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54-646: Waldemar , Valdemar or Woldemar is an Old High German given name. It consists of the elements wald- "power", "brightness" and -mar "fame". The name is considered the equivalent of the Latvian name Valdemārs , the Estonian name Voldemar , and the Slavic names Vladimir , Volodymyr , Uladzimir or Włodzimierz . The Old Norse form Valdamarr (also Valdarr ) occurs in the Guðrúnarkviða II as

108-612: A far more complicated set of declensions, where the suffixes (or prefixes, or infixes ) change depending on the gender of the noun , the quantity of the noun , and other possible factors. This complexity and the possible lengthening of words is one of the disadvantages of inflected languages. Notably, many of these languages lack articles . There may also be irregular nouns where the declensions are unique for each word (like irregular verbs with conjugation ). In inflected languages, other parts of speech such as numerals , demonstratives , adjectives, and articles are also declined. It

162-537: A more complex example, the sentence: becomes nonsensical in English if the words are rearranged (because there are no cases): But if English were a highly inflected language, like Latin or some Slavic languages such as Croatian , both sentences could mean the same thing. They would both contain five nouns in five different cases: mum – vocative (hey!), dog – nominative (who?), boy – genitive (of whom?), cat – accusative (whom?), street – locative (where?);

216-519: Is agreed that Ancient Greeks had a "vague" idea of the forms of a noun in their language. A fragment of Anacreon seems to confirm this idea. Nevertheless, it cannot be concluded that the Ancient Greeks actually knew what the cases were. The Stoics developed many basic notions that today are the rudiments of linguistics . The idea of grammatical cases is also traced back to the Stoics, but it

270-590: 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

324-844: Is given in four Old High German dialects below. Because these are translations of a liturgical text, they are best not regarded as examples of idiomatic language, but they do show dialect variation very clearly. Declension Declension occurs in many of the world's languages. It is an important aspect of language families like Quechuan (i.e., languages native to the Andes ), Indo-European (e.g. German , Icelandic , Irish , Lithuanian and Latvian , Slavic , Sanskrit , Latin , Ancient and Modern Greek , Albanian , Romanian , Kurdish , Classical and Modern Armenian ), Bantu (e.g. Swahili , Zulu , Kikuyu ), Semitic (e.g. Modern Standard Arabic ), Finno-Ugric (e.g. Hungarian , Finnish , Estonian ), and Turkic (e.g. Turkish ). Old English

378-471: 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,

432-684: Is never regarded as declined in Modern English, although formally, the words that and possibly she correspond to forms of the predecessor of the ( sē m., þæt n., sēo f.) as it was declined in Old English. Just as verbs in Latin are conjugated to indicate grammatical information, Latin nouns and adjectives that modify them are declined to signal their roles in sentences. There are five important cases for Latin nouns: nominative , genitive , dative , accusative , and ablative . Since

486-824: Is not declined in Modern English. There are isolated situations where certain nouns may be modified to reflect gender, though not in a systematic fashion. Loan words from other languages, particularly Latin and the Romance languages, often preserve their gender-specific forms in English, e.g. alumnus (masculine singular) and alumna (feminine singular). Similarly, names borrowed from other languages show comparable distinctions: Andrew and Andrea , Paul and Paula , etc. Additionally, suffixes such as -ess , -ette , and -er are sometimes applied to create overtly gendered versions of nouns, with marking for feminine being much more common than marking for masculine. Many nouns can actually function as members of two genders or even all three, and

540-631: Is often restricted to specific contexts, depending on the dialect or the speaker. It is most typically used to refer to a single person of unknown gender (e.g. "someone left their jacket behind") or a hypothetical person where gender is insignificant (e.g. "If someone wants to, then they should"). Its use has expanded in recent years due to increasing social recognition of persons who do not identify themselves as male or female (see gender-nonbinary ). The singular they still uses plural verb forms, reflecting its origins. Some English adjectives and adverbs are declined for degree of comparison . The unmarked form

594-402: Is still not completely clear what the Stoics exactly meant with their notion of cases. In Modern English , the system of declensions is so simple compared to some other languages that the term declension is rarely used. Most nouns in English have distinct singular and plural forms. Nouns and most noun phrases can form a possessive construction. Plurality is most commonly shown by

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648-417: Is subjective, and the objective whom (although it is increasingly common to use who for both). The one situation where gender is still clearly part of the English language is in the pronouns for the third person singular. Consider the following: The distinguishing of neuter for persons and non-persons is peculiar to English. This has existed since the 14th century. However, the use of singular they

702-629: Is the positive form, such as quick . Comparative forms are formed with the ending -er ( quicker ), while superlative forms are formed with -est ( quickest ). Some are uncomparable; the remainder are usually periphrastic constructions with more ( more beautiful ) and most ( most modestly ). See degree of comparison for more. Adjectives are not declined for case in Modern English (though they were in Old English), nor number nor gender. The demonstrative determiners this and that are declined for number, as these and those . The article

756-506: 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

810-578: 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

864-660: 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

918-706: 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

972-548: 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

1026-488: The ending -s (or -es ), whereas possession is always shown by the en clitic -'s or, for plural forms ending in s , by just an apostrophe. Consider, for example, the forms of the noun girl . Most speakers pronounce all forms other than the singular plain form ( girl ) exactly the same. By contrast, a few irregular nouns (like man /men) are slightly more complex in their forms. In this example, all four forms are pronounced distinctly. For nouns, in general, gender

1080-495: The locative , the instrumental form of "down our street" could also be used: Different word orders preserving the original meaning are possible in an inflected language, while modern English relies on word order for meaning, with a little flexibility. This is one of the advantages of an inflected language. The English sentences above, when read without the made-up case suffixes, are confusing. These contrived examples are relatively simple, whereas actual inflected languages have

1134-501: The same word , and thus are not declensions. Pronouns in English have more complex declensions. For example, the first person " I ": Whereas nouns do not distinguish between the subjective (nominative) and objective (oblique) cases, some pronouns do; that is, they decline to reflect their relationship to a verb or preposition , or case . Consider the difference between he (subjective) and him (objective), as in "He saw it" and "It saw him"; similarly, consider who , which

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1188-453: The vocative case usually takes the same form as the nominative, it is seldom spelt out in grammar books. Yet another case, the locative , is limited to a small number of words. The usual basic functions of these cases are as follows: The genitive, dative, accusative, and ablative also have important functions to indicate the object of a preposition. Given below is the declension paradigm of Latin puer 'boy' and puella 'girl': From

1242-533: 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

1296-431: 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

1350-720: 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

1404-468: 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

1458-692: 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

1512-442: The adjective little would be in the same case as the noun it modifies ( boy ), and the case of the determiner our would agree with the case of the noun it determines ( street ). Using the case suffixes invented for this example, the original sentence would read: And like other inflected languages, the sentence rearranged in the following ways would mean virtually the same thing, but with different expressiveness: Instead of

1566-459: 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,

1620-424: 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

1674-494: 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

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1728-610: 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

1782-443: 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

1836-520: 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

1890-555: 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

1944-469: The gender classes of English nouns are usually determined by their agreement with pronouns, rather than marking on the nouns themselves. There can be other derivations from nouns that are not considered declensions. For example, the proper noun Britain has the associated descriptive adjective British and the demonym Briton . Though these words are clearly related, and are generally considered cognates , they are not specifically treated as forms of

1998-437: 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

2052-594: 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

2106-418: 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

2160-472: 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

2214-422: 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

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2268-653: 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

2322-595: The name of a king of the Danes. The Old Norse form is also used in Heimskringla , in the story of Harald Hardrada , as the name of a ruler of Holmgard (Veliky Novgorod). The Fagrskinna kings' sagas also have Valdamarr , in reference to both Vladimir the Great and Vladimir Yaroslavovich . People with the name include: Old High German Old High German ( OHG ; German : Althochdeutsch (Ahdt., Ahd.) )

2376-498: 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

2430-420: 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

2484-600: 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

2538-460: 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

2592-406: The subject and object. As an example, even though both of the following sentences consist of the same words, the meaning is different: Hypothetically speaking, suppose English were a language with a more complex declension system in which cases were formed by adding the suffixes: The first sentence above could be formed with any of the following word orders and would have the same meaning: As

2646-468: 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

2700-485: 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,

2754-540: 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

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2808-452: Was an inflectional language , but largely abandoned inflectional changes as it evolved into Modern English . Though traditionally classified as synthetic , Modern English has moved towards a mostly analytic language . Unlike English, many languages use suffixes to specify subjects and objects and word cases in general. Inflected languages have a freer word order than modern English, an analytic language in which word order identifies

2862-697: 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

2916-511: 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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