish army, led by Louis III of France, over Danish (Viking) raiders at the Battle of Sau ...
, whose presence in a French manuscript suggests
bilingualism, are controversial.
Literacy
Old High German literacy is a product of the monasteries, notably at
St. Gallen
, neighboring_municipalities = Eggersriet, Gaiserwald, Gossau, Herisau (AR), Mörschwil, Speicher (AR), Stein (AR), Teufen (AR), Untereggen, Wittenbach
, twintowns = Liberec (Czech Republic)
, website = ...
,
Reichenau Island
Reichenau Island () is an island in Lake Constance in Southern Germany. It lies almost due west of the city of Konstanz, between the Gnadensee and the Untersee, two parts of Lake Constance. With a total land surface of and a circumference of ...
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
The ''Hildebrandslied'' (; ''Lay'' or ''Song of Hildebrand'') is a heroic lay written in Old High German alliterative verse. It is the earliest poetic text in German, and it tells of the tragic encounter in battle between a father (Hildebrand) ...
'' and the ''
Muspilli
''Muspilli'' is an Old High German poem known in incomplete form (103 lines) from a ninth-century Bavarian manuscript. Its subject is the fate of the soul immediately after death and at the Last Judgment. Many aspects of the interpretation of the ...
'').
Einhard tells how Charlemagne himself ordered that the epic lays should be collected for posterity. 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
Louis the Pious (german: Ludwig der Fromme; french: Louis le Pieux; 16 April 778 – 20 June 840), also called the Fair, and the Debonaire, was King of the Franks and co-emperor with his father, Charlemagne, from 813. He was also King of Aqui ...
, who destroyed his father's collection of epic poetry on account of its pagan content.
Rabanus Maurus, a student of
Alcuin
Alcuin of York (; la, Flaccus Albinus Alcuinus; 735 – 19 May 804) – also called Ealhwine, Alhwin, or Alchoin – was a scholar, clergyman, poet, and teacher from York, Northumbria. He was born around 735 and became the student o ...
's and abbot at Fulda from 822, was an important advocate of the cultivation of German literacy. Among his students were
Walafrid Strabo
Walafrid, alternatively spelt Walahfrid, nicknamed Strabo (or Strabus, i.e. " squint-eyed") (c. 80818 August 849), was an Alemannic Benedictine monk and theological writer who lived on Reichenau Island in southern Germany.
Life
Walafrid Strabo ...
and
Otfrid of Weissenburg.
Towards the end of the Old High German period,
Notker Labeo
Notker Labeo (c. 950 – 28 June 1022), also known as Notker the German ( la, Notcerus Teutonicus) or Notker III, was a Benedictine monk and the first commentator on Aristotle active in the Middle Ages. "Labeo" means "the thick-lipped one". Late ...
(d. 1022) was among the greatest stylists in the language, and developed a systematic orthography.
Writing system
While there are a few
runic inscriptions
A runic inscription is an inscription made in one of the various runic alphabets. They generally contained practical information or memorials instead of magic or mythic stories. The body of runic inscriptions falls into the three categories of E ...
from the pre-OHG period, all other OHG texts are written with the Latin
alphabet
An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syll ...
, 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.
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: "" ("...so also, in many expressions, spelling is difficult because of the piling up of letters or their unfamiliar sound.") The careful orthographies of the OHG ''
Isidor'' or Notker show a similar awareness.
Phonology
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
Tatian of Adiabene, or Tatian the Syrian or Tatian the Assyrian, (; la, Tatianus; grc, Τατιανός; syc, ܛܛܝܢܘܣ; c. 120 – c. 180 AD) was an Assyrian Christian writer and theologian of the 2nd century.
Tatian's most influential w ...
''. 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
Middle High German (MHG; german: Mittelhochdeutsch (Mhd.)) is the term for the form of German spoken in the High Middle Ages. It is conventionally dated between 1050 and 1350, developing from Old High German and into Early New High German. Hig ...
forms of words, particularly with respect to the consonants.
Vowels
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.
Notes:
# Vowel length was indicated in the manuscripts inconsistently (though modern handbooks are consistent). Vowel letter doubling, a
circumflex
The circumflex () is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from la, circumflexus "bent around"a ...
, or an
acute accent
The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed ch ...
was generally used to indicate a long vowel.
# 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.
# All back vowels likely had front-vowel
allophones
In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor ''phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in '' ...
as a result of
umlaut.
[But see ]Fausto Cercignani
Fausto Cercignani (; born March 21, 1941) is an Italian scholar, essayist and poet.
Biography
Born to Tuscan parents, Fausto Cercignani studied in Milan, where he graduated in foreign languages and literatures with a dissertation dealing with ...
(2022). The development of the Old High German umlauted vowels and the reflex of New High German /ɛ:/ in Present Standard German. ''Linguistik Online''. 113/1: 45–57
Online
/ref> The front-vowel allophones likely became full phonemes in Middle High German. In the Old High German period, there existed (possibly a mid-close vowel) from the umlaut of and but it probably wasn't phonemicized until the end of the period. Manuscripts occasionally distinguish two sounds. Generally, modern grammars and dictionaries use for the mid vowel and for the mid-close vowel.
Reduction of unstressed vowels
By the mid 11th century the many different vowels found in unstressed syllables had almost all been reduced to .
Examples:
(The Modern German forms of these words are broadly the same as in Middle High German.)
Consonants
The main difference between Old High German and the West Germanic dialects from which it developed is that it underwent the Second Sound Shift. The result of this sound change is that the consonantal system of German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
remains different from all other West Germanic languages, including English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
and Low German
:
:
:
:
:
(70,000)
(30,000)
(8,000)
, familycolor = Indo-European
, fam2 = Germanic
, fam3 = West Germanic
, fam4 = North Sea Germanic
, ancestor = Old Saxon
, ancestor2 = Middle L ...
.
# There is wide variation in the consonant systems of the Old High German dialects arising 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.
#In the plosive and fricative series, where there are two consonants in a cell, the first is fortis the second lenis
In linguistics, fortis and lenis ( and ; Latin for "strong" and "weak"), sometimes identified with tense and lax, are pronunciations of consonants with relatively greater and lesser energy, respectively. English has fortis consonants, such as the ...
. The voicing of lenis consonants varied between dialects.
#Old High German distinguished long and short consonants. Double-consonant spellings don't indicate a preceding short vowel as in Modern German but true consonant gemination
In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from ''gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from s ...
. Double consonants found in Old High German include ''pp, bb, tt, dd, ck'' (for ), ''gg, ff, ss, hh, zz, mm, nn, ll, rr.''
# changes to in all dialects during the 9th century. The status in the Old High German ''Tatian'' (c. 830), reflected in modern Old High German dictionaries and glossaries, is that ''th'' is found in initial position, ''d'' in other positions.
# It is not clear whether Old High German had already acquired a palatalized allophone following front vowels as in Modern German.
#A curly-tailed ''z'' ('' ȥ'') is sometimes used in modern grammars and dictionaries to indicate the alveolar fricative which arose from Common Germanic
Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages.
Proto-Germanic eventually developed from pre-Proto-Germanic into three Germanic br ...
''t'' in the High German consonant shift, to distinguish it from the alveolar affricate, represented as ''z''. This distinction has no counterpart in the original manuscripts, except in the OHG ''Isidor'', which uses ''tz'' for the affricate.
# 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 these two graphs seem not to have merged before the 13th century. Now seeing that ''s'' later came to be pronounced before other consonants (as in ''Stein'' , ''Speer'' , ''Schmerz'' (original ''smerz'') or the southwestern pronunciation of words like ''Ast'' ), it seems safe to assume that the actual pronunciation of Germanic ''s'' was somewhere between and , most likely about , in all Old High German up to late Middle High German. A word like ''swaz'', "whatever", would thus never have been but rather , later (13th century) , .
Phonological developments
Here are enumerated the sound changes that transformed Common West Germanic into Old High German, not including the Late OHG changes which affected Middle High German
Middle High German (MHG; german: Mittelhochdeutsch (Mhd.)) is the term for the form of German spoken in the High Middle Ages. It is conventionally dated between 1050 and 1350, developing from Old High German and into Early New High German. Hig ...
* , > , in all positions ( > already took place in West Germanic). Most but not all High German areas are subject to this change.
** PG *''sibi'' "sieve" > OHG ''sib'' (cf. Old English ''sife''), PG *''gestra'' "yesterday" > OHG ''gestaron'' (cf. OE ''ġeostran'', ''ġ'' being a fricative )
* High German consonant shift: Inherited voiceless plosives are lenited
In linguistics, lenition is a sound change that alters consonants, making them more sonorous. The word ''lenition'' itself means "softening" or "weakening" (from Latin 'weak'). Lenition can happen both synchronically (within a language at a pa ...
into fricatives and affricates, while voiced fricatives are hardened into plosives and in some cases devoiced.
** Ungeminated post-vocalic , , spirantize intervocalically to , , and elsewhere to , , . Cluster is exempt from this. Compare Old English ''slǣpan'' to Old High German ''slāfan''.
** Word-initially, after a resonant and when geminated, the same consonants affricatized to , and , OE ''tam'': OHG ''zam''.
*** Spread of > is geographically very limited and is not reflected in Modern Standard German.
** , and are devoiced.
*** In Standard German, this applies to in all positions, but to and only when geminated. PG *brugjo > *bruggo > ''brucca'', but *leugan > ''leggen''.
* (*''ē²'') and are diphthongized into and respectively.
* Proto-Germanic became , except before , , and word finally, where it monophthongizes into ê ( which is also the reflex of unstressed ).
** Similarly > before , and all dentals, otherwise > . PG *''dauþaz'' "death" > OHG ''tôd'', but *''haubudą'' "head" > ''houbit''.
*** refers here only to inherited from PIE *k, and not to the result of the consonant shift , which is sometimes written as h.
* merges with under ''i''-umlaut and ''u''-umlaut, but elsewhere is (earlier ). In Upper German
Upper German (german: Oberdeutsch ) is a family of High German dialects spoken primarily in the southern German-speaking area ().
History
In the Old High German time, only Alemannic and Bairisch are grouped as Upper German. In the Middle High ...
varieties it also becomes before labials and velars.
* fortifies to in all German dialects.
* Initial and before another consonant are dropped.
Morphology
Nouns
Verbs
Tense
Germanic had a simple two-tense system, with forms for a present and preterite
The preterite or preterit (; abbreviated or ) is a grammatical tense or verb form serving to denote events that took place or were completed in the past; in some languages, such as Spanish, French, and English, it is equivalent to the simple pas ...
. These were inherited by Old High German, but in addition OHG developed three periphrastic tenses: the perfect, pluperfect
The pluperfect (shortening of plusquamperfect), usually called past perfect in English, is a type of verb form, generally treated as a grammatical tense in certain languages, relating to an action that occurred prior to an aforementioned time i ...
and future.
The periphrastic past tenses were formed by combining the present or preterite of an auxiliary verb
An auxiliary verb ( abbreviated ) is a verb that adds functional or grammatical meaning to the clause in which it occurs, so as to express tense, aspect, modality, voice, emphasis, etc. Auxiliary verbs usually accompany an infinitive verb or a ...
(''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. For example:
''After thie thö argangana warun ahtu taga'' (Tatian
Tatian of Adiabene, or Tatian the Syrian or Tatian the Assyrian, (; la, Tatianus; grc, Τατιανός; syc, ܛܛܝܢܘܣ; c. 120 – c. 180 AD) was an Assyrian Christian writer and theologian of the 2nd century.
Tatian's most influential w ...
, 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)
''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)
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
Medieval Latin was the form of Literary Latin used in Roman Catholic Western Europe during the Middle Ages. In this region it served as the primary written language, though local languages were also written to varying degrees. Latin functione ...
forms, 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.
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)
The present tense continued to be used alongside these new forms to indicate future time (as it still is in Modern German).
Conjugation
The following is a sample conjugation
Conjugation or conjugate may refer to:
Linguistics
* Grammatical conjugation, the modification of a verb from its basic form
* Emotive conjugation or Russell's conjugation, the use of loaded language
Mathematics
* Complex conjugation, the chang ...
of a strong verb, ''nëman'' "to take".
Personal pronouns
Syntax
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, while the verse works may show patterns that are determined by the needs of rhyme and metre, or that represent literary archaisms. Nonetheless, the basic word order rules are broadly those of Modern Standard German.
Two differences from the modern language are the possibility of omitting a subject pronoun and lack of definite and indefinite articles
Article often refers to:
* Article (grammar), a grammatical element used to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness
* Article (publishing), a piece of nonfictional prose that is an independent part of a publication
Article may also refer to:
G ...
. Both features are exemplified in the start of the 8th century Alemannic creed from St Gall: (Modern German, ; English "I believe in God the almighty father").
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
Demonstratives ( abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic; their meaning depending on a particular fram ...
() and the numeral ("one") has come into use as an indefinite article. 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).
Texts
The early part of the period saw considerable missionary activity, and by 800 the whole of the Frankish Empire
Francia, also called the Kingdom of the Franks ( la, Regnum Francorum), Frankish Kingdom, Frankland or Frankish Empire ( la, Imperium Francorum), was the largest post-Roman barbarian kingdom in Western Europe. It was ruled by the Franks du ...
had, in principle, been Christianized. All the manuscripts which contain Old High German texts were written in ecclesiastical scriptoria
Scriptorium (), literally "a place for writing", is commonly used to refer to a room in medieval European monasteries devoted to the writing, copying and illuminating of manuscripts commonly handled by monastic scribes.
However, lay scribes and ...
by scribe
A scribe is a person who serves as a professional copyist, especially one who made copies of manuscripts before the invention of automatic printing.
The profession of the scribe, previously widespread across cultures, lost most of its promi ...
s 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
Latin, also called Church Latin or Liturgical Latin, is a form of Latin developed to discuss Christian thought in Late Antiquity and used in Christian liturgy, theology, and church administration down to the present day, especially in the Ca ...
on the vocabulary. In fact, most surviving prose texts are translations of Latin originals. Even secular works such as the are often preserved only because they were written on spare sheets in religious codices
The codex (plural codices ) was the historical ancestor of the modern book. Instead of being composed of sheets of paper, it used sheets of vellum, papyrus, or other materials. The term ''codex'' is often used for ancient manuscript books, with ...
.
The earliest Old High German text is generally taken to be the Abrogans
''Abrogans'', also ''German Abrogans'' or ''Codex Abrogans'' (St Gall, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 911), is a Middle Latin–Old High German glossary, whose preserved copy in the Abbey Library of St Gall is regarded as the oldest preserved book in th ...
, a Latin–Old High German glossary variously dated between 750 and 780, probably from Reichenau. The 8th century Merseburg Incantations
The Merseburg charms or Merseburg incantations (german: die Merseburger Zaubersprüche) are two medieval magic spells, charms or incantations, written in Old High German. They are the only known examples of Germanic pagan belief preserved in the ...
are the only remnant of pre-Christian German literature. The earliest texts not dependent on Latin originals would seem to be the and the Wessobrunn Prayer
The Wessobrunn Prayer (german: Wessobrunner Gebet, also ''Wessobrunner Schöpfungsgedicht'', "Wessobrunn Creation Poem") is among the earliest known poetic works in Old High German, believed to date from the end of the 8th century.
Provenance and ...
, both recorded in manuscripts of the early 9th century, though the texts are assumed to derive from earlier copies.
The Bavarian ''Muspilli
''Muspilli'' is an Old High German poem known in incomplete form (103 lines) from a ninth-century Bavarian manuscript. Its subject is the fate of the soul immediately after death and at the Last Judgment. Many aspects of the interpretation of the ...
'' is the sole survivor of what must have been a vast oral tradition. Other important works are the (Gospel harmony
A gospel harmony is an attempt to compile the canonical gospels of the Christian New Testament into a single account. This may take the form either of a single, merged narrative, or a tabular format with one column for each gospel, technically kn ...
) of Otfrid von Weissenburg, the short but splendid and the 9th century . The boundary to Early Middle High German (from ) is not clear-cut.
An example of Early Middle High German literature is the .
Example texts
The Lord's Prayer
The Lord's Prayer, also called the Our Father or Pater Noster, is a central Christian prayer which Jesus taught as the way to pray. Two versions of this prayer are recorded in the gospels: a longer form within the Sermon on the Mount in the Gosp ...
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.
See also
* Old High German literature
Old High German literature refers to literature written in Old High German, from the earliest texts in the 8th century to the middle of the 11th century.
Scope
The term "literature" as it is used in connection with Old High German has a broader sc ...
* Middle High German
Middle High German (MHG; german: Mittelhochdeutsch (Mhd.)) is the term for the form of German spoken in the High Middle Ages. It is conventionally dated between 1050 and 1350, developing from Old High German and into Early New High German. Hig ...
* Old High German declension
Notes
Citations
Sources
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Grammars
*
*
Online version
Dialects
*
*
External links
- links to a range of online texts
Modern English-Old High German dictionary
{{Authority control
German dialects
Languages attested from the 8th century
Languages of Germany