The pre-Old High German period — the third period of our mother-tongue, which is not attested by literary records — has, however, acquired its distinctive features by new contact with the languages of civilised nations, which added new elements to the existing material: above all, the contact with the Romans resulted in an exchange of productions and contrivances. However fond we may be of overrating the influence of Latin on the West Teutonic languages, yet it cannot be denied that it materially widened the most various spheres of ideas.
Words which point to active commercial intercourse, such as Münze and Pfund, Straße and Meile, Kiſte and Sack, Eſel and Pfau, were made known in the pre-High German period, probably even in the first century A.D., to our forefathers both mediately and immediately by the Romans. Contemporaneously with these the Latin nomenclature of the culture of the vine was naturalised in Germany in the words Wein, Moſt, Lauer, Kelter, and Trichter. Not much later a rich terminology, together with the Roman style of building, was introduced; Mauer, Keller, Söller, Speicher, Kammer, Weiher, Ziegel, Pfeiler, Pfoſten, Pfahl, and numerous other cognate ideas, evidently bear the stamp of a Latin origin. The adoption of the Southern method of building in stone, however, brought about a transformation of the entire domestic life. When a migratory life is exchanged for a permanent settlement, the example of a highly civilised people cannot fail to furnish abundant material for imitation. We are not surprised, therefore, to find in the language itself the influence of even Roman cookery and of Roman horticulture before the Old High German period; Koch, Küche, Schüſſel, Keſſel, Becken, Tiſch, Eſſig, Senf, Pfeffer, Kohl, Pflanze, Rettig, Kürbis, Kümmel, Kirſche, Pfirſich, Pflaume, Quitte, Feige, &c., testify how ready the German of that period was to extend his knowledge and enrich his language when he exchanged the simple customs of his ancestors for a more luxuriant mode of life.
It would, of course, be a too hasty assumption to explain such Southern alien terms (a few Keltic words such as carrus, carruca, and paraveredus, see Karren, Karch, and Pferd, were introduced through a Roman medium) from the importation of products and technical accomplishments which were unknown to our ancestors till about the beginning of our era. We have indubitable reasons, supported by the extent of the Teutonic exports to Rome, and not merely linguistic reasons. We know from Pliny's Natural History that the Teutons furnished effeminate, imperial Rome the material for pillows by the importation of geese; eoque processere deliciae ut sine hoc instrumento durare jam ne virorum quidem cervices possint. This suggests to the historian of languages the connection of the Latin origin of Flaum, Kiſſen, and Pfühl with Pliny's account; our ancestors adopted the Latin designation for the articles which the Romans procured from Germania, Thus our Pfühl with its cognates attests the share Germania had in the decline of Rome.
With Greece the Western Teutons have had in historical times — the word Arzt does not prove much — no immediate contact producing any influence on the German language. It was really the Romans who made known to the new conquerors of the world the name of that nation which at a subsequent period was destined to affect our development so powerfully. But the settlement of the Goths in the Balkan peninsula (their latest descendants were the Crimean Goths, who died out about the beginning of the last century) had such an influence on the Western Teutons that they have left traces even in our mother-tongue; the first knowledge of Christianity spread from them among the other Teutons. Our oldest supply of loan-words bearing on the Christian religion belongs to Greek terminology, which never existed in the
