| Old High German | |
|---|---|
| diutisk | |
_(cropped).jpg) First page of the St. Gall Codex Abrogans (Stiftsbibliothek, cod. 911), the earliest text in Old High German | |
| Region | Central Europe |
| Ethnicity | Franks,Lombards |
| Era | Early Middle Ages (c. AD 500–1050) |
Indo-European
| |
Early form | |
| Runic,Latin | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-2 | goh |
| ISO 639-3 | goh |
| Glottolog | oldh1241 |
| 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. | |
Old High German (OHG;German:Althochdeutsch (Ahdt., Ahd.)) is the earliest stage of theGerman language, conventionally identified as the period from around 500/750 to 1050. Rather than representing a single supra-regional form of German, Old High German encompasses the numerousWest Germanic dialects that had undergone the set ofconsonantal changes called theSecond Sound Shift.
At the start of this period, dialect areas reflected the territories of largely independent tribal kingdoms, but by 788 the conquests ofCharlemagne had brought all OHG dialect areas into a singlepolity. The period also saw the development of a stable linguistic border between German andGallo-Romance, laterFrench.
Old High German largely preserved thesyntheticinflectional system inherited from its ancestral Germanic forms. The eventual disruption of these patterns, which led to the moreanalytic grammar, are generally considered to mark the transition toMiddle High German.
Surviving Old High German texts were all composed in monasticscriptoria, so the overwhelming majority of them are religious in nature or, when secular, belong to theLatinate literary culture ofChristianity. The earliest instances, which date to the latter half of the 8th century, areglosses—notes added to the margins or between lines that provide translation of the (Latin) text or other aid to the reader.
Old High German is generally dated from around 750 to around 1050.[1][2] The beginning of this period marks the emergence of the Old High German (OHG) written tradition initially limited to glosses, but by the 9th century, it included substantial translations and original compositions.[2] However, the fact that the defining feature of Old High German, the Second Sound Shift (generally called the High German Consonant Shift in English), 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 asVoralthochdeutsch ("pre-OHG")[3] orvorliterarisches 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]
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 adjectivedeclensions.[6] There is also a hundred-year "dearth of continuous texts" after the death ofNotker Labeo in 1022.[5] The mid-11th century is widely accepted as marking the transition toMiddle High German.[7]
Old High German encompasses the dialects that had undergone theSecond Sound Shift during the 6th century—namely all of the Upper and Central German dialects.
The Franks in the western part ofFrancia (Neustria and westernAustrasia) gradually adoptedGallo-Romance by the beginning of the OHG period, with the linguistic boundary later stabilised approximately along the course of theMeuse andMoselle in the east, and the northern boundary probably a little further south than the current boundary betweenFrench andDutch.[8] North of this line, the Franks retained their language, but it was not affected by the Second Sound Shift, which thus separated theLow Franconian or Old Dutch varieties from the more easterly Franconian dialects which formed part of Old High German.[9]
In the south, theLombards, who had settled inNorthern Italy, maintained their dialect until their conquest byCharlemagne in 774. After this the Germanic-speaking population, who were by then almost certainly bilingual, gradually switched to theRomance language of the native population, so that Langobardic had died out by the end of the OHG period.[10]
At the beginning of the period, no Germanic language was spoken east of a line fromKieler Förde to the riversElbe andSaale, earlier Germanic speakers in the Northern part of the area having been displaced by theSlavs. This area did not become German-speaking until theGerman eastward expansion ("Ostkolonisation", "Ostsiedlung") of the early 12th century, though there was some attempt at conquest and missionary work under theOttonians.[11]
The Alemannic polity was conquered byClovis 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 continentalGermanic-speaking peoples under Frankish rule. While this led to some degree ofFrankish 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.
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 ofmanuscripts produced in a few major ecclesiastical centres, there is noisogloss information of the sort on which modern dialect maps are based. For this reason the dialects may be termed "monastery dialects" (GermanKlosterdialekte).[12]
The main dialects, with theirbishoprics andmonasteries:[13]
In addition, there are two poorly attested dialects:
The continued existence of aWest 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 theLudwigslied, whose presence in a French manuscript suggestsbilingualism, are controversial.[14][15]
Old High German literacy is a product of the monasteries, notably atSt. Gallen,Reichenau Island andFulda. Its origins lie in the establishment of the German church bySaint Boniface in the mid-8th century, and it was further encouraged during theCarolingian 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 theHildebrandslied and theMuspilli).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 ofAlcuin and later an abbot at Fulda, was an important advocate of the cultivation of German literacy. Among his students wereWalafrid Strabo andOtfrid of Weissenburg.
Towards the end of the Old High German period,Notker Labeo was among the greatest stylists in the language, and developed a systematic orthography.[20]
Old High German marked the culmination of a shift away fromrunic writing of the pre-OHG period[21] to theLatin alphabet. This shift led to considerable variations in spelling conventions, as individual scribes and scriptoria had to develop their owntransliteration of sounds not native toLatin script.[22]Otfrid von Weissenburg, in one of the prefaces to hisEvangelienbuch, 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 OHGIsidor or Notker show a similar awareness.[22]
The charts show the vowel and consonant systems of the East Franconian dialect in the 9th century. This is the dialect of the monastery ofFulda, and specifically of the Old High GermanTatian. 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 theMiddle High German forms of words, particularly with respect to the consonants.[25]
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.[26]
| Front | Back1 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Short2 | Long3 | Short2 | Long3 | |||
| Close | i | iː | u | uː | ||
| Mid | e | eː | o | oː | ||
| Open | (ɛ)4 | a | aː | |||
| Diphthongs5 | ||||||
| ie̯ | uo̯ | |||||
| iu̯ | io̯ | |||||
| ei̯ | ou̯ | |||||
Notes:
By the mid 11th century the many different vowels found in unstressed syllables had almost all beenreduced to⟨e⟩[ə].[29]
Examples:
| Old High German | Middle High German | New High German | English |
|---|---|---|---|
| mahhōn | machen | machen | to make, do |
| taga | tage | Tage | days |
| dëmu | dëm(e) | dem | to the |
(The New High German forms of these words are broadly the same as in Middle High German.)
The main difference between Old High German and theWest Germanic dialects from which it developed is that the former underwent theSecond Sound Shift. The result of the sound change has been that theconsonantal system ofGerman is different from all other West Germanic languages, includingEnglish andLow German. The shift applied to different extents onto various dialects, added to other interdialectal variations, this makes a single "High German" system and precise articulations details thereabout difficult to reconstruct.
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Dorsal | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive6 | Lenis | b | d | ɡ | ||
| Fortis | p | t | /k/⟨c, k⟩ | |||
| Affricate | Fortis | /p͡f/⟨ph, pf⟩ | /θ/⟨th⟩7 | /t͡s/⟨tz, z⟩ | (/k͡x/⟨ch⟩)8 | |
| Fricative6 | Fortis | f | /s/⟨ȥ⟩9 | /x/10⟨ch, h⟩ | ||
| Lenis | v | ⟨s⟩/s̠/11 | h | |||
| Sonorant | Modal | /w/⟨w, uu⟩ | r | /j/⟨j, i⟩ | ||
| Lateral | l | |||||
| Nasal | m | n | [ŋ]⟨ng⟩ | |||
Notes:
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 consonantgemination. Double consonants found in Old High German includepp, bb, tt, dd, ck (for/kː/),gg, ff, ss, zz, hh, mm, nn, ll, rr.
This list has the sound changes that transformedCommon West Germanic into Old High German but not the Late OHG changes that affectedMiddle High German:
Germanic had a simple two-tense system, with forms for apresent andpreterite. These were inherited by Old High German, but in addition OHG developed threeperiphrastic tenses: theperfect,pluperfect andfuture.
The periphrastic past tenses were formed by combining the present or preterite of anauxiliary 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.[30] 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)[31]
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)[32][33]
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 renderMedieval Latin forms,[34] 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.[35][36]
Germanic also had no future tense, but again OHG created periphrastic forms, using an auxiliary verbskulan (Modern Germansollen) and the infinitive, orwerden 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)[37]
The present tense continued to be used alongside these new forms to indicate future time (as it still is in Modern German).
The following is a sampleconjugation of a strong verb,nëman "to take".
| Indicative | Subjunctive | 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 | |||
| 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 |
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,[39] while the verse works may show patterns that are determined by the needs of rhyme and metre, or that represent literary archaisms.[40] Nonetheless, the basic word order rules are broadly those of ModernStandard German.[41]
Two differences from the modern language are the possibility ofomitting a subject pronoun and lack of definite and indefinitearticles. Both features are exemplified in the start of the 8th century Alemanniccreed fromSt Gall:[42]kilaubu in got vater almahticun (Modern German,Ich glaube an Gottden allmächtigen Vater; English "I believe in God the almighty father").[43]
By the end of the OHG period, however, use of a subject pronoun has become obligatory, while the definite article has developed from the originaldemonstrative pronoun (der, diu, daz)[44] and the numeralein ("one") has come into use as an indefinite article.[45] 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]
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The early part of the period saw considerable missionary activity, and by 800 the whole of theFrankish Empire had, in principle, been Christianized. All the manuscripts which contain Old High German texts were written in ecclesiasticalscriptoria byscribes 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 ofecclesiastical Latin on the vocabulary. In fact, most surviving prose texts are translations of Latin originals. Even secular works such as theHildebrandslied are often preserved only because they were written on spare sheets in religiouscodices.
The earliest Old High German text is generally taken to be theAbrogans, a Latin–Old High German glossary variously dated between 750 and 780, probably fromReichenau. The 8th centuryMerseburg Incantations are the only remnant ofpre-Christian German literature. The earliest texts not dependent on Latin originals would seem to be theHildebrandslied and theWessobrunn Prayer, both recorded in manuscripts of the early 9th century, though the texts are assumed to derive from earlier copies.
The BavarianMuspilli is the sole survivor of what must have been a vast oral tradition. Other important works are theEvangelienbuch (Gospel harmony) ofOtfrid von Weissenburg, theLudwigslied and the 9th centuryGeorgslied. The boundary to Early Middle High German (fromc. 1050) is not clear-cut.
An example of Early Middle High German literature is theAnnolied.
TheLord'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.
| Latin version (FromTatian)[46] | Alemannic, 8th century The St Gall Paternoster[47] | South Rhine Franconian, 9th century Weissenburg Catechism[48] | East Franconian,c. 830 Old High GermanTatian[46] | Bavarian, early 9th century Freisinger Paternoster[48] |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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. |
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