| Old Dutch | |
|---|---|
| Old Low Franconian | |
| *thiudisc | |
| Pronunciation | [ˈθiu̯.disk] |
| Native to | Holland,Austrasia,Zeeland andFlanders |
| Region | TheLow Countries |
| Era | Gradually developed intoMiddle Dutch by mid-12th century[1][2] |
Early forms | |
| Runes,Latin (later) | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | odt |
odt | |
| Glottolog | oldd1237oldd1238 |
 The areas where the Old Dutch language was spoken | |
| This article containsIPA phonetic symbols. Without properrendering support, you may seequestion marks, boxes, or other symbols instead ofUnicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA. | |
In linguistics,Old Dutch (Modern Dutch:Oudnederlands) orOld Low Franconian (Modern Dutch:Oudnederfrankisch)[3][4] is the set of dialects that evolved fromFrankish spoken in theLow Countries during theEarly Middle Ages, from around the 6th[5] to the 12th century. Old Dutch is mostly recorded on fragmentary relics, and words have been reconstructed fromMiddle Dutch and Old Dutch loanwords inFrench.[6]
Old Dutch is regarded as the primary stage in the development of a separate Dutch language. It was spoken by the descendants of theSalian Franks who occupied what is now the southernNetherlands, northernBelgium, part of northern France, and parts of theLower Rhine regions of Germany. It evolved intoMiddle Dutch around the 12th century. The inhabitants of northern Dutch provinces, includingGroningen,Friesland, and the coast ofNorth Holland, spokeOld Frisian, and some in the east (Achterhoek,Overijssel, andDrenthe) instead spokeOld Saxon.
Within the field of historical philology, the terminology for the oldest historical phase of the Dutch language traditionally includes bothOld Dutch as well asOld Low Franconian. In English linguistic publications,Old Netherlandic is occasionally used in addition to the aforementioned terms.
Old Low Franconian, derives from the linguistic category first devised by the German linguistWilhelm Braune (1850–1926), who used the termFranconian as awastebasket taxon for the early West Germanic texts that he could not readily classify as belonging to eitherSaxon,Alemannic orBavarian and assumed to derive from thelanguage of the Franks.[7] He subsequently further divided this new grouping intoLow,Middle andHigh Franconian based on the absence or presence of theSecond Germanic consonant shift.[8] With the exception of Dutch, modern linguistic research has challenged thedirect diachronical connection toOld Frankish for most of the varieties grouped under the broader "Franconian" category.[9][7] Nevertheless, the traditional terminology of the West Germanic varieties along assumedLate Classical tribal lines, typical of 19th and early 20th century Germanic linguistics, remains common.[7]
Within historical linguisticsOld Low Franconian is synonymous withOld Dutch.[10][11] Depending on the author, the temporal boundary between Old Dutch and Old Frankish is either defined by the onset of theSecond Germanic consonant shift in Eastern Frankish, the assimilation of an unattested coastal dialect showingNorth Sea Germanic-features by West Frankish during the closing of the9th century,[12] or a combination of both. Some linguists use the termsOld Low Franconian orWest Frankish to specifically refer to the (very sparsely attested) varieties of Old Dutch spoken prior its assimilation of the coastal dialect.
Old Dutch itself is further divided into Old West Dutch and Old East Dutch, with the descendants of Old West Dutch forming the dominant basis of the Middle Dutch literary language and Old East Dutch forming a noticeable substrate within the easternmost Dutch dialects, such asLimburgish.[citation needed]
Before the advent of Old Dutch or any of the Germanic languages,Germanic dialects weremutually intelligible. TheNorth Sea Germanic languages were spoken in the whole of the coastal parts of the Netherlands and Belgium.Old Frisian was one of these languages, and elements of it survived through theFrisian language, spoken in the province ofFriesland in the North of the Netherlands. In the rest of the coastal region, these languages were mostly displaced following the withdrawal toEngland of the migratingAngles,Saxons andJutes, who gave rise to Old English.
It was largely replaced byWeser–Rhine Germanic dialects, spoken by theSalian Franks. It spread from northern Belgium and the southern Netherlands to the coast and evolved into Old Dutch. It has, however, a North sea Germanicsubstrate.[14][15] Linguists typically date this transition to around the 5th century.[16]
Old Dutch is divided into Old West Low Franconian and Old East Low Franconian (Limburgian); however, these varieties are very closely related, the divergence being that the latter shares more traits with neighboring historical forms ofCentral Franconian dialects such asRipuarian andMoselle Franconian. While both forms of Low Franconian were instrumental to the framing ofMiddle Dutch, Old East Low Franconian did not contribute much toStandard Dutch, which is based on the consolidateddialects of Holland andBrabant.
During theMerovingian period, the Central Franconian dialects were influenced by Old Low Franconian (Old Dutch), resulting in certain linguistic loans which yielded a slight overlap of vocabulary, most of which relates towarfare. In addition is the subsumption of theHigh German consonant shift, a set of phonological changes beginning around the 5th or 6th century that partially influenced Old Dutch, and extensively influenced Central Franconian and otherOld High German dialects.
Old English,Old Frisian and (to a lesser degree)Old Saxon share the application of theIngvaeonic nasal spirant law. Old Dutch was considerably less affected than those other three languages, but a dialect continuum formed/existed between Old Dutch, Old Saxon and Old Frisian. Despite sharing some particular features, a number of disparities separate Old Saxon, Old Frisian, Old English and Old Dutch. One such difference is that Old Dutch used-a as its plural a-stem noun ending, while Old Saxon and Old English employed-as or-os. Much of the grammatical variation between Old Dutch and Old Saxon is similar to that between Old Dutch and Old High German.
It is also found that Old Dutch had lost the dual number for its pronouns, unlike Old English, which usedwit to refer to "the two of us". Old Dutch would have usedwe both to refer to that and to refer to many more people in the "us" group, much like Modern Dutch and English.
Old Dutch naturally evolved intoMiddle Dutch with some distinctions that approximate those found in most medieval West Germanic languages. The year 1150 is often cited as the time of the discontinuity, but it actually marks a time of profuseDutch writing whose language is patently different from Old Dutch.
The most notable difference between Old and Middle Dutch isvowel reduction. Back vowels (a,o) in non-stressed syllables are rather frequent in Old Dutch, but in Middle Dutch, they are reduced to aschwa:
| Old Dutch | Middle Dutch | English |
|---|---|---|
| vogala | vogele | bird (fowl) |
| daga /dago | daghe | days (nominative/genitive) |
| brecan | breken | to break |
| gescrivona | ghescreven | written (past participle) |
The following is a translation ofPsalm 55:18, taken from theWachtendonck Psalms; it shows the evolution of Dutch, from the original Old Dutch, writtenc. 900, to modern Dutch, but so accurately copies theLatinword order of the original that there is little information that can be garnered on Old Dutchsyntax. In Modern Dutch, recasting is necessary to form a coherent sentence.
| Old Dutch | Irlōsin sal an frithe sēla mīna fan thēn thia ginācont mi, wanda under managon he was mit mi. |
|---|---|
| Middle Dutch | Erlosen sal hi in vrede siele mine van dien die genaken mi, want onder menegen hi was met mi. |
| Modern Dutch (with old word order) | Verlossen zal hij in vrede ziel mijn van zij die aanvallen mij, want onder menigen hij was met mij. |
| Modern Dutch (with new word order) | Hij zal mijn ziel verlossen in vrede van hen die mij aanvallen, want onder menigen was hij met mij. |
| English | He will deliver my soul in peace from those who attack me, for, amongst many, he was with me. |
Old Dutch texts are extremely rare and much more limited than for related languages likeOld English andOld High German. Most of the earliest texts written in the Netherlands were written inLatin, rather than Old Dutch. Some of the Latin texts, however, contained Old Dutch words interspersed with the Latin text. Also, it is hard to determine whether a text actually was written in Old Dutch, as theGermanic languages spoken at that time were not standardised and were much more similar to one another.
Several words that are known to have developed in the Netherlands before Old Dutch was spoken have been found, and they are sometimes calledOudnederlands (English: "Old Netherlandic" or "Old Dutch") in a geographic sense. The oldest known example,wad 'mudflat', is already mentionedc. 107–108 AD inTacitus'Histories (Book 5), in Latinised form asvadam (acc. sg.), as the name of a village,Vada, probably reflecting Early Germanic*wada. The word exclusively referred to the region and ground type that is now known as theWadden Sea. However, since the word existed long before Old Dutch did (and even before its parent language,Frankish), it cannot be considered part of the vocabulary of Old Dutch but rather ofProto-Germanic.
Haþuþȳwas. Ann kusjam logūns.
This sentence has been interpreted as "Haþuþyw's. I/He grant(s) a flame (i.e. brand, sword) to the select". It was discovered on asword sheath mounting, excavated in 1996 in the Dutch village ofBergakker[17] and is perhaps better described asFrankish than Old Dutch (Frankish was the direct parent language of Old Dutch).[18] The text however, shows the beginning of Old Dutch morphology. The wordann, found in the partially-translated inscription is coined as the oldest Dutch by linguists Nicoline van der Sijs and Tanneke Schoonheim fromGenootschap Onze Taal. They attribute that word to the ancestor of the modern Dutch verb rootgun, through the addition of the prefixge-.[19] (An Englishcognate probably survives into own (up) in the sense of 'to acknowledge, concede'.) Its modern meaning is roughly "to think someone deserves something, to derive satisfaction from someone else's success", and it is commonly translated as "grant" or "bestow".
Maltho thi afrio lito
Glosses to the Salic law code (theMalberg glosses) contain several Old Dutch words and this full sentence written in the early 6th century, which is likely the earliest in the language. It translates as "I tell you: I am setting you free, serve". The phrase was used to free aserf.[20][21] Alito (English:half-free) was a form of serf in thefeudal system, a half-free farmer, who was connected to the land of the lord for whom he worked but not owned by that lord. In contrast, a slave was fully owned by the lord. The Old Dutch word and the Modern Dutch counterpartlaat are both etymologically and in meaning undoubtedly related to the verb rootlaat (English: 'let go', 'release'), which may indicate the fairly free status of such person in relation to that a slave. The Old Dutch wordlito is particularly recognisable in the verb's past tenselieten.[22]
End ec forsacho allum dioboles uuercum and uuordum, Thunær ende Uuôden ende Saxnôte ende allum thêm unholdum thê hira genôtas sint.
TheUtrecht Baptismal Vow, orOld Saxon Baptismal Vow, is a 9th-centurybaptismal vow that was found in a monastery library in the German city ofMainz but was written in the Dutch city ofUtrecht. The sentence translates as "And I renounce all the deeds and words of the devil, Thunear, Wōden and Saxnōt, and all those fiends that are their companions". It mentions threeGermanic pagan gods of the earlySaxons which the reader is to forsake: Uuôden ("Woden"),Thunaer andSaxnōt. ScholarRudolf Simek comments that the vow is of particular interest because it is the sole instance of the god Saxnōt mentioned in a religious context. One of many baptismal vows, it is now archived in theVatican Codex pal. 577.[23] Sometimes interpreteted as Old Saxon, a number of Dutch scholars have concluded the Baptismal Vow was actually written in the 8th century in Old Dutch.[24][25] The difficulty in establishing whether the text was written in Old Saxon or Old Franconian is that those languages were very much alike.
Irlôsin sol an frithe sêla mîna fan thên thia ginâcont mi, wanda under managon he was mit mi
TheWachtendonck Psalms are a collection of Latinpsalms, with a translation in an eastern variety of Old Dutch (Old East Low Franconian) which contains a number of Old High German elements.[26] The example sentence above translates as "He will deliver my soul in peace from those who attack me, for, amongst many, he was with me." Probably based on a Central Franconian original, very little remains of the psalms. They were named after a manuscript that has not survived but was the source from which scholars believe the surviving fragments must have been copied. The manuscript was once owned by Canon Arnold Wachtendonck. The surviving fragments are handwritten copies made by the Renaissance scholarJustus Lipsius in the sixteenth century. Lipsius made a number of separate copies of what appeared to be the same material, but the versions do not always agree. In addition, scholars conclude that the numerous errors and inconsistencies in the fragments point not only to some carelessness or inattentiveness by the Renaissance scholars but also to errors in the now-lost manuscript out of which the material was copied. The language of the Psalms suggests that they were originally written in the 10th century.
Thes naghtes an minemo beddo vortheroda ich minen wino. Ich vortheroda hine ande ne vand sin niet.
This example sentence taken from theLeiden Willeram translates as "All night long on my bed I looked for the one my heart loves; I looked for him but did not find him". The manuscript, now in the library of theLeiden University in the Netherlands, contains an Old Dutch translation of an Old High German (East Franconian) commentary onSong of Solomon, written by the German abbotWilliram of Ebersberg. The translation was done by a monk of theAbbey of Egmond, and so the manuscript's other name isEgmond Willeram. The text represents an imperfect attempt to translate the original into the local Old Dutch vernacular. The text contains many Old Dutch words as well as mistranslated words since the scribe must have been unfamiliar with some Old High German words in the original. It could nevertheless be regarded as the first book written in Old Dutch. However, since the book never left the abbey, it cannot be regarded as the start of a Dutch literature and did not influence later works.
Hebban olla vogala nestas hagunnan hinase hic enda thu, uuat unbidan uue nu.
Arguably the most famous text containing Old Dutch, the fragment is translated as "All birds have started making nests, except me and you, what are we waiting for?" The text is dated from around 1100 and written by a West Flemish monk in a convent inRochester,England. For a long time, the sentence was commonly but erroneously considered to be the earliest in Dutch.[27][16] However, it could be considered the oldest Dutch non-religious poetry. The text is usually considered aWest Flemish dialect,[28] but certainIngvaeonic forms might be expected in any of the coastal dialects of Old English, Old Frisian, Old Saxon or Old Dutch. However, the-n of the third-person pluralhebban, which is absent in both Old English and Frisian, identifies the language as Old Dutch (Old High Germanhabent uses a different stem).Hagunnan andhi(c) have aprothetich, which points also to West Flemish in which theh was frequently dropped or, in the written language, added before vowels (compareabent in the Latin version). However, it has been postulated that the text could equally well beOld English, more specificallyOld Kentish.[29]
nu saget mir einen kuning other greven, the an uren got wille gelouven, that se sagent, that ist gelogen, thes ist thaz arme volc bedrogen.
Translated as "Mention one king or earl who wants to believe in their god, what they say is a lie, that's how the people are being deceived", this fragment comes from an important source for Old Dutch: the Rhinelandic Rhyming Bible (Dutch:Rijnlandse Rijmbijbel; German:Rheinische Reimbibel). The verse translation of biblical histories is attested only in a series of fragments from different writers. It contains Old Dutch (Low Franconian), Low German (Low Saxon) and High German (Rhine-Franconian) elements.[30] It was likely composed in the northwest of Germany in the early 12th century, possibly inWerden Abbey, nearEssen.
Phonologically, Old Dutch stands in betweenOld Saxon andOld High German, sharing some innovations with the latter, and others with the former.
The table below lists the consonantal phonemes of Old Dutch. For descriptions of the sounds and definitions of the terms, follow the links on the headings.
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | |||||
| Plosive | voiceless | p | t | k | |||
| voiced | b | d | |||||
| Fricative | voiceless | f | θ | s | x | h | |
| voiced | v | ɣ | |||||
| Approximant | l | j | w | ||||
| Trill | r | ||||||
Notes:
Final-obstruent devoicing of Proto-Germanic[β] to[f] occurred across the West Germanic languages, and thus also in Old Dutch. Old Dutch spelling also reveals final devoicing of other consonants, namely:
Final devoicing was countered by the syllable-initial voicing of voiceless fricatives, which made[v] and[f] allophones of each other.
Final devoicing appears much earlier in Old Dutch than it does Old Saxon and Old High German. In fact, by judging from thefind at Bergakker, it would seem that the language already had inherited this characteristic fromOld Frankish[citation needed] whereas Old Saxon and Old High German are known to have maintained word-final voiced obstruents much later (at least 900).
| Front | Back | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| unrounded | rounded | rounded | |||
| short | long | short | short | long | |
| Close | i | iː | y | u | uː |
| Mid | e | eː | ø | o | oː |
| Open | ɑ | ɑː | |||
Notes:
In unstressed syllables, only three vowels seem to have been reliably distinguished: open, front and back. In the Wachtendonck Psalms, thee andi merged in unstressed syllables, as dido andu. That led to variants likedagi anddage ("day", dative singular) andtungon andtungun ("tongue", genitive, dative, accusative singular and nominative, dative, accusative plural). The forms withe ando are generally found later on, showing the gradual reduction of the articulatory distinction, eventually merging into aschwa (/ə/). A short phrase from thegospel book ofMunsterbilzen Abbey, written around 1130, still shows several unstressed vowels distinguished:
That was a late monument, however, as the merging of all unstressed short vowels was already well underway by that time. Most likely, the difference was maintained only in spelling traditions, but it had been mostly lost in speech. With the introduction of new scribal traditions in the 12th and 13th century, the practices were abandoned, and unstressed vowels were consistently written ase from that time onward.
| Front | Back | |
|---|---|---|
| Opening | io (ia ie) | uo |
| Height-harmonic | iu | |
| Closing | ei | (ou) |
Notes:
Old Dutch was spelt using the Latin alphabet.
The length of a vowel was generally not represented in writing probably because the missionaries, who were the ones capable of writing and teaching how to write, tended to base the written language on Latin, which also did not make a distinction in writing:dag "day" (short vowel),thahton "they thought" (long vowel). Later on, the long vowels were sometimes marked with amacron to indicate a long vowel:ā. In some texts long vowels were indicated by simply doubling the vowel in question, as in the placenameHeembeke and personal nameOodhelmus (both from charters written in 941 and 797 respectively).
Old Dutch may have preserved at least four of the six cases of Proto-Germanic:nominative,accusative,genitive anddative. A fifth case, theinstrumental, could have also existed.
The-s ending in the masculine plural was preserved in the coastal dialects, as can be seen in the Hebban Olla Vogala text wherenestas is used instead ofnesta. Later on, the-s ending entered Hollandic dialects and became part of the modern standard language.
| Masculine:dag (day) | Neuter:buok (book) | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | |||||
| Nominative, Accusative | dag | – | daga(s) | -a(s) | buok | – | buok | – |
| Genitive | dages / dagis | -es / -is | dago | -o | buokes / buokis | -es / -is | buoko | -o |
| Dative | dage / dagi | -e / -i | dagon | -on | buoke / buoki | -e / -i | buokon | -on |
During the Old Dutch period, the distinction between the feminineō-stems andōn-stems began to disappear, when endings of one were transferred to the other declension and vice versa, as part of a larger process in which the distinction between the strong and weak inflection was being lost not only in feminine nouns but also in adjectives. The process is shown in a more advanced stage in Middle Dutch.
| Feminine:ertha (earth) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singular | Plural | |||
| Nominative, Accusative | ertha | -a | ertha / erthon | -a / -on |
| Genitive | erthon | -on | erthono | -ono |
| Dative | ertho | -o | erthon | -on |
| Masculine:bruk (breach) | Feminine:gift (gift) | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | |||||
| Nominative, Accusative | bruk | – | bruke / bruki | -e / -i | gift | – | gifte / gifti | -e / -i |
| Genitive | brukes / brukis | -es / -is | bruko | -o | gifte / gifti | -e / -i | gifto | -o |
| Dative | bruke / bruki | -e / -i | brukin | -in | gifte / gifti | -e / -i | giftin | -in |
| Masculine:balko (beam) | Neuter:herta (heart) | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | |||||
| Nominative | balko | -o | balkon | -on | herta | -a | herton | -on |
| Accusative | balkon | -on | balkon | -on | herta | -a | herton | -on |
| Genitive | balkin | -in | balkono | -ono | hertin | -in | hertono | -ono |
| Dative | balkin | -in | balkon | -on | hertin | -in | herton | -on |
Old Dutch reflects an intermediate form between Old Saxon and Old High German. Like Old High German, it preserved the three different verb endings in the plural (-on,-et and-unt) while the more northern languages have the same verb ending in all three persons. However, like Old Saxon, it had only two classes of weak verb, with only a few relic verbs of the third weak class, but the third class had still largely been preserved in Old High German.
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