11.5 A history of the German language — Epoché
What you will be able to do Explain why German Wasser , Apfel and machen differ from English water , apple and make : the High German consonant shift. Name the four periods of the language and a text from each. Describe how Luther's Bible and the printing press helped one written German to win over the dialects. Explain why Kant wrote Muth and daß , and what the spelling reforms of 1901 and 1996 changed. Sentences from this lesson, before the explanation. Read the German aloud; all of them come back below. German English Er muss nach seinem Großvater benannt worden sein. [1] He must have been named after his grandfather. Alle Sprachen haben Dialekte. [2] All languages have dialects. Sie wurde nach ihrer Großmutter benannt. [3] She was named after her grandmother. Leider weiß die Welt nicht viel über die ungarische Literatur. [4] Unfortunately, the rest of the world doesn't know much about Hungarian literature. Ich glaubte nicht an Wunder, bis ich Zeuge des Wunders der Geburt wurde. [5] I did not believe in miracles until I witnessed the miracle of childbirth. Haben Sie je die Bibel gelesen? [6] Have you ever read the Bible? Prerequisites : 11.4 — you need the sound shifts of 1.2 Cognates and 1.3 Cognates , the archaic forms of 2.39 Grammar , and the three standards of 11.3 Background . At the beginning of this course you learned that English and German are sisters: Haus and house , trinken and drink , Wasser and water . This lesson tells the story behind those pairs. It explains how a group of dialects in the south of the German-speaking area changed their consonants, how the language passed through four stages from its first written texts to today, how a reformer's translation of the Bible and a goldsmith's invention gave it a common written form, and why the texts you have read in this phase look slightly different on the page from a German newspaper today. From Germanic to German English, German, Dutch and the Scandinavian languages belong to one Sprachfamilie , the Germanic branch of Indo-European. Their common ancestor, Proto-Germanic, was spoken about two and a half thousand years ago and left no written texts. Its speakers were the peoples the Romans called Germanen . Between about the sixth and the eighth century, the dialects in the south of the German-speaking area changed some of their consonants. Linguists call this the High German consonant shift. Where English and the northern dialects kept p , t and k , the southern dialects turned them into pf or f , ts (written z ) or s , and ch : English apple , pound and ship became Apfel , Pfund and Schiff ; ten , tide and water became zehn , Zeit and Wasser ; make and book became machen and Buch . These are the correspondences you practised in 1.2 Cognates and 1.3 Cognates . The shift did not reach the north. The dialects of northern Germany, Plattdeutsch or Low German, still say Water , Appel and maken , like English and Dutch. This is why linguists divide German into High German in the south and centre, where the shift happened, and Low German in the north, where it did not. High and low refer to the land, the mountains of the south and the plains of the north, not to social rank. Standard German is a High German language. Four periods Period Dates A text you may meet Old High German about 750–1050 the Hildebrandslied , a fragment of a heroic poem, and translations made in monasteries Middle High German about 1050–1350 the Nibelungenlied and the love poetry of Walther von der Vogelweide Early New High German about 1350–1650 Luther's Bible and the first printed books New High German from about 1650 everything from Goethe to the newspaper you read today A modern German can read Goethe without help and Luther with a little effort. Middle High German needs a glossary: the Nibelungenlied begins Uns ist in alten mæren wunders vil geseit , roughly in old tales we are told many wonders . Old High German is a foreign language to modern readers and is studied like Old English. Luther and the printing press Until the sixteenth century there was no single written German. Each region wrote its own dialect, and the language of learning, the church and the law was Latin. Two events changed this. Around 1450 Johannes Gutenberg in Mainz began printing with movable type, and books became cheap enough to spread across the whole German-speaking area. In 1522 Martin Luther published his translation of the New Testament, and in 1534 the complete Bibel . Luther did not invent a new language. He based his written German on the language used in the offices of the Saxon court, which was already understood both in the north and in the south, and he wanted it to sound like the speech of ordinary people: in a famous letter on translating he said that one must listen to the mother at home, the children in the street and the common man at the market. Because his Bible was printed again and again and read aloud in every Protestant church, its language became a model for writers in all regions. The Schriftsprache , the written standard, grew from this root. One spelling for all Even after Luther, spelling remained free for a long time. Writers spelt the same word in several ways, and different states taught different rules in their schools. In 1880 Konrad Duden published a dictionary of spelling that became the standard reference, and in 1901 a conference of the German-speaking states agreed on common rules. One of its decisions was to remove the h after t in German words: Theil became Teil and Muth became Mut . This is why Kant's text in 10.3 Argument looks old-fashioned on the page although its grammar is almost modern. The last great change was the Rechtschreibreform of 1996, revised in 2006. Its best-known rule concerns ß : after a short vowel it is now written ss , so daß became dass and muß became muss , while ß remains after a long vowel or a diphthong, as in Straße and heißen . Switzerland and Liechtenstein do not use ß at all. When you read a book printed