| Old High German |
Article Index for Old |
Website Links For Old |
Information AboutOld High German |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT OLD HIGH GERMAN | |
| old high germanold high german | |
| german language | |
| medieval languages | |
| german, old high | |
The term Old High German (OHG, German: ''Althochdeutsch'') refers to the earliest stage of the German Language and it conventionally covers the period from around 500 to 1050. Coherent written texts do not appear until the second half of the 8th Century , and some treat the period before 750 as 'prehistoric' and date the start of Old High German proper to 750 for this reason. There are, however, a number of Elder Futhark inscriptions dating to the 6th century (notably the Pforzen Buckle ), as well as single words and many names found in Latin texts predating the 8th century. The main difference between Old High German and the West Germanic Dialects from which it developed is that it underwent the Second Sound Shift or High German Consonant Shift . This is generally dated very approximately to the late 5th and early 6th centuries - hence dating the start of OHG to around 500. The result of this sound change is that the Consonant System of German remains different from all other West Germanic languages, including English and Low German . Grammatically, however, Old High German remained very similar to Old English and Old Saxon . By the mid 11th century the many different Vowels found in unstressed syllables had all been reduced to 'e'. Since these vowels were part of the grammatical endings in the Nouns and Verbs , their loss led to radical simplification of the Inflection al grammar of German. For these reasons, 1050 is seen as the start of the Middle High German period, though in fact there are almost no texts in German for the next hundred years. Examples of vowel reduction in unstressed syllables: (The Modern German forms of these words are broadly the same as in Middle High German.) Dialects 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 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 OHG dialects may be termed Monastery Dialect s. The main OHG dialects, with their Bishoprics and Monasteries :
There are some important differences between the geographical spread of the Old High German dialects and that of Modern German:
With Charlemagne 's defeat of the Lombards in 776, all High German speaking peoples had been incorporated into the Frankish Empire . The Saxons and the Frisians were also conquered by Charlemagne, bringing all continental West Germanic speakers under Frankish rule. However, since the language of both the administration and the Church was Latin, this unification did not lead to any development of a supra-regional variety of German until the emergence of Early New High German . TEXTS The early part of the period saw considerable missionary activity, and by 800 the whole of the Frankish Empire had, in principle, been Christianised. All the manuscripts which contain Old High German texts were written in ecclesiatical Scriptoria by Scribe 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 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 OHG 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 Otfried Von Weissenburg , the short but splendid '' Ludwigslied '' and the 9th century '' Georgslied ''. The boundary to Early Middle High German (from ca. 1050) is not clear-cut. The most impressive example of EMHG literature is the '' Annolied ''. EXAMPLE TEXTS The Lord's Prayer in three OHG dialects. 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.
Source: Braune/Ebbinghaus, ''Althochdeutsches Lesebuch'', 15th edn (Niemeyer,1969) SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
SOURCES
|
|
|