Sprache the language of those West Germanic tribes, who, at their earliest appearance in history, spoke a Germanic tongue, and still speak it at the present day. The chief of these tribes are: the Saxons, the Franks (but with the restriction noted above), the Chatti (Hessians), Thuringians, Alemannians and Bavarians. This definition naturally includes the languages spoken in the Low Countries, Flemish and Dutch, which are offsprings of the Low Franconian dialect, mixed with Frisian and Saxon elements; but, as the literary development of these languages has been in its later stages entirely independent of that of the German language, they are excluded from the present survey.
The German language, which is spoken by about seventy-one millions, and consequently occupies in this respect the third place among European languages, borders, in the west and south, on Romance languages (French, Italian), and also to some extent on Slavonic. On Italian and Slovenian territory there are several German-speaking “islands,” notably the Sette and Tredici Communi, east and north-east of the Lake of Garda, and the “Gottschee Ländchen” to the south of Laibach. The former of these is, however, on the point of dying out. Neighbours on the east, where the boundary line runs by no means as straight as on the west or south, are the Magyars and again Slavonic races. Here, too, there are numerous “islands” on Hungarian and Slavonic territory. Danes and Frisians join hands with the Germans in the north.[1]
In the west and south the German language has, compared with its status in earlier periods, undoubtedly lost ground, having been encroached upon by Romance tongues. This is the case in French Flanders, in Alsace and Lorraine, at any rate before the war of 1870, in the valleys south of Monte Rosa and in southern Tirol; in Styria and Carinthia the encroachment is less marked, but quite perceptible. On the east, on the other hand, German steadily spread from the days of Charles the Great down to recent times, when it has again lost considerable ground in Bohemia, Moravia and Livonia. At the time of Charles the Great the eastern frontier extended very little beyond the lower Elbe, following this river beyond Magdeburg, whence it passed over to the Saale, the Bohemian forest and the river Enns (cf. the map in F. Dahn, Urgeschichte der germanischen und romanischen Völker, vol. iii.). Partly as a result of victories gained by the Germans over the Avars and Slavs, partly owing to peaceful colonization, the eastern boundary was pushed forward in subsequent centuries; Bohemia was in this way won for the German tongue by German colonists in the 13th century, Silesia even a little earlier; in Livonia German gained the upper hand during the 13th century, while about the same time the country of the Prussians was conquered and colonized by the knights of the Teutonic order. The dialect which these colonists and knights introduced bore the Middle German character; and this, in various modifications, combined with Low German and even Dutch elements, formed the German spoken in these newly-won territories. In the north (Schleswig), where at the time of Charles the Great the river Eider formed the linguistic boundary, German has gained and is still gaining on Danish.
Before considering the development of the language spoken within these boundaries, a word of explanation is perhaps necessary with regard to the word deutsch. As applied to the language, deutsch first appears in the Latin form theotiscus, lingua theotisca, teutisca, in certain Latin writings of the 8th and 9th centuries, whereas the original Old High German word thiudisc, tiutisc (from thiot, diot, “people,” and the suffix -isc) signified only “appertaining to the people,” “in the manner of the people.” Cf. also Gothic þiudisko as a translation of ἐθνικῶς (Gal. ii. 14). It, therefore, seems probable that if the application of the word to the language (lingua theotisca) was not exactly an invention of Latin authors of German nationality, its use in this sense was at least encouraged by them in order to distinguish their own vernacular (lingua vulgaris) from Latin as well as from the lingua romana.[2]
In the 8th and 9th centuries German or “Deutsch” first appears as a written language in the dialects of Old High German and Old Low German. Of an “Urdeutsch” or primitive German, i.e. the common language from which these sharply distinguished dialects of the earliest historical period must have developed, we have no record; we can only infer its character—and it was itself certainly not free from dialectic variations—by a study of the above-named and other Germanic dialects. It is usual to divide the history of the German language from this earliest period, when it appears only in the form of proper names and isolated words as glosses to a Latin text, down to the present day, into three great sections: (1) Old High German (Althochdeutsch) and Old Low German (Old Saxon; Altniederdeutsch, Altsächsisch); (2) Middle High German (Mittelhochdeutsch) and Middle Low German (Mittelniederdeutsch); and (3) Modern High German and Modern Low German (Neuhochdeutsch and Neuniederdeutsch). It is more difficult to determine the duration of the different periods, for it is obvious that the transition from one stage of a language to another takes place slowly and gradually.
The first or Old High German period is commonly regarded as extending to about the year 1100. The principal characteristic of the change from Old High German to Middle High German is the weakening of the unaccented vowels in final syllables (cf. O.H.G. tagā, gesti, geban, gābum and M.H.G. tage, geste, geben, gāben). But it must be remembered that this process began tentatively as early as the 10th century in Low German, and also that long, unaccented vowels are preserved in the Alemannic dialect as late as the 14th century and even later. Opinion is more at variance with regard to the division between the second and third periods. Some would date Modern High German from the time of Luther, that is to say, from about 1500. But it must be noted that certain characteristics attributed to the Modern German vowel system, such as lengthening of Middle High German short vowels, the change from Middle High German ī, ū, iu to Modern High German ei, au, eu (öu), of Middle High German ie, uo, üe to Modern High German ī, ū, ǖ, made their appearance long before 1500. Taking this fact into consideration, others distinguish a period of classical Middle High German extending to about 1250, and a period of transition (sometimes called Frühneuhochdeutsch, or Early Modern High German) from 1250 to 1650. The principal characteristics of Modern High German would then consist in a greater stability of the grammatical and syntactical rules, due to the efforts of earlier grammarians, such as Schottelius, Gottsched and others, and the substitution of a single vowel sound for the varying vowels of the singular and plural of the preterite of strong verbs (cf. Middle High German schreib, schriben, and Modern High German schrieb, schrieben, &c.). The much debated question of the origins of Modern High German has been recently reopened by O. Behaghel (Geschichte der deutschen Sprache, l.c. 661), who hopes that a more satisfactory solution may be arrived at by the study of certain syntactical peculiarities to be seen in the dialects of more recent periods.
As the middle ages did not produce a German Schriftsprache or literary language in the modern sense of the word, which—as is undoubtedly the case in Modern German—might have influenced the spoken language (Umgangssprache), the history of the language in its earlier stages is a history of different dialects. These dialects will, therefore, claim our attention at some length.
It may be assumed that the languages of the different West Germanic tribes enumerated above were, before the appearance of the tribes in history, distinguished by many dialectic variations;
- ↑ For a detailed description of the boundary line cf. O. Behaghel’s article in Paul’s Grundriss, 2nd ed., pp. 652-657, where there is also a map, and a very full bibliography relative to the changes in the boundary.
- ↑ Cf. J. Grimm, Deutsche Grammatik, 3rd ed., i. p. 13; F. Kluge, Etymologisches Wörterbuch, 6th ed., pp. 75 ff.; K. Luick, “Zur Geschichte des Wortes ‘deutsch,’” in Anzeiger für deutsches Altertum, xv., pp. 135, 248; H. Fischer, “Theotiscus, Deutsch,” in Paul and Braune’s Beiträge, xviii. p. 203; H. Paul, Deutsches Wörterbuch (1897), p. 93.
