Old High Theech

The name Old High Theech (OHT, Theech: Althochdeutsch, shortened Ahd.; English: Old High German) bespeaks the earliest time of the Theech tung and it often overlays the timespan from around 500 to 1050. Fast writs do not kythe until the other half of the 8th yearhundred, and some handle the time before 750 as 'fore-eretidely' and put the beginning of true Old High Theech to 750 for this ground. There are, however, scores of Elder Futhark writings from the 6th yearhundred (as byspel the Pforzen buckle), as well as lone words and monny names found in Latinish writs before the 8th yearhundred.

AhonesomesEdit

The main unlikeness between Old High Theech (German) and the West Theedish (Germanic) byleids from which it grew is that it underwent the Twoth Loud Shift or High Theech withloud shift. This is overall put wary roughly to the late 5th and early 6th yearhundreds - hence putting the start of OHT to around 500. The outcome of this loud-shift is that the withloud framework of Theech belives unsame from all other West Theedish tungs, inholding English and Low Theech. Stavecraftly, however, Old High Theech belived much alike to Old English, Old Frankish and Old Saxish.

By the mid 11th yearhundred the monny unsame selflouds found in unhighlighted loudteams had all been lessened to 'e'. Since these selflouds were a deal of the stavecraftly endings in the namewords and deedwords, their loss led to steep fewfolding of the shiftingly stavecraft of Theech. For the sake of these grounds, 1050 is seen as the start of the Middle High Theech time, though indeed there are almost no writings in Theech for the next hundred years.

Byspells of selfloud lessening in unhighlighted loudteams:

(The New Theech builds of these words are broadly the same as in Middle High Theech.)

ByleidsEdit

There was no shared or over-landshiply kind of Old High Theech; every writ is written in a known byleid, or sometimes a blending of byleids. Broadly speaking, the head byleid splits of Old High Theech seem to have been alike to those of later times; they are grounded on settled landly teamings and the deeds of the Twoth Loud Shift, which have belived swaying until today. But since the straight showingness for Old High Theech is made up only of writings made in a few big churchly midspots, there is no byleid-sundriness word of the kind on which new byleid maps are grounded. For this reason the OHT byleids may be named minster byleids.

The main OHT byleids, with their bishoprics and minsters:

• Middle Theech
  • Middle Frankish: Trier, Echternigh, Rikeling (Cologne)
  • Rhine Frankish: Lorsch, Speyer, Worms, Mainz, Frankfurt
  • South Rhine Frankish: Weissenburgh im Elsass
  • East Frankish (High Frankish): Fulda, Bambarrow, Wortsburgh
  • Thuringish: (no writings)
  • West Frankish: likely byleid of the Franks in Northern Gaul

• Upper Theech
  • Allmenish: Murbach, Reichenau, Holy Gallen. Straßburgh
  • Bairish: Freesing, Passau, Regensburgh, Augsburgh, Ebersberry, Wessobrunn, Tegernsea, Saltburgh, Mandsea
  • Langobardish: (only bits, teaming as OHT unsicker)

There are some weighty unlikenesses between the landlorely spread of the Old High Theech byleids and that of New Theech:

• No Theech byleids were spoken east of the eas Elbe and Saale - in the OHT timespan this land had Slavish folks and was not settled by Theech speakers until the 12th yearhundred* the Lombardish byleid of the Lombards who overran Northern Italy in the 6th yearhundred is thought to have been an Upper Theech byleid, though little showingness of it belives aside from names and onesome words in Latinish writs, and a few writings.

FrankishEdit

The Franks overwon Northern Gaul as far south as the Loire; the speechcraftly border later steadied roughly along the flow of the Maas and Mosel, with Frankish speakers further west being made Romishly. However, Frankish is a standout among the old West Theedish tungs, the Frankish theeds build their rike at the same time as the High Theech withloud shift happened. This meant that the byleids of Frankish in the North of their rike, the Lowlands, did not shift while the byleids in the South did. The byleids in the south are a deal of Old High Theech, the ones in the North are deal of Old Frankish.

With Churl the Great's loss of the Lombards in 776, nearly all mainlandly Theech speaking folks had been inwrought into the Frankish Rike, thus also bringing all mainlandly West Theedish speakers under Frankish leadership. However, since the tung of both the rike and the Church was Latin, this togethering did not lead to any growth of an over-landshiply kind of Frankish.

WritingsEdit

The early share of the time saw heeding errandboder deeds, and by 800 the whole of the Frankish Rike had, guessingly, been christened. All the writings which inhold Old High Theedish writs were written in churchly writingrooms by draughtsmen whose main errand was writing in Latin rather than Theedish. Thereby, the greaterhood of Old High Theech writings are worshipsome and show strong swaying of Church Latin on the wordstock. In truth, most outlasting prose writings are wendings of Latin stemwrits. Even worldly works such as the Hildebrandslied are often kept only since they were written on spare sheets in worshipsome erebooks.

The earliest OHT writing is overall taken to be the Abrogans, a Latin-Old High Theech wordlist sundrily put between 750 and 780, most likely from Reichenau. The 8th hundredyear Merseburgh Spellcraftspeaks are the only leftover of fore-Christlike Theedish booklore. The earliest writings not hanging on Latin stemwrits would seem to be the Hildebrandslied and the Wessobrunn Bead, both written in writings of the early 9th hundredyear, though the writings are thought to stem from earlier deals.

The Bairish Muspilli is the only outlaster of what must have been a broad spoken folklore. Other weighty works are the Evangelienbuch (Gospel banding) of Otfrid of Weissenburg, the short but wonderful Ludwigslied and the 9th hundredyear Georgslied. The border to Early Middle High Theech (from around 1050) is not clear-cut. The most sightly byspell of EMHT booklore is the Annolied.

LodestarsEdit

The Lord's Bead in three OHT byleids. Since these are oversettings of a churchly worshipsome writ, they are best not taken as byspells of lively tung, but they do show byleid sundriness wary starkly.

Stem: Braune/Ebbinghaus, Althochdeutsches Lesebuch, 17th wending (Niemeyer, 1994)

See alsoEdit

• Middle High Theech
• Middle-elthly Theech booklore

Outward linksEdit

• Joseph Wright, An Old High Theech Futharkbook – whole writ of 1906 work (English)
• A Short Gathering of Old High Theech (English)
• Althochdeutsche Texte im Internet (8.–10. Jahrhundert) - links to a reach of online writs (Theedish)
• LiTLiNks: althochdeutche Texte - thorough listing of OHT writs with links to online makes. (Theedish)

StemsEdit

• Althochdeutches Lesebuch, wenders W.Braune, K.Helm, E.A.Ebbinghaus, 17th wending, Tübingen 1994. ISBN 3-484-10707-3
• J. Knight Bostock, A Handbook on Old High German Literature, 2nd wending, looked again by K.C.King and D.R.McLintock, Oxford 1976. ISBN 0-19-815392-9
• R.E.Keller, The German Language, London 1978. ISBN 0-571-11159-9
• Lexikon der Germanistischen Linguistik, wenders Hans Peter Althaus, Helmut Henne, Herbert Ernst Weigand, 2nd againlooked wending, Tübingen 1980. ISBN 3-484-10396-5
• S.Sonderegger, Althochdeutsche Sprache und Literatur, de Gruyter 1974 ISBN 3-11-004559-1
• C.J.Wells, German. A Linguistic History to 1945, Oxford 1987. ISBN 0-19-815809-2