Old High German language
| Old High German | |
|---|---|
| diutisk | |
| Region | Central Europe |
| Era | Early Middle Ages |
|
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. 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.
During the migration period, the Elbe Germanic tribes settled in what became Alamannia, the Duchy of Bavaria and the Kingdom of Lombardy. At the same time the Weser-Rhine tribes settled the area between those two rivers before crossing the Rhine to conquer Northern Gaul, where under the Merovingians they created the Frankish kingdom, which eventually streched down to the Loire.
Old High German comprises the dialects of these groups which underwent the Second Sound Shift during the 6th Century, namely all of Elbe Germanic and most of the Weser-Rhine Germanic dialects.
The Franks in the western part of Francia (Neustria and western Austrasia) gradually adopted the Gallo-Romance language by the beginning of the OHG period, with the linguistic boundary later stabilised approximately along the course of the Maas and Moselle in the east, and the northern boundary probably a little further south than the current boundary between French and Flemish. North of this line, the Franks retained their language, but it was not affected by the Second Sound Shift, which thus separated their Low Franconian dialect (the ancestor of Dutch) from the more easterly Franconian dialects which formed part of Old High German.
...
Wikipedia