Old High German

Old High German (OHG) is the earliest stage of the German language, covering the period from around 500 or 750 to 1050. It wasn't one single language but a group of many different West Germanic dialects that changed in sound in similar ways, a process called the Second Sound Shift.

During this time, different tribal areas slowly came together under the rule of Charlemagne, uniting the OHG dialects into one larger region. This period also set the lasting language border between German and what would become French.

Old High German kept many complex grammar rules from older Germanic languages. When these rules began to simplify, it marked the start of Middle High German. Most surviving texts from this time were written in monastery rooms called scriptoria and were mostly about Christianity, with some early examples being short notes called glosses that helped explain Latin writings.

Periodisation

Old High German is the earliest stage of the German language, and it is usually dated from around 750 to 1050. During this time, people began writing in Old High German, starting with small notes and later including bigger translations and original stories. Some experts think the changes in sounds that define this period started even earlier, around the 6th century.

By the mid-11th century, the way people spelled words showed big changes in how nouns and adjectives were used. This time is generally seen as the end of Old High German and the start of Middle High German.

Territory

Further information: Francia, Carolingian Empire, and Frankish language

Old High German includes the dialects that changed during the 6th century due to something called the Second Sound Shift. This mainly affected the Upper and Central German dialects.

In the west, the Franks gradually started speaking Gallo-Romance by the beginning of the Old High German period. North of this area, they kept their language, but it didn’t change in the same way. In the south, the Lombards, who lived in Northern Italy, kept their dialect until Charlemagne conquered them in 774. After that, they slowly began speaking the local Romance language instead.

Dialects

Further information: Proto-Germanic language and Germanic languages

Old High German did not have one standard form; instead, it had many different dialects. These dialects were grouped based on where people lived and changes in sounds that happened over time. The main dialects included Central German, Upper German, and a mix between the two called East Franconian.

Important places where these dialects were used included cities like Trier, Cologne, Mainz, Frankfurt, Strasbourg, Freising, Passau, and Regensburg. Some dialects, like Thuringian and Langobardic, have very little evidence left today.

Literacy

Further information: Oaths of Strasbourg, Germanic Christianity, and Anglo-Saxon mission

Old High German literacy grew thanks to monasteries, especially at St. Gallen, Reichenau Island, and Fulda. It began when Saint Boniface set up the German church in the mid-8th century and got a boost during the Carolingian Renaissance in the 9th century. Important poems from this time, like the Hildebrandslied and the Muspilli, were saved by scholars, though only a small amount remains today.

Rabanus Maurus, a student of Alcuin and later abbot at Fulda, helped promote German writing. His students included Walafrid Strabo and Otfrid of Weissenburg. Later, Notker Labeo became a great writer in Old High German and created a system for writing the language.

Writing system

Old High German saw a big change from using runic writing to the Latin alphabet. Because the Latin alphabet didn't have all the sounds needed for German, different writers came up with their own ways to spell words. This caused a lot of spelling differences.

One writer, Otfrid von Weissenburg, talked about these problems in his book. He said that spelling was hard because sometimes too many letters were used or the sounds were not familiar. Other careful writers like in the Isidor also showed they knew about these issues.

Phonology

The charts show the vowel and consonant sounds of the East Franconian dialect from the 9th century. This dialect comes from the monastery of Fulda, especially from an old book called the Tatian. Dictionaries and grammar books about Old High German often use the spellings from the Tatian because they are close to the forms of words in Middle High German.

Vowels

Old High German had six short vowel sounds and five long vowel sounds. These vowels appeared in both stressed and unstressed parts of words. There were also six combinations of vowels called diphthongs.

Consonants

The biggest change between Old High German and earlier West Germanic languages was a series of sound shifts called the Second Sound Shift. This change made the consonant sounds of German different from other West Germanic languages, like English and Low German. Because the shift affected different areas in different ways, it is hard to describe one single system for all of Old High German.

Phonological developments

Here are some of the main sound changes that helped turn Common West Germanic into Old High German:

• Soft voiced sounds like /ɣ/ and /β/ became hard sounds like /ɡ/ and /b/.
• Voiceless sounds like /p/, /t/, and /k/ changed into fricatives and affricates in certain positions.
• The long vowel sounds *ē₂ and *ō turned into the combinations /ie/ and /uo/.
• The sound *ai became ei except in some positions where it stayed as ē.
• The sound /eu/ mixed with /iu/ in some cases and became /io/ in others.

Morphology

Nouns

Verbs

Tense

Old High German used a simple system with two tenses: present and past, called the preterite. It also developed three new tenses: perfect, pluperfect, and future. These new tenses were formed by combining helper verbs with past participles. Over time, these participles changed from acting like adjectives to becoming part of the verb itself.

Old High German also created ways to talk about the future using helper verbs like skulan and werden along with the main verb. The present tense was still used to talk about future events, just like in modern German.

Conjugation

The following is a sample conjugation of a strong verb, nëman "to take".

Syntax

Old High German syntax can be tricky to understand because many texts were translations from Latin, which influenced their structure. Also, poems sometimes followed special patterns for rhyme and rhythm. But the basic rules for word order were similar to modern Standard German.

One big difference was that sometimes the subject pronoun, like "I" or "he," was left out of sentences. For example, an early Alemannic creed from St Gall starts with "kilaubu in got vater almahticun," which means "I believe in God the almighty father" in modern German. By the end of the Old High German period, using a subject pronoun became necessary, and definite articles started to appear, changing from old demonstrative pronouns.

Texts

Early Old High German times had lots of missionaries traveling around. By the year 800, most people in the Frankish Empire had become Christian. Most of the old writings we have from this time were made in special rooms in churches called scriptoria by people known as scribes. These scribes usually wrote in Latin, so many Old High German books are about religion and use words from ecclesiastical Latin.

One of the oldest known Old High German texts is called the Abrogans, a book that lists words in both Latin and Old High German. Another old text is the Hildebrandslied, a story that was later written down in church books. There were also special prayers and poems from long ago, like the Wessobrunn Prayer and the Muspilli. Later, people wrote stories based on the Bible, such as the Evangelienbuch by Otfrid von Weissenburg.

Example texts

The Lord's Prayer is shown in four different Old High German dialects. While these are translations from a religious service, they help us see how the language varied across regions. This gives us a clear look at the differences between the dialects.