Old High German
| Old High German | |
|---|---|
| diutisk | |
| Region | southern Germany (south of the Benrath line), parts of Austria and Switzerland, Southern Bohemia, Sporadic communities in Eastern Gaul |
| Era | developed into Middle High German from the 11th century |
|
Indo-European
|
|
| Runic, Latin | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-2 | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | oldh1241 |
Old High German (OHG, German: Althochdeutsch, German abbr. Ahd.) is the earliest stage of the German language, conventionally covering the period from around 700 to 1050 AD. 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 approximately to the late 5th and early 6th centuries—hence dating its start to around 500 AD. The result of this sound change is that the consonantal 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, Old Dutch, 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 inflectional 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.
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Wikipedia