Talk:Old High German

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I wonder whether it would be worth separating this into OHG language and OHG literature. Pfold 11:10, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Contents 1 Frankish 2 Alphabet 3 Pater noster samples 4 Morphology 5 Frankish = Old High German/Dutch?

[edit] Frankish

In this article I get the feeling that Old Frankish is classified as being a High German dialect ... As Old Frankish became Old Low Frankish/Old Dutch that sounds weird. I mean languages that have experienced the High German consonant shift don't shift back, apart from that, the Old Frankish langauge was never attested.Also Old Frankish was extinct before Charlemagne was born ...

Would someone explain what exactly is meant by Frankish here? Rex 17:24, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Frankish dialects all belong to the Rhein-Weser Germanic group, and those east of the Maas, the ones that were shifted, became the core of Central German (as in the tree on this page). The unshifted became Low Franconian. I'm not sure the term Old Frankish is widely used (I can't find it 4 of the standrad works on the subject in English), and Frankish dialects certainly didn't die out before Charlemagne. Fränkische Sprachen explains it more fully.

Of course, it's true we don't know anything much about the language of the Carolingian court or whether the dialects of the Franks in Gaul were shifted before they became romanised. --Pfold 18:43, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Well this is strange, because "the unshifted" kind of implies that it's the same, only further on in time. According to the Old Frankish language article, it "evolved" into Old Low Frankish in the Netherlands and Flanders and died before Charlemagne was born out everywhere else, so how can it be the ancestor of Middle German dialects. Or more importantly... how can it be High German? Rex 19:02, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

I would say the Old Frankish article is fundamentally flawed. It completely fails to mention the Frankish dialects east of the Rhine! Any book on the history of German will confirm what I've said. --Pfold 19:53, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

The history of German? This goes beyond that. But could you answer my question it could not have been high right? Rex 20:34, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Histories of German are sound sources of information on the West Germanic dialects (and much sounder than WP!). As I said above:

Of course, it's true we don't know anything much about the language of the Carolingian court or whether the dialects of the Franks in Gaul were shifted before they became romanised.

What's your source for saying it couldn't be shifted? In any case, if you look at the Frankish language page you'll see that your view that Frankish = Old Low Franconian is only one possible use of the word. --Pfold 21:47, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

I believe the history of German, does not encompass the entire West Germanic branch, eventhough German books on German are generally good, but apart from that.

German is germanic, but germanic is not german. West germanic is about as varied as the romance languages and taking a purely german viewpoint on west germanic is as preposterous as taking a purely french viewpoint on romance languages, because german is not a more prototypical member of the group!--AkselGerner (talk) 22:56, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Dear AkselGerner, you are 100% right. --El bes (talk) 00:08, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

This page is about Old High German, yet it lists (Old) Frankish as being "High", I don't think this can be accurate. If Old Low Franconian is the decendant of Old Frankish, it cannot have been "High" before that.

So I seriously wonder what is meant by Frankish in this article ... Rex 21:59, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

It means the language of people who were Franks. I just don't see the problem.

Books on the history of German certainly talk about all forms of Frankish.

Old Low Franconian is not the descendant of Frankish. If that's the basis of your objection, you have no case. There are lots of Frankish dialects, many of which are shifted. --Pfold 22:13, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

My objection is that if the language in question here is Old Frankish (pre 6th century) it cannot be listed as Old High German. And if what is meant here are the dialects of Old High German influenced by Frankish, there is stil a problem with the image they create. Rex 22:25, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

You're the one who introduced the term Old Frankish - my text simply said "Frankish speakers". And if you don't know or can't accept that some Frankish dialects are part OHG... well, what can I say?

In any case, it's not listed as OHG - it's part of a description of how the French-German linguistic boundary arose. --Pfold 22:45, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Stop the press! I never said I cannot accept that some Old High German dialects were influcenced by Frankish or the other way around. But this article makes it seem as all of thewm were.

It's not about influnence - there were both shifted and unshifted Frankish dialects, and all the (shifted) West Central German dialects were Frankish. Also of course, the boundary between unshifted and shifted would have changed during the earlier part of the OHG period.

As for the German - French linguistic boundary ... it talks about conquering what is now France as far as the Loire river (eventhough the Franks conquered all of modern France) Northern France ... and then talks about establishing a "linguistic border above the Maas" I don't think German was spoken there.

Also this part sounds really weird: 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.

What I read here are that the Franks all spoke High German, infact it sort of says that the only continental west germanic languages other than High German were Saxon and Frisian... a bit weird. Rex 23:04, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Pfold? Rex 11:55, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I think it's correct as it stands, but I can see it is open to misinterpretation and could be rephrased. Obviously the *Franks* were part of the Frankish Empire by definition (wther they spoke shifted or unshifted dialects); they incorporated all the non-Frankish German speakers by conquest. --19:04, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

But like you said it is easy to misinterpret these parts. I will try to rephrase them and you tell me what you think,  Rex  19:15, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Alphabet

I miss a listing of the Alphabet used in Old High German. According to my sources Old High German had its own alphabet including the th sound (Theta) as we have in English. This sound vanished in the course of consonant shifts during the time of Old High German. Can anyone confirm or deny this statement?

Cakeandicecream 20:55, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

OHG used the Latin alphabet. The spellings associated with the individual phonemes are given in the phonology section (though I see I forgot to include

[edit] Pater noster samples

Looking at recent edits of the Pater noster examples, I was wondering if anyone would disagree if I replaced the texts in the article (which are from the 15th edition of the Althochdeutsche Lesebuch) with the following (from the 17th edition)? The main difference is the inclusion of length marks in the Weissenburg and Tatian texts. Although they may be editorial, we're acknowledging that the texts are taken from the Lesebuch, so we shouldn't alter them. Are they really absent in the 15th edition, or is it due to technological difficulties? Also, in line 1 of the St Galler Pater noster, "bist" has been changed to "pist" in my edition, which is what would be expected for this dialect. I'm not sure whether this was actually written "bist" in the earlier edition of the Lesebuch, or whether a Wikipedian thought it looked wrong and changed it at some stage.

If the article does match with the texts as presented in the 15th edition, then I don't mind if the article stays the way it is. I just thought it may be easier to start afresh with the 17th edition, to iron out any undetected well-meant "corrections" that people may have made.

, which I've now added. Th changed to d in the 9th century, well after the second sound shift. --Pfold 14:32, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
Alemannic, 8th Century	South Rhine Franconian, 9th Century	East Franconian, c. 830
The St Gall Paternoster	Weissenburg Catechism	OHG Tatian
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.

Source: Braune/Ebbinghaus, Althochdeutsches Lesebuch, 17th edn (Niemeyer, 1994)

--Malfidus ~ (talk) 23:53, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, go with the later edition. --Pfold 11:36, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

This might seem counterproductive, but I have the 4th edition of the Lesebuch (1897), and I find it superior in its rendition of the St. Galler Pater Noster:

Fater unseer, thû pist in himile, uuîhi namun dînan, qhueme rîhhi dîn, uuerde uuillo diin, sô in himile sôsa in erdu. prooth unseer emezzihic kip uns hiutu, oblâz uns sculdi unseero, sô uuir oblâzêm uns sculdîkêm, enti ni unsih firleiti in khorunka, ûzzer lôsi unsih fona ubile.

I assume I'm in the minority here, though. Aryaman (☼) 21:39, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Morphology

I think that a few words should be written about endings of various kinds, and of distinctions of cases. There seems to be some misunderstandings here and there in the project, with claims that "German has preserved the proto-germanic grammar" or similarly. This is not 100% true (although German certainly has preserved much of the grammar). I therefore think that mentioning the instrumental case, and the fact that there were more different endings in OHG than in modern High German is interesting enough to merit a section. I do not think we should try to reproduce all paradigms; but some representative sample. (However, I just know them from rather old books; and these books do not very carefully distinguish different epochs or dialects within the OHG.) I had in mind an example like this:

	Sing.	Pl.
N	tag	taga
G	tages	tago
D	tage	tagum
A	tag	taga
I	tagu	(not distinguishable)

and a few words on how e.g. 1:st and 3:rd p. pl. of the verbs then were quite distinct (in pres. ind. normally ending in -mes and -nt, and in pret. -m and -n, respectively); where in the modern language a final -m is replaced by an -n, making the forms indistinguishable. Is this sensible? JoergenB 17:49, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Frankish = Old High German/Dutch?

Dear fellow wikipedians,

there are a lot of misconceptions concerning the term "Old High German", which was coined in the 19th century and was nearly undisputed ever since. Only in recent scientific papers some scholars are questioning this term and are demanding a reassassment. Professor Otto Kronsteiner from the university of Salzburg for example goes as far as to say:

"Am Begriff althochdeutsch ist real nur alt- korrekt. Es gab in der fraglichen Zeit weder ein Deutsch noch ein Hochdeutsch, natürlich auch kein Mittelhochdeutsch. Es waren vereinzelte Ansätze, in verschiedenen Regionen (um den Bodensee, um Salzburg) aus einem Dialekt eine Schriftsprache zu machen, die aber wieder ausgestorben sind, und nicht fortgesetzt wurden, während die zugrundeliegenden Dialekte (wie Alemannisch oder Bairisch) bis heute weiterleben" http://www.inst.at/trans/3Nr/kronst.htm

Translation: "As a matter of fact the only correct part of the term Old High German is old. In the era we are talking about, there was no High German and also no Middle High German. There have been singular attempts in different regions (around Lake Constance, around Salzburg) to form written languages based on one of those dialects, but they were all extinct and discontinued, while the underlaying dialects (like Alemannic or Bavarian) still exist today"

• High = consonant shift

When we talk about the consonant shift, we may distinguish the texts from those old manuscripts before the year 1000 into two groups: those with the consonant shift and those without. To be precise, the first one (including Old Alemannic, Old Bavarian, Old High Frankonian and the little known Old Lombardian) could be called Old High Continental Germanic and the second one Old Low Continental Germanic (inluding Old Saxon, Old Frisian and Old Low Frankonian). Frankish doesn't form an homogeneous language that can be classified as either this or that, but is split. From a purely linguistic point of view, even Old English could be classified as part of the "Low" (unshifted) group.

• German = theodisk?

In the respective era we are talking about (before the year 1000 AD), the term "theodisk" from which the modern German word "Deutsch" derives, didn't have a specific meaning. It was an exonym, given by romance speaking people to the germanic languages they weren't able to understand und could mean any (west) germanic language. Otfrid of Weissenburg for example uses this term around the year 865 in his Gospel book, but translates it with "frenkisg", because that was his vulgar language. From about the year 1000 on the term starts to beeing used by the so titled people themselves. For the time before 1000 it is simply unhistoric and a pure invention by the Grimm brothers.

• Dutch and German

As a matter of fact, the today's two most important continantal germanic standard languages (Ausbau-languages) Dutch (Nederlands) and German (Standard Deutsch) derive both from the Old Frankonian dialects. Dutch originates from the unshifted Old Low Frankonian, while German derivest from the "high" variants of Old Frankonian. German scholars often tried to place Dutch among the German dialects, refering to this common Frankish origin, while Dutch scholars fiercely oppose that. Both scientific points of views are incorrect, because the term German is simply not equivalent to Frankish. Dutch is not a German dialect that evolved to an Ausbau-language, because there was no German at the time of the common origin. We even do not know whether there was a common origin, because the Frankish tribe was a big heterogeneous group that incorporated several distinct smaller germanic groups, giving them a common name. Interesting to know is also, that the Letzeburgish language, which is now co-official in Luxemburg and also Yiddish derive both from Old Frankonian.

• Old High German literally

When the term "high" refers to shifted consonants, the only intirely "high" old germanic variants (hence Frankonian is only regionally shifted) are Old Alemannic and Old Bavarian. But their modern linguistic descendents (the Swiss, the Bavarians, the Austrians, etc.) don't like to be called "German" either.

• Alternatives?

The historically and linguistically correct term would be "Old Germanic", or "Old Continental Germanic" (the second one excluding Old English and the Scandinavian variants). The North Germanic and West Germanic distinction also works, but is a little bit confusing, cause the western group in fact is in the south. Also these terms (North and West) are not used consequently, neither by scholars nor here in wikipedia. Old English could be in both groups, hence England experienced two waves of germanic settlement (the one from the western group, the other from the northern group). A furhter weakness of this West-North classification is the fact, that there are still some East Germanic pecularities found in modern Bavarian and a lot of Old Bavarian words are still untranslateable or hapax legomenon.

The conclusion is that the term "Old High German" represents a widly cited theory, but not necessarily the most correct one. Future research, especially from Indo-European scholars, will supposely bring more light into that and more scientific precission. Thx ... --El bes 15:30, 31 October 2007 (UTC)