Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/537

Rh LANGUAGE] lables already mentioned. As to the former there is only one exception, viz., the retaining of the termina- tion in (pronounced as Modern German 17 or French long 2:) for the nom. sing. fem. and the nom. and acc. plur. neutr. of the adjectives (blindiu, while all other cases have the levelled e); and even this seems to be a speciality of Upper German, the corresponding Midland form being Llimle as in Modern German. The unaccented e is frequently dropped in all dialects, especially in the south, where the dropping is almost regular after an 7' or Z closing a short syllable, as in bern, steln-, for here», stelen, to bear, to steal; Old High German, beran, stclan. In the Midland dialectsi is often written for this e, thus berivz, stelin. The accented vowels of the root syllables are greatly changed in this period by the “ Umlaut,” or mutation of sounds, being an assimilation of these vowels to an i or 3/ Originally following. Thus a, (Z, 0, 0', 2:, 2?, no are changed to e, (6, 2'6 or 6, 09, ii, in (long ii), its», as may be seen in the following instances :—h(m.t, hand, pl. hende} rcit, council, pl. rcnte; gult, gold, girl/din, golden, or mohte, I might, subj. miihte; _r/2'53, great, groeze, size; has, a kiss, K-2'isse71, to kiss; mats, mouse, pl. miuse; ,r/not, good, _r/iiete, goodness. The Umlaut, however, is not always expressed in the spelling of the niauuscripts, though it must have existed in the living language. Of the diphthongs, in has been changed into long 2'1), but the old spelling is often retained in the MSS. (little, modern Leute, Old High German liuti, people). As to the consonants, the th sound had nearly disappeared at the beginning of the period, and was lost entirely in its course ; sh has passed into the sh sound, written sch as in Modern German. Spelling in general is simpler, and in some points more rigidly phonetic than in Old German. Final voiced consonants, as I), (I, g, are generally changed into the corresponding voiceless sounds, as p, 2‘, c (in High German grap, grave, gen. grabes, pfat, path, gen. pfacles, tac, day, gen. dayes ; in Low German graf graves, pat pades, dach dages). Double consonants are simpliﬁed in the same position, as in Old German (bal, ball, gen. balles). The use of the letter 22 has greatly increased; in High German it means simply f, and is therefore quite superﬂuous ; in Low aierman its pronunciation is f at the beginning of words, while in the middle of words it has the same sound as English 2'. The leading dialects of the period are those of Old Ger- man, the most noteworthy difference being the accession of the dialects of the kingdom of Saxony (0be7'sc'ichsisch, or Upper Saxon) and Silesia to the midland dialects, and those of some eastern provinces of Prussia (.-’'ieclersc'ichsz'sch, or Low Saxon) to Low German, in consequence of the Ger- man colonization of these countries. Low German, to begin with, has retained the phonetic structure of its con- sonantal system unaltered, except by the loss of the (h sound. The spelling of the vowel system is very imperfect. Umlaut is not expressed in the older manuscripts, except in the case of (6 and :3. Along e corresponds to both High German ei and ie, a long 0 to High German 021, 62c, and no, 710, the only diphthong generally admitted being on before a 11-, as in houwen, to hew. The pronunciation of E and 5 must, however, in these cases have been different according to their etymological values, for all the High German sounds men- tioned above are distinctly kept asunder in the modern Low German dialects, and ei and u or it are often written for E and 5 where they stand for High German ei and no or iie, but never otherwise. It is most likely, judging from the present state of things, that open e, 0 were the equivalents for High German 627, on, 61:, while close e, 0 corresponded to High German 2'0, 210, iie. The preﬁx _r/e is dropped, as in English and in the Scandinavian languages (thus bort, birth, High German _r/eburl). But the most remarkable fact in the his- tory of Low German sounds is the restoration of ml or ma GERMANY 519 for th after a dropped nasal sound (see above, p. 516), as in ander or armor, other, for Old Saxon éthar, or in mum‘, mouth, for Old Saxon mzith. This transition cannot be explained by any phonetic laws, but must necessarily be ascribed to High German inﬂuence. As to the inﬂexional system, a similar inﬂuence seems to have introduced the High German terminations of the plural of verbs (wi _r/even, _r/i {/evet, se geven we, you, they give). The Old Saxon -s in the nominative plural has been dropped, as in High German. The following lines quoted from the municipal laws of the town of Hamburg (written 1270) may be taken as a fair specimen of 13th-century Low German :——“ Dat nement syn er11e verkopen schal, he ne bede id erst synen negesten. So we syn erue vorkopen wil, dat bynnen desscr stad. vnde bynnen dessem wicbelrle belegen is, de schal id beden twen synen negesten vrunden, dar syn erue vp vallen mach, vnde wil it erer nen kopen, so mot he syn erue wol vorkopen deme de eme dar vmme allermest geuen wil.” “ That nobody shall sell his inheritance, unless he offer it ﬁrst to his nearest (relations). Whosoever is willing to sell his inheritance, that is situated within this town and within these precincts, shall offer it to two his nearest friends (relations), to whom his inheritance may fall, and if neither of them is willing to buy it, he must (may) well sell his inheritance to him who is willing to give him most for it.” The differences of the main dialects of High German are not very striking during the ﬁrst stage of this period. Alemannian is best characterized by its rigidly keeping its original vowel qualities, some of the modern Swiss dialects showing exactly the same system as about 1200. Swabian is easily discovered by its frequent use of an for d, as in, gazm, to go, for gdn. A very important change of vowel qualities is found to have taken place, at a very early time, in the Bavarian dialect. While ie, no, he were preserved as in Alemannian, ei, ou, 6-u were changed into cei (or an), an, en (or ciu), and three new diphthongs, ci, ou, eu, sprang up from the long vowels E, 2?, in In the Midland dialects again, ei, on, and E, '12, 27 were kept, as in Alemannian (although it is generally not distinguished from u in writing, as in most Midland manuscripts no special signs for the Umlaut vowels are u3ed,_except e), but is, 210, iie were contracted to simple 5, 22 (ii), differing from the old 5, 1?, in only in their open quality. The system of these changes may be illustrated by the following list :— Alcmmm. diep guot siiezc min hﬁs miuse stein boum frtiude L’rL'va7'z'an diep guot siiezc mein hous mcusc stain paum freude 1l[z'dla7Ld dip gﬁt sﬁze min hﬁs muse stein boum freudc Low Ger. déf god sote min hfis mﬁse stén born froude English thief good sweet mine housemice stone beam (joy) As to the consonants, Alemannian and Bavarian still clung to the use of ch or hch for ordinary 1', as chomen, for It-omen, to come. P initial for bis especially Bavarian, and was rather more frequent in the 14th and 15th centuries than before ; 20 initial is often expressed by I» in Bavarian manuscripts since the 13th century ; thus we ﬁnd paideu, both, for beidiu or peidiu in Alemannian, or beide in the Midland dialects, and bcip, wife, or even zbai, two, for ordinary zoip, zwei ; is initial for ordinary g went altogether out of use. In Midland orthography the two sounds of Old High German 2, viz. ts and ss, were expressed by cz or so, and 2 or 23 re- spectively. The following specimens of the language of this period are taken from the Schwabcnspz'c_r/cl, or Swabian Law, for Alemannian (13th century); the Spiegel cleutscher Leute, or Mirror of German People, for Bavarian (14th century) ; and a Midland version of the Sachsenspiegcl, or Saxon Law 1 :— 1 The editions whence the extracts are taken are—for the Schzcabcn: spz'cgcl, that of Lassberg, Tiibingen, 1840, p. 5; for the F1?l'¢’.9“ rlrulsclzrr Lcufl’, that of J. Ficker, Innsbruck, 1359, p. 35; and for the Sue/zsc2zs1;z'e_r/el, that of Hildebrand, Lcipsic, 1370, 1?. 3.