Part 17

GERMAN LANGUAGE. Together with English and Frisian, the German language forms part of the West Germanic group of languages. To this group belongs also Langobardian, a dialect which died out in the 9th or 10th century, while Burgundian, traces of which are not met with later than the 5th century, is usually classed with the East Germanic group. Both these tongues were at an early stage crushed out by Romance dialects, a fate which also overtook the idiom of the Western Franks, who, in the so-called _Strassburg Oaths_[1] of 842, use the Romance tongue, and are addressed in that tongue by Louis the German.

Leaving English and Frisian aside, we understand by _Deutsche_ _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 Landchen" 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.[2]

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 Volker_, 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 _[thorn]iudisko_ as a translation of [Greek: ethnikos] (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_.[3]

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_, _Altsachsisch_); (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. _taga_, _gesti_, _geban_, _gabum_ and M.H.G. _tage_, _geste_, _geben_, _gaben_). 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 _i_, _u_, _iu_ to Modern High German _ei_, _au_, _eu_ (_ou_), of Middle High German _ie_, _uo_, _ue_ to Modern High German _i_, _u_, _u_, 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 _Fruhneuhochdeutsch_, 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; this was certainly the case immediately after the Migrations, when the various races began to settle down. But these differences, consisting presumably in matters of phonology and vocabulary, were nowhere so pronounced as to exclude a mutual understanding of individuals belonging to different tribes. One might compare the case of the Poles and Czechs of the present day. During the 6th century, however, a phonological process set in, which ultimately resulted in the separation of Germany into two great linguistic divisions, south and north, or, as the languages are called, High and Low German. This fundamental change, which is known as the second or High German Soundshifting (_Lautverschiebung_), spread northward from the mountainous districts in the south, and, whatever its cause may have been,[4] left behind it clear and easily recognizable effects on the Germanic voiced stop _d_, which became changed to _t_, and more especially on the voiceless stops _t_, _p_ and _k_. Dialects which have shifted initial _t_ and _tt_ in the middle of a word to the affricate _tz_ (written _z_, _tz_) and _p_ and _k_ in corresponding positions to the affricates _pf_ and _k[chi]_ (written _ch_), further, _t_, _p_ and _k_ in the middle of words between vowels, to the double spirant _zz_ (now written _ss_, _sz_), _ff_, _hh_ (written _ch_), are called High German; those in which these changes have not taken place form the Low German group, this group agreeing in this respect with English and Frisian.

Of these sound changes, that of _t_ to _tz_ and _zz_ (_ss_) is the most universal, extending over the whole region in which shifting occurs; that of _k_ to _k[chi]_ (_ch_), the most restricted, being only found in Old Bavarian, and in the Swiss pronunciation, e.g. in _chind_. The remaining dialects occupy positions between the two extremes of complete shifting and the absence of shifting. Some Franconian dialects, for instance, leave _p_ unchanged under certain conditions, and in one dialect at least, Middle Franconian, _t_ has remained after vowels in certain pronominal forms (_dat_, _wat_, _allet_, &c.). On this ground a subdivision has been made in the High German dialects into (a) an Upper German (_Oberdeutsch_) and (b) a Middle German (_Mitteldeutsch_) group; and this subdivision practically holds good for all periods of the language, although in Old High German times the Middle German group is only represented, as far as the written language is concerned, by Franconian dialects.

As the scientific study of the German language advanced there arose a keen revival of interest--and that not merely on the part of scholars--in the dialects which were so long held in contempt as a mere corruption of the _Schriftsprache_.[5] We are still in the midst of a movement which, under the guidance of scholars, has, during the last three decades, bestowed great care on many of the existing dialects; phonological questions have received most attention, but problems of syntax have also not been neglected. Monumental works like Wenker's _Sprachatlas des deutschen Reiches_ and dialect dictionaries are either in course of publication or preparing;[6] while the difficult questions concerned with defining the boundaries of the various dialects and explaining the reasons for them form the subject of many monographs.[7]

Beginning in the north we shall now pass briefly in review the dialects spoken throughout the German-speaking area.

A. THE LOW GERMAN DIALECTS

The Low German dialects, as we have seen, stand nearest to the English and Frisian languages, owing to the total absence of the consonantal shifting which characterizes High German, as well as to other peculiarities of sounds and inflections, e.g. the loss of the nasals _m_ and _n_ before the spirants _f_, _s_ and _p_. Cf. Old Saxon _fif_ (five), _us_ (us), _kup_ (cf. uncouth). The boundary-line between Low and High German, the so-called _Benrather Linie_, may roughly be indicated by the following place-names, on the understanding, however, that the Ripuarian dialect (see below) is to be classed with High German: Montjoie (French border-town), Eupen, Aachen, Benrath, Dusseldorf, north of Siegen, Cassel, Heiligenstadt, Harzgerode, to the Elbe south of Magdeburg; this river forms the boundary as far as Wittenberg, whence the line passes to Lubben on the Spree, Furstenwald on the Oder and Birnbaum near the river Warthe. Beyond this point the Low Germans have Slavs as their neighbours. Compared with the conditions in the 13th century, it appears that Low German has lost ground; down to the 14th and 15th centuries several towns, such as Mansfeld, Eisleben, Merseburg, Halle, Dessau and Wittenberg, spoke Low German.

Low German falls into two divisions, a western division, namely, Low Franconian, the parent, as we have already said, of Flemish and Dutch, and an eastern division, Low Saxon (_Plattdeutsch_, or, as it is often simply called, Low German). The chief characteristic of the division is to be sought in the ending of the first and third person plural of the present indicative of verbs, this being in the former case _-en_, in the latter _-et_. Inasmuch as the south-eastern part of Low Franconian--inclusive of Gelderland and Cleves--shifts final _k_ to _ch_ (e.g. _ich_, _mich_, _auch_, _-lich_), it must obviously be separated from the rest, and in this respect be grouped with High German. Low Saxon is usually divided into Westphalian (to the west of the Weser) and Low Saxon proper, between Weser and Elbe. The south-eastern part of the latter has the verbal ending -en and further shows the peculiarity that the personal pronoun has the same form in the dative and accusative (_mik_, _dick_), whereas the remainder, as well as the Westphalian, has _mi_, _di_ in the dative, and _mi_, _di_ or _mik_, _dik_ in the accusative. To these Low German dialects must also be added those spoken east of the Elbe on what was originally Slavonic territory; they have the ending _-en_ in the first and third person plural of verbs.[8]

B. THE HIGH GERMAN DIALECTS

1. _The Middle German Group._--This group, which comprises the dialects of the Middle Rhine, of Hesse, Thuringia, Upper Saxony (Meissen), Silesia and East Prussia to the east of the lower Vistula between Bischofswerder, Marienburg, Elbing, Wormditt and Wartenberg--a district originally colonized from Silesia--may be most conveniently divided into an East and a West Middle German group. A common characteristic of all these dialects is the diminutive suffix _-chen_, as compared with the Low German form _-ken_ and the Upper German _-lein_ (O.H.G. _lin_). East Middle German consists of Silesian, Upper Saxon and Thuringian,[9] together with the linguistic colony in East Prussia. While these dialects have shifted initial Germanic _p_ to _ph_, or even to _f_ (_fert_ = _Pferd_), the West Middle German dialects (roughly speaking to the west of the watershed of Werra and Fulda) have retained it. If, following a convincing article in the _Zeitschrift fur deutsches Altertum_ (37, 288 ff.) by F. Wrede, we class East and South Franconian--both together may be called High Franconian--with the Upper German dialects, there only remain in the West Middle German group:[10] (a) Middle Franconian and (b) Rhenish Franconian. The former of these,[11] which with its _dat_, _wat_, _allet_, &c. (cf. above) and its retention of the voiced spirant _b_ (written _v_) represents a kind of transition dialect to Low German, is itself divided into ([alpha]) Ripuarian or Low Rhenish with Cologne and Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle) as centres, and ([beta]) Moselle Franconian[12] with Trier (Treves) as principal town. The latter is distinguished by the fact that in the Middle High German period it shifts Germanic _-rp-_ and _-rd-_, which are retained in (a), to _-rf-_ and _-rt-_ (cf. _werfen_, _hirtin_ with _werpen_, _hirdin_).[13] The Rhenish Franconian dialect is spoken in the Rhenish palatinate, in the northern part of Baden (Heidelberg), Hesse[14] and Nassau, and in the German-speaking part of Lorraine. A line drawn from Falkenberg at the French frontier to Siegen on the Lahn, touching the Rhine near Boppard, roughly indicates the division between Middle and Rhenish Franconian.

2. _The Upper German Group._--The Upper German dialects, which played the most important part in the literature of the early periods, may be divided into (a) a Bavarian-Austrian group and (b) a High Franconian-Alemannic group. Of all the German dialects the Bavarian-Austrian has carried the soundshifting to its furthest extreme; here only do we find the labial voiced stop _b_ written _p_ in the middle of a word, viz. old Bavarian _kapames_, old Alemannic _kabames_ ("we gave"); here too, in the 12th century, we find the first traces of that broadening of _i_, _u_, _iu_ (_u_) to _ei_, _au_, _eu_, a change which, even at the present day, is still foreign to the greater part of the Alemannic dialects. Only in Bavarian do we still find the old pronominal dual forms _es_ and _enk_ (for _ihr_ and _euch_). Finally, Bavarian forms diminutives in _-el_ and _-erl_ (_Madel_, _Maderl_), while the Franconian-Alemannic forms are _-la_ and _-le_ (_Madle_). On the other hand, the pronunciation of _-s_ as _-sch_, especially _-st_ as _-scht_ (cf. _Last_, _Haspel_, pronounced _Lascht_, _Haschpel_), may be mentioned as characteristic of the Alemannic, just as the _fortis_ pronunciation of initial _t_ is characteristic of High Franconian, while the other Franconian and Upper German dialects employ the _lenis_.

The Alemannic dialect which, roughly speaking, is separated from Bavarian by the Lech and borders on Italian territory in the south and on French in the west, is subdivided into: (a) Swabian, the dialect of the kingdom of Wurttemberg and the north-western part of Tirol (cf. H. Fischer, _Geographie der schwabischen Mundart_, 1895); (b) High Alemannic (Swiss), including the German dialects of Switzerland, of the southern part of the Black Forest (the Basel-Breisgau dialect), and that of Vorarlberg; (c) Low Alemannic, comprising the dialects of Alsace and part of Baden (to the north of the Feldberg and south of Rastatt), also, at the present day, the town of Basel. Only Swabian has taken part in the change of _i_ to _ei_, &c., mentioned above, while initial Germanic _k_ has been shifted to _ch_ ([chi]) only in High Alemannic (cf. _chalt_, _chind_, _chorn_, for _kalt_, _kind_, _korn_). The pronunciation of _u_ as _u_, _u_ (_Hus_ for _Haus_) is peculiar to Alsatian.

The High Franconian dialects, that is to say, east and south (or south-Rhenish) Franconian, which are separated broadly speaking by the river Neckar, comprise the language spoken in a part of Baden, the dialects of the Main valley from Wurzburg upwards to Bamberg, the dialect of Nuremberg and probably of the Vogtland (Plauen) and Egerland. During the older historical period the principal difference between East and South Franconian consisted in the fact that initial Germanic _d_ was retained in the latter dialect, while East Franconian shifted it to _t_. Both, like Bavarian and Alemannic, shift initial German _p_ to the affricate _pf_.

Finally, the Bavarian-Austrian dialect is spoken throughout the greater part of the kingdom of Bavaria (i.e. east of the Lech and a fine drawn from the point where the Lech joins the Danube to the sources of the rivers Elster and Mulde, this being the East Franconian border-line), in Austria, western Bohemia, and in the German linguistic "islands" embedded in Hungary, in Gottschee and the Sette and Tredici Communi (cf. above).[15]

THE OLD HIGH GERMAN PERIOD

The language spoken during the Old High German period, that is to say, down to about the year 1050, is remarkable for the fulness and richness of its vowel-sounds in word-stems as well as in inflections. Cf. _elilenti_, _Elend_; _luginari_, _Lugner_; _karkari_, _Kerker_; _menniskono slahta_, _Menschengeschlecht_; _herzono_, _Herzen_ (gen. pl.); _furisto_, _vorderste_; _hartost_, (_am_) _hartesten_; _sibunzug_, _siebzig_; _ziohemes_, (_wir_) _ziehen_; _salbota_, (_er_) _salbte_; _gaworahtos_, (_du_) _wirktest_, &c. Of the consonantal changes which took place during this period that of the spirant th (preserved only in English) to d (_werthan_, _werdan_; _theob_, _deob_) deserves mention. It spread from Upper Germany, where it is noticeable as early as the 8th century to Middle and finally, in the 11th and 12th centuries, to Low Germany. Further, the initial _h_ in _hl_, _hn_, _hr_, _hw_ (cf. _hwer_, _wer_; _hreini_, _rein_; _hlahhan_, _lachen_) and _w_ in _wr_ (_wrecceo_, _Recke_) disappeared, this change also starting in Upper Germany and spreading slowly north. The most important vowel-change is the so-called mutation (_Umlaut_),[16] that is to say, the qualitative change of a vowel (except _i_) in a stem-syllable, owing to the influence of an _i_ or _j_ in the following syllable. This process commenced in the north where it seems to have been already fully developed in Low German as early as the 8th century. It is to be found, it may be noted, in Anglo-Saxon, as early as the 6th century. It gradually worked its way southwards to Middle and Upper Germany where, however, certain consonants seem to have protected the stem syllable from the influence of _i_ in a following syllable. Cf., for instance, Modern High German _drucken_ and _drucken_; _glauben_, _kaufen_, _Haupt_, words which in Middle German dialects show mutation. Orthographically, however, this process is, during the first period, only to be seen in the change of _a_ to _e_; from the 10th century onwards there are, it is true, some traces of other changes, and vowels like _u_, _o_, _ou_ must have already been affected, otherwise we could not account for the mutation of these vowels at a period when the cause of it, the _i_ or _j_, no longer existed. A no less important change, for it helped to differentiate High from Low German, was that of Germanic _e_2 (a closed _e_-sound) and _o_ diphthongs in Old High German, while they were retained in Old Low German. Cf. O.H.G. _her_, _hear_, _hiar_, O.L.G. _her_; O.H.G. _fuoz_, O.L.G. _fot_. The final result was that in the 10th century ie (older forms, _ia_, _ea_) and _uo_ (older _ua_, _oa_ in Alemannic, _ua_ in South Franconian) had asserted themselves throughout all the High German dialects. Again while in Old High German the older diphthongs _ai_ and _au_ were preserved as _ei_ and _ou_, unless they happened to stand at the end of a word or were followed by certain consonants (_h_, _w_, _r_ in the one case, and _h_, _r_, _l_, _n_, _th_, _d_, _t_, _z_, _s_ in the other; cf. _zeh_ from _zihan_, _zoh_ from _ziohan_, _verlos_, &c.), the Old Low German shows throughout the monophthongs _e_ (in Middle Low German a closed sound) and _o_ (cf. O.L.G. _sten_, _oga_). These monophthongs are also to be heard in Rhenish Franconian, the greater part of East Franconian and the Upper Saxon and Silesian dialects of modern times (cf. _Stein_: _Steen_ or _Stan_; _laufen_: _lofen_ or _lopen_).