52-730: Eastergoa (also Ostergau , Ostergo , or Oostergo ) was one of the seven areas and one of the three Gaue within what is today the province of Friesland in the Netherlands . On its west side Eastergoa was bordered by the Middelsee with Westergoa on the other side of the water. To the south the Alde Leppedyk and the Boarn were the border with Bornegoa [ fy ; nl ] , and later with Sânwâlden [ fy ; nl ; nds-nl ] ( Dutch : Zeuvenwoolden ). To
104-829: A former or current province . It was used in the Middle Ages , when it can be seen as roughly corresponding to an English shire . The administrative use of the term was revived as a subdivision during the period of Nazi Germany in 1933–1945. It still appears today in regional names, such as the Rheingau or Allgäu . The Germanic word is reflected in Gothic gawi (neuter; genitive gaujis ) and early Old High German gewi, gowi (neuter) and in some compound names -gawi as in Gothic (e.g. Durgawi " Canton of Thurgau ", Alpagawi " Allgäu "), later gâi, gôi , and after loss of
156-648: A hundred homesteads each, further divided into vici (villages or farmsteads). Charlemagne , by his capitulary legislation, adopted the comitatus subdivision and appointed local rulers as deputies of the central Imperial authority. In the German-speaking lands of East Francia , the Gau formed the unit of administration of the realm during the 9th and 10th centuries and ruled by a gaugrave ( Gaugraf i.e. "gau count"). Similar to many shires in England, during
208-590: Is also a hundred-year "dearth of continuous texts" after the death of Notker Labeo in 1022. The mid-11th century is widely accepted as marking the transition to Middle High German . Old High German encompasses the dialects that had undergone the Second Sound Shift during the 6th century—namely all of the Upper and Central German dialects. The Franks in the western part of Francia ( Neustria and western Austrasia ) gradually adopted Gallo-Romance by
260-471: Is in Modern German). The following is a sample conjugation of a strong verb, nëman "to take". Any description of OHG syntax faces a fundamental problem: texts translated from or based on a Latin original will be syntactically influenced by their source, while the verse works may show patterns that are determined by the needs of rhyme and metre, or that represent literary archaisms. Nonetheless,
312-506: Is the earliest stage of the German language , conventionally identified as the period from around 500/750 to 1050. Rather than representing a single supra-regional form of German, Old High German encompasses the numerous West Germanic dialects that had undergone the set of consonantal changes called the Second Sound Shift . At the start of this period, dialect areas reflected the territories of largely independent tribal kingdoms, but by 788
364-578: Is the sole survivor of what must have been a vast oral tradition. Other important works are the Evangelienbuch ( Gospel harmony ) of Otfrid von Weissenburg , the Ludwigslied and the 9th century Georgslied . The boundary to Early Middle High German (from c. 1050 ) is not clear-cut. An example of Early Middle High German literature is the Annolied . The Lord's Prayer
416-763: The Reichsgau of Sudetenland , with territory to the south annexed to the Reichsgaue of Lower and Upper Danube. Following the Axis invasion of Poland in 1939, territories of the Pomeranian and Poznań voivodeships as well as the western half of Łódź voivodeship were reannexed to Germany as the Reichsgaue of Danzig-Westpreussen (which also incorporated the former Free City of Danzig ) and Wartheland . Other parts of Nazi-occupied Poland were incorporated to pre-existing bordering gaus of East Prussia (as in
468-788: The Reichstag election districts of the Weimar Republic , based on the constituent states ( Länder ) and the provinces of Prussia . Following the suppression of the political institutions of the Länder in the course of the Nazi Gleichschaltung process and the appointment of Reichsstatthalter (Reich Governors) in 1933, the Gaue became the de facto administrative regions of the government and each individual Gauleiter had considerable power within his territory. With
520-660: The Abrogans , a Latin–Old High German glossary variously dated between 750 and 780, probably from Reichenau . The 8th century Merseburg Incantations are the only remnant of pre-Christian German literature. The earliest texts not dependent on Latin originals would seem to be the Hildebrandslied and the Wessobrunn Prayer , both recorded in manuscripts of the early 9th century, though the texts are assumed to derive from earlier copies. The Bavarian Muspilli
572-706: The Carolingian Renaissance in the 9th. The dedication to the preservation of Old High German epic poetry among the scholars of the Carolingian Renaissance was significantly greater than could be suspected from the meagre survivals we have today (less than 200 lines in total between the Hildebrandslied and the Muspilli ). Einhard tells how Charlemagne himself ordered that the epic lays should be collected for posterity. It
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#1732801304897624-548: The Middle High German forms of words, particularly with respect to the consonants. Old High German had six phonemic short vowels and five phonemic long vowels. Both occurred in stressed and unstressed syllables. In addition, there were six diphthongs. Notes: By the mid 11th century the many different vowels found in unstressed syllables had almost all been reduced to ⟨e⟩ / ə / . Examples: (The New High German forms of these words are broadly
676-533: The (Latin) text or other aid to the reader. Old High German is generally dated from around 750 to around 1050. The start of this period sees the beginning of the OHG written tradition, at first with only glosses, but with substantial translations and original compositions by the 9th century. However, the fact that the defining feature of Old High German, the Second Sound Shift, may have started as early as
728-457: The 18th and 19th centuries, and was considered an ancient administration structure of Germanic peoples . It was adopted in the 1920s as the name given to the regional associations of the Nazi Party (NSDAP). Each Gau denoted an administrative region, created by a party statute dated 22 May 1926. Each Gau was headed by a Gauleiter . The original 33 Gaue were generally coterminous with
780-431: The 6th century and is complete by 750, means that some take the 6th century to be the start of the period. Alternatively, terms such as Voralthochdeutsch ("pre-OHG") or vorliterarisches Althochdeutsch ("pre-literary OHG") are sometimes used for the period before 750. Regardless of terminology, all recognize a distinction between a pre-literary period and the start of a continuous tradition of written texts around
832-720: The Biblical texts were translated from Greek, not Latin) raise the possibility that it was an independent development. Germanic also had no future tense, but again OHG created periphrastic forms, using an auxiliary verb skulan (Modern German sollen ) and the infinitive, or werden and the present participle: Thu scalt beran einan alawaltenden (Otfrid's Evangelienbuch I, 5,23) "You shall bear an almighty one" Inti nu uuirdist thu suigenti' (Tatian 2,9) "And now you will start to fall silent" Latin: Et ecce eris tacens (Luke 1:20) The present tense continued to be used alongside these new forms to indicate future time (as it still
884-468: The Late OHG changes that affected Middle High German : Germanic had a simple two-tense system, with forms for a present and preterite . These were inherited by Old High German, but in addition OHG developed three periphrastic tenses : the perfect , pluperfect and future . The periphrastic past tenses were formed by combining the present or preterite of an auxiliary verb ( wësan , habēn ) with
936-589: The Middle Ages, many such Gaue came to be known as counties or Grafschaften , the territory of a Graf ( count ) within the Holy Roman Empire . Such a count or Graf would originally have been an appointed governor , but the position generally became an hereditary vassal princedom, or fief in most of continental Europe. The term Gau was revived in German historical research in
988-692: The OHG Isidor or Notker show a similar awareness. The charts show the vowel and consonant systems of the East Franconian dialect in the 9th century. This is the dialect of the monastery of Fulda , and specifically of the Old High German Tatian . Dictionaries and grammars of OHG often use the spellings of the Tatian as a substitute for genuine standardised spellings, and these have the advantage of being recognizably close to
1040-744: The Old High German gaumann . However, the Oxford English Dictionary connects the etymology of yeoman to young instead. In the Carolingian Empire , a Gau was a subdivision of the realm, further divided into Hundreds . The Frankish gowe thus appear to correspond roughly to the civitas in other barbarian kingdoms ( Visigoths , Burgundians , or the Italian Kingdom of the Lombards ). After
1092-459: The administration and the Church was Latin, and this unification did not therefore lead to any development of a supra-regional variety of Frankish nor a standardized Old High German; the individual dialects retained their identity. There was no standard or supra-regional variety of Old High German—every text is written in a particular dialect, or in some cases a mixture of dialects. Broadly speaking,
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#17328013048971144-424: The almighty father"). By the end of the OHG period, however, use of a subject pronoun has become obligatory, while the definite article has developed from the original demonstrative pronoun ( der, diu, daz ) and the numeral ein ("one") has come into use as an indefinite article. These developments are generally seen as mechanisms to compensate for the loss of morphological distinctions which resulted from
1196-468: The annexation of Austria in 1938, the country, briefly renamed " Ostmark " between 1938 and 1942, was sub-divided into seven Reichsgaue . These had boundaries broadly the same as the former Austrian Länder (states), with the Tyrol and Vorarlberg being merged as "Tyrol-Vorarlberg", Burgenland being divided between Styria and "Lower Danube" ( Niederdonau , the renamed Lower Austria ). Upper Austria
1248-494: The basic word order rules are broadly those of Modern Standard German . Two differences from the modern language are the possibility of omitting a subject pronoun and lack of definite and indefinite articles . Both features are exemplified in the start of the 8th century Alemannic creed from St Gall : kilaubu in got vater almahticun (Modern German, Ich glaube an Gott den allmächtigen Vater ; English "I believe in God
1300-414: The beginning of the annexation of neighbouring territories by Nazi Germany in the late 1930s, a new unit of civil administration, the Reichsgau , was established. German-speaking territories annexed to Germany from 1938 were generally organised into Reichsgaue . Unlike the pre-existing Gaue , the new Reichsgaue formally combined the spheres of both party and state administration. Following
1352-610: The beginning of the OHG period, with the linguistic boundary later stabilised approximately along the course of the Meuse and Moselle in the east, and the northern boundary probably a little further south than the current boundary between French and Dutch . North of this line, the Franks retained their language, but it was not affected by the Second Sound Shift, which thus separated the Low Franconian or Old Dutch varieties from
1404-598: The case of Zichenau ) and Upper Silesia (as in the case of the Silesian voivodeship with the counties of Oświęcim and Biała ). After the successful invasion of France in 1940, Germany re-annexed Alsace-Lorraine . The former département of Moselle was incorporated into the Gau of Saar-Palatinate, while Bas-Rhin and Haut-Rhin became part of the Gau Baden . Similarly, the formerly independent state of Luxembourg
1456-443: The conquests of Charlemagne had brought all OHG dialect areas into a single polity . The period also saw the development of a stable linguistic border between German and Gallo-Romance , later French . Old High German largely preserved the synthetic inflectional system inherited from its ancestral Germanic forms. The eventual disruption of these patterns, which led to the more analytic grammar, are generally considered to mark
1508-717: The east it was bordered by the Lauwers , the Lauwerzee and the Westerkwartier of the Ommelanden (the western portion of the today's province of Groningen ). The whole of this area belonged to Wininge and Achtkarspelen , which was at that point still a part of Eastergoa. Around 1200 Wininge comprised Dantumadeel , Dongeradeel and Ferwerderadeel ([Dantumadiel, Dongeradiel] Error: {{Langx}}: invalid parameter: |longname= ( help ) and Ferwerderadiel ) in
1560-551: The end of the Migration Period , the Hundred ( centena or hunaria , Old High German huntari ) had become a term for an administrative unit or jurisdiction, independent of the figure hundred. The Frankish usage contrasts with Tacitus' Germania , where a pagus was a subdivision of a tribal territory or civitas , corresponding to the Hundred, i.e. areas liable to provide a hundred men under arms, or containing roughly
1612-520: The end of the OHG period. At the beginning of the period, no Germanic language was spoken east of a line from Kieler Förde to the rivers Elbe and Saale , earlier Germanic speakers in the Northern part of the area having been displaced by the Slavs . This area did not become German-speaking until the German eastward expansion ("Ostkolonisation", "Ostsiedlung") of the early 12th century, though there
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1664-490: The end of the Old High German period, Notker Labeo was among the greatest stylists in the language, and developed a systematic orthography. Old High German marked the culmination of a shift away from runic writing of the pre-OHG period to Latin alphabet . This shift led to considerable variations in spelling conventions, as individual scribes and scriptoria had to develop their own transliteration of sounds not native to Latin script . Otfrid von Weissenburg , in one of
1716-437: The language by the 8th century, others exclude Langobardic from discussion of OHG. As Heidermanns observes, this exclusion is based solely on the external circumstances of preservation and not on the internal features of the language. The end of the period is less controversial. The sound changes reflected in spelling during the 11th century led to the remodelling of the entire system of noun and adjective declensions . There
1768-541: The language of the Carolingian court or that it is attested in the Ludwigslied , whose presence in a French manuscript suggests bilingualism , are controversial. Old High German literacy is a product of the monasteries, notably at St. Gallen , Reichenau Island and Fulda . Its origins lie in the establishment of the German church by Saint Boniface in the mid-8th century, and it was further encouraged during
1820-418: The main dialect divisions of Old High German seem to have been similar to those of later periods—they are based on established territorial groupings and the effects of the Second Sound Shift, which have remained influential until the present day. But because the direct evidence for Old High German consists solely of manuscripts produced in a few major ecclesiastical centres, there is no isogloss information of
1872-472: The majority of Old High German texts are religious in nature and show strong influence of ecclesiastical Latin on the vocabulary. In fact, most surviving prose texts are translations of Latin originals. Even secular works such as the Hildebrandslied are often preserved only because they were written on spare sheets in religious codices . The earliest Old High German text is generally taken to be
1924-474: The middle of the 8th century. Differing approaches are taken, too, to the position of Langobardic . Langobardic is an Elbe Germanic and thus Upper German dialect, and it shows early evidence for the Second Sound Shift. For this reason, some scholars treat Langobardic as part of Old High German, but with no surviving texts — just individual words and names in Latin texts — and the speakers starting to abandon
1976-653: The more easterly Franconian dialects which formed part of Old High German. In the south, the Lombards , who had settled in Northern Italy , maintained their dialect until their conquest by Charlemagne in 774. After this the Germanic-speaking population, who were by then almost certainly bilingual, gradually switched to the Romance language of the native population , so that Langobardic had died out by
2028-514: The north and Idaarderadeel [ nl ; fy ] , Leeuwarderadeel and Tietjerksteradeel in the south ([Idaarderadiel, Ljouwerteradiel] Error: {{Langx}}: invalid parameter: |longname= ( help ) and Tytsjerksteradiel ). Around 1250 it was split into two parts called the Noardlike njoggen ('northern nine') and the Sudlike njoggen ('southern nine'). Around 1500 Eastergoa
2080-498: The past participle. Initially the past participle retained its original function as an adjective and showed case and gender endings - for intransitive verbs the nominative, for transitive verbs the accusative. For example: After thie thö argangana warun ahtu taga ( Tatian , 7,1) "When eight days had passed", literally "After that then gone-by were eight days" Latin: Et postquam consummati sunt dies octo (Luke 2:21) phīgboum habeta sum giflanzotan (Tatian 102,2) "There
2132-420: The prefaces to his Evangelienbuch , offers comments on and examples of some of the issues which arise in adapting the Latin alphabet for German: " ...sic etiam in multis dictis scriptio est propter litterarum aut congeriem aut incognitam sonoritatem difficilis. " ("...so also, in many expressions, spelling is difficult because of the piling up of letters or their unfamiliar sound.") The careful orthographies of
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2184-600: The same as in Middle High German.) The main difference between Old High German and the West Germanic dialects from which it developed is that the former underwent the Second Sound Shift . The result of the sound change has been that the consonantal system of German is different from all other West Germanic languages, including English and Low German . This list has the sound changes that transformed Common West Germanic into Old High German but not
2236-460: The sort on which modern dialect maps are based. For this reason the dialects may be termed "monastery dialects" (German Klosterdialekte ). The main dialects, with their bishoprics and monasteries : In addition, there are two poorly attested dialects: The continued existence of a West Frankish dialect in the Western, Romanized part of Francia is uncertain. Claims that this might have been
2288-576: The stem suffix gaw, gao , and with motion to the feminine as gawa besides gowo (from gowio ). Old Saxon shows further truncation to gâ, gô . As an equivalent of Latin pagus , a gau is analogous with a pays of the Kingdom of France , or of Lotharingia . Old English , by contrast, has only traces of the word, which was replaced by scire (modern English shire ) from an early time, in names such as Noxga gā, Ohtga gā and perhaps in gōman, ġēman " yeoman ", which would then correspond to
2340-468: The transition to Middle High German . Surviving Old High German texts were all composed in monastic scriptoria , so the overwhelming majority of them are religious in nature or, when secular, belong to the Latinate literary culture of Christianity . The earliest instances, which date to the latter half of the 8th century, are glosses —notes added to margins or between lines that provide translation of
2392-485: The weakening of unstressed vowels in the endings of nouns and verbs (see above). The early part of the period saw considerable missionary activity, and by 800 the whole of the Frankish Empire had, in principle, been Christianized. All the manuscripts which contain Old High German texts were written in ecclesiastical scriptoria by scribes whose main task was writing in Latin rather than German. Consequently,
2444-540: Was a fig tree that some man had planted", literally "Fig-tree had certain ( or someone) planted" Latin: arborem fici habebat quidam plantatam (Luke 13:6) In time, however, these endings fell out of use and the participle came to be seen no longer as an adjective but as part of the verb, as in Modern German. This development is taken to be arising from a need to render Medieval Latin forms, but parallels in other Germanic languages (particularly Gothic, where
2496-467: Was also renamed "Upper Danube" ( Oberdonau ), thus eliminating the name of "Austria" ( Österreich in German) from the official map. A small number of boundary changes also took place, the most significant of which was the massive expansion of Vienna 's official territory, at the expense of "Lower Danube". Northern and eastern territory annexed from the dismembered Czechoslovakia were mainly organised as
2548-747: Was annexed to Koblenz-Trier, and the Belgian territories of Eupen and Malmedy were incorporated into Cologne-Aachen. The medieval term Gau (sometimes Gäu ; gouw in Dutch ) has survived as (second, more generic) component of the names of certain regions – some named after a river – in Germany, Austria, Alsace , Switzerland , Belgium, South Tyrol , and the Netherlands . Notes Bibliography Old High German Old High German ( OHG ; German : Althochdeutsch (Ahdt., Ahd.) )
2600-415: Was further divided into two cities and eleven grietenijen ([gritenijen] Error: {{Langx}}: invalid parameter: |longname= ( help ) ; municipalities). Gau (territory) Gau ( German : [ɡaʊ] ; Dutch : gouw [ɣʌu] ; West Frisian : gea [ɡɪə] or goa [ɡoə] ) is a Germanic term for a region within a country, often
2652-641: Was some attempt at conquest and missionary work under the Ottonians . The Alemannic polity was conquered by Clovis I in 496, and in the last twenty years of the 8th century Charlemagne subdued the Saxons, the Frisians, the Bavarians, and the Lombards, bringing all continental Germanic-speaking peoples under Frankish rule. While this led to some degree of Frankish linguistic influence , the language of both
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#17328013048972704-511: Was the neglect or religious zeal of later generations that led to the loss of these records. Thus, it was Charlemagne's weak successor, Louis the Pious , who destroyed his father's collection of epic poetry on account of its pagan content. Rabanus Maurus , a student of Alcuin and later an abbot at Fulda, was an important advocate of the cultivation of German literacy. Among his students were Walafrid Strabo and Otfrid of Weissenburg . Towards
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