Robert Priebsch

“ 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. ”

“ About the year 1200 there was undoubtedly a marked tendency towards a unification of the literary language on the part of the more careful poets like Walther von der Vogelweide, Hartmann von Aue and Gottfried von Strassburg; they avoid, more particularly in their rhymes, dialectic peculiarities, such as the Bavarian dual forms es and enk, or the long vowels in unstressed syllables, retained in Alemannic, and they do not make use of archaic words or forms. ”

“ Although the Middle High German period had thus not succeeded in effecting any permanent advance in the direction of a uniform literary language, the desire for a certain degree of uniformity was never again entirely lost. At the close of the 13th century literature had passed from the hands of the nobility to those of the middle classes of the towns; the number of writers who used the German tongue rapidly increased ”

“ But it is noteworthy that he, like the chancery, retained the old vowel-change in the singular and plural of the preterite of the strong verbs (i.e. steig, stigen; starb, sturben) , although before Luther’s time the uniformity of the modern preterite had already begun to show itself here and there. The adoption of the language of the chancery gave rise to the mixed character of sounds and forms which is still a feature of the literary language of Germany. Thus the use of the monophthongs ī, ū, and ǖ, instead of the old diphthongs ie, uo and üe, comes from Middle Germany ”

“ We have thus a right to speak, if not of a Middle High German literary language in the widest sense of the word, at least of a Middle High German Dichtersprache or poetic language, on an Alemannic-Franconian basis. ”

“ Braune’s argument being that the system of modern pronunciation is based on the spelling, not on the sounds produced in speaking. The latter, he holds, is only responsible for the pronunciation of -chs- as -ks- in wachsen, Ochse, &c., or for that of sp- and st- in spielen, stehen, &c. Other scholars, again, such as K. Luick and O. Brenner, warn against any such attempts to create a living language on an artificial basis; [30] the Bühnendeutsch or “stage-German” they regard as little more than an abstract ideal. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 kāpamēs, old Alemannic kābamēs (“we gave”) ”

“ Compared with the times of Goethe and Schiller a certain advance towards unification has undoubtedly been made, but the differences between north and south are still very great. This is particularly noticeable in the pronunciation of r—either the uvular r or the r produced by the tip of the tongue; of the voiced and voiceless stops, b, p, d, t, g and k; of the s sounds; of the diphthongs; of the long vowels ē and œ̄, &c. (cf. W. Vietor, German Pronunciation, 2nd ed., 1890) . ”

“ 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 Würzburg 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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 kχ (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. ”

“ 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) . ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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) .
Of the dialects enumerated above, Bavarian and Alemannic, High and Rhenish Franconian as well as Old Saxon are more or less represented in the literature of the first period. ”

“ Montjoie (French border-town) , Eupen, Aachen, Benrath, Düsseldorf, 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 Lübben on the Spree, Fürstenwald 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 ”