Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/535

Rh LA‘.‘GUAGE.] all (the) devil’s works? And I forsake all the devil’s works and words, Thuner and Voden and Saxnot and all the un- couth (beings) that their companions are.” We cannot, unfortunately, tell what special dialect of Low German this piece belonged to, nor even whether it was origi_nally written in German, as several forms occur- , ring in it have rather an Old English look. N o more cer- tain are the place of origin and the dialect of the most important relic of the Old Saxon language, the great poem of the Ilélimul, or the History of our Saviour, composed in the old alliterative verse by a Saxon cleric or monk, about the year 830. We quote as a specimen the following lines from the Munich .IS.1 :— “ Quamun managa Iudeon an thene gastseli ; 11uard im thar gladmod hngi, blidi an iro breostun: gisahnn iro bz ggcbon uuesen an 1111nneon. l)rog man uuin an flet skiri mid sealun, scenkeon hnnrbnn, gengun mid goldfatun ; gaman nuas thar inne, hlud an thero hall11, helidos drunkun." “ (There) eame many Jews to the guest-hall; became to them there glad (their) mind, blithe in their breasts: (they) saw their ring—givcr he in joy. Wine was borne into (the) hall bright in L-ups; eup—bearers walked about, went with golden vessels, joy was therein loud in the hall, the knights drank." Much more nmnerous and various in age and dialect are the documents of Old High German, some of which date as far back as the 8th century. Welcome as they n1a.y be to the student of grannnar, not 1n11ch can be said for their intrinsic value. Almost all the prose pieces are mere translations (many of them could not be worse) from the Latin; and even such poetical works as Otfrid’s Lz_,'fe«_»/' C/u'-Isl’-’ are no more than prose thoughts forced into bad verse. Only a very few relics of true poetry have reached us, among which the Ilildebrrzmlslied (in a mixed dialect), the fragments of the Jleispilli (a poem about the Last Judgment, in the Bavarian dialect, belonging, like the ][i[(fef)I‘((1ldsfi€(f, to the beginning of the 9th century, and also written in alliterative verse), and the LmIzI.'ig.sliecl (881 or 882, in one of the l*'r-ankish dialects) may be mentioned here.3 High German, as already hinted, is chieﬂy distinguished from the other Teutonic languages by a certain transfor- mation of its nmte system. The ordinary changes,—that is to say, those received in the modern High German literary language, —are the following :——(l is changed to t in all positions ; t to 2 (either pronounced is or ss); 7) to ;5r',__ri', or_f according to its position in the word; is initial and following a consonant is kept, but after a vowel Ir passes into ch (pronounced as Scotch or Modern German c/2), Thus we get the following comparisons :— Old Old Old High lllodcrn High Bfodern English. Saxon. German. German. l-English. don don tuon tlu111 do to to 2110 7.11 to sealt salt salz salz salt settan settian sezzen setzen set ctan etan ezzan essen eat pund pnnd pfunt pfund pound hearp harpa harpfa, harfa harfe harp sla’-pan shipan slziifan sehlafen sleep cyning knning kuning kiinig king thencan thenkian thenkcn dcnken think macian makon mar-hon max-hen make GERMANY 517 This is the state of things in the High Fr-ankish or Eastern Frankish dialect, spoken in the south-east of the Frankish territory. In the earliest period, as may be seen from the above list, it still preserved the th sound in many cases; in the later stages (I is found to have been substituted, as in Modern High German. The Upper German dialects show the same change at a much earlier time, and, in addition to this, they have also changed is initial and following a consonant into ch, and b and g initial into 72 and /5 (representing most likely voiceless soft stops, as still pro- nounced in South Germany and Switzerland) ; Bavarian admits p forb even in the middle of words. Tl111s we have, for instance, denclcen for Frankish tlmzken, to think ; pilten for l"rankish bitten, to bid; /rebruz, or Bavarian /.'e}_mn, for }:'rankish _r/ebcm, to give. In illustration of these distinctions and some other variations of spelling we may quote three contemporaneous versions of the Lord’s Prayer which have fortunately been preserved*:~ Fran/ti.sh llrsion. Alcmanmmzllrsion. L’a1:arz'an Version. Fater u11ser thn in Fater unsar thn pist Fater unser, d11 pist himilolnbist,giu11il1it in himile, uuihi 11a- in himilum. Ka- sinamo thin. Queme mun dinan. Qhueme uuihit si namo din. 1'ichitl1in. U11erdhe rihhi din. Unerde l'iqhuen1e rihhi din. u11illco thin samaso unillo diin samasoin Uuesa din unillo in himile endi in himile sosa in erdu. samaso in himile est. erth11. Broot unseraz Prooth unsaremezich samain erdu. Pilipi emezzigaz gib 11ns kip 11ns l1i11tn. Oblaz unsraz emizzigaz kip hiutn. Endi farlaz 11ns se11ldi unsaro so 11ns eogauuanna. nns seuldhi unsero 1111ir oblazem uns Enti flaz uns unsro samaso 11nir farlaz- senldikcm. Enti ni senldi samaso 11nir zem seolom unserem. unsih ﬁrleiti in kho- ilazzames unsrem Imli ni gileiti 11nsih runka, nzzer losi seolom. Enti ni in costunga, auh unsih fona ubile. princ unsih in cho- arlosi 11nsih fona runka, nzzan kaneri ubile. 1n1sil1 fona allem sunton. It is impossible to give here a sufficient idea of the varia- bility of Old High German, as, indeed, out of several lumdred pieces that have co111e to our knowledge, there are not two representing exactly the same dialect to all its shades or at least in exactly the same spelling. We shall therefore restrict ourselves to a short notice of the more important documents. South-western Frankish is best re- presented by a very old translation of a treatise by Isidorus Hispalensis, De Fide C'atlmlz'ca,5 and Otfrid’s Lire of C'lu-ist, mentioned above. The chief source of Eastern Frankish is a translation of the I/:1-rnzrmy of the G'0.<-pals erroneously ascribed to the Syrian father Tatianus.° For Bavarian we may quote some old glossaries,7 for Alemamii-an the interlineary versions of the Benedictine Bnles a11d some Latin church hymns,” besides several glossaries. For later Old High Germ.an, the works of Notker Labeo, or Teutonieus, a monk of St Gall who died in 1022, are the fundamental sources.” What rmin did for English phonetics, Notker may be said to have done, even more completely, for those of Germany. He not only care- fully marks the quantities of vowels, but also points out the phonetic difference between such diphthongs as ea", on, fat, aml ie, 210 by his way of accentuating them (éi, 621, in, a11d '24’, 220) ; even such phonetic minutiae as the change of initial voiced stop consonants into voice- less stops after a pause or a voiceless consonant are duly registered, as may be seen from the following specimen. 1 This MS. gives the poem in a pure Saxon dialect, while the dialect of the Cotton MS. in some respects resembles the Frankish idiom. Both texts are printed in the latest edition by E. Sievers, Halle, 1878. '-‘ Otfrid, a monk of Weissenburg, in Alsace, formerly a pupil of Ilrabanus Maurns, at Fulda, wrote his work (in the South-Frankish dialect) in 867 or 868. It is for the most part due to him that the rhymed stanza (imitated from that of the Latin Church hymns) was introduced into German poetry, instead of the earlier alliterative metre. The latest editions are by J. Kelle, Ratisbon, 1856, 1869, aml by 1‘. Piper, Paderborn, 1878. 3 The minor pieces of Old High German, bot]; verse and prose, are collected in lliillenhoff and Seherer's l)cul.'1/idler, 1373. 4 Ten different versions of the Lord's Prayer (down to the 14th century) are given, in a synoptical order, by .Iassmann, life tleutsclzen .lbsclw;«)'rzu2,r/s-, Bciclzl-, and 1}ciformcln, Quedlinburg and Leipsie, 1839, p. 158 sq. 5 K. Weinhold, Die altdeulsc/zen Ihzlclzsliiclce (lcs I3c'sclmfIsz'¢lorus Ton Sr‘-z‘L'lI(L (le /zirle (failzolicct, Paderborn, 1874. 5 Latest edition by E. Sievers, Paderborn, 1872. _ 7 H. Steinmeyer uml E. Sievers, All/Loclu/eulsche Glossen, i., Berlin, 1879. 3 H. Hattemer, I)m1l:m(I/xlc des .11 ittclttllrjrs, i., St Gall, 1544. 9 E. Sievers, hie Jlurbaclzcr I[_:/nmcn, Halle, 1874. 1" llattemer, op. cit., vols. ii., iii.