Many questions in newsgroups devoted to the German language deal with regional or historic varieties of German. Often they cannot be answered without a brief explanation of the history of the German language. This article attempts to present the basic facts without going into detail; it is therefore often an oversimplification. Readers are encouraged to consult the relevant literature. – The author is an amateur in the best and the worst sense of this word. It is hoped that this had led only to more conciseness, but not to more errors.
Key to notation: Words quoted as examples, no matter to which language they belong, are written in italics. The pronunciation is not indicated; if it is a modern German word, you can look it up in a dictionary. When sounds or sound clusters are mentioned, also in italics, long vowels are marked with a circumflex ^ accent, and vowel clusters stand for diphthongs. Typewriter script is used when talking about spelling irrespective of pronunciation. Example: “The German word Liebe (Engl. love) has an î sound, not an ie sound as one might suspect when seeing the ie in the middle of the word.” In Middle High German written diphthongs like ie are pronounced in fact as diphthongs.
The Germanic languages departed from the other Indo-European languages by a shift in sounds called the First Germanic Sound Shift, and by other distinguishing features as well. More detail can be found here.
The language we now call German departed from the other Germanic languages (mainly English, Dutch, Scandinavian and the now extinct Gothic) by a shift in sounds called the Second Germanic Sound Shift. Its effect can still be seen by comparing modern German words with their English cognates: pound–>Pfund, pipe–>Pfeife, hope–>hoffen, apple–>Apfel, plant–>Pflanze, tide–>Zeit, cat–>Katze, heart–>Herz, hate–>hassen, make–>machen, weak–>weich.
The rules for this sound shift are:
p–>f,
pp–>pf, t–>ss, tt–>ts
(written [t]z), k–>ch, kk–>kch,
where initial p, t and k are treated like their
doubled counterparts. The p–>(p)f shift is quite
regular, and so is the t–>(t)s shift, which is somewhat
blurred by the later differentiation between tz and
ss. The k–>(k)ch shift, however, is fully in
effect only in Swiss German; in standard German and in most of its
dialects we find kk (written [c]k) instead of
kch. (The characters in square brackets are not written
initially in a syllable.)
The Second Sound Shift divides Germany into a smaller Northern part (without the sound shift) and a larger central and Southern part (with the sound shift). The border between the two regions approximates a line passing through Cologne (Köln) and Berlin, but there is a more or less fuzzy region of more than a hundred kilometres width south of that line where the language underwent the Seconds Sound Shift only partially. In Western Germany, for instance, the non-initial t (e.g. dat and wat instead of das and was) reaches much farther south than most of the other non-shifted sounds. There are several central German dialects that have neither initial p nor pf, but f instead. The other countries where German is spoken are all south of this line.
Since the part of Germany where there was no Second Sound Shift are the North German Lowlands, their language is called Low German as distinct from High German. Because High German has been the official language even there for quite some time, and because Low German is too different from High German to mix easily with it, this region has become, in fact, bilingual. We even find a two-layered dialect situation: in addition to Low German, the real vernacular of the region, new High German dialects are developing there, in particular in the larger cities. Examples are Berlinisch (Berlin), Missingsch (Hamburg, Kiel, ...), Ruhrpott-Deutsch (Bochum, Dortmund, ...). “Missingsch” has its name from the town Meißen, although Missingsch did certainly not develop there – the connexion between Meißen and High German will become clearer towards the end of this article.
German comes in many dialects which are in general not mutually intelligible. A separate Web page by the same author deals with German dialects. Which dialects are to be regarded as separate languages shall not be discussed here. It is reasonable to regard a variety of German as a separate language at least when it is one of the official languages in a country or when it has its own historic development:
Dutch and its Belgian variety Flemish are official languages in the Netherlands and in Belgium; they are closely related to the Low German languages of Germany's North. Afrikaans which developed out of the Dutch spoken by Dutch settlers, is an official language in South Africa.
Of the languages related to High German, that is, languages that have undergone the Second Sound Shift at least partially, there is only one besides German which has such a status: Luxemburgish (Lëtzebuergesch) is an official language in Luxemburg along with both French and German.
Yiddish, which developed out of Middle High German dialects and is now spoken by several million Jews throughout the world, belongs in the High German language family, too, and has its own interesting history. It is not an official language in any country.
In the last section, the German language was characterised as the language that has undergone the Second Germanic Sound Shift, but nonetheless the term “Low German” was introduced for a language not meeting this criterion. What, then, does “German” mean?
The name “German” (deutsch) denotes at the same time a language and a country. These two notions do not coincide, which leads to some inconsistencies. The Low German areas are said to speak a variety of German because they belong to Germany, and because they have adopted High German as their standard language gradually since the 15th century. Even earlier, High German had occasionally been used in Low Germany as a means of communication across whole Germany, as Berthold of Regensburg (~1210–1272) states: “Also stêt ez umbe di niderlender und umbe oberlender, daz manic niderlender ist, der sich der oberlender sprâche annimet. (It is so with the lowlanders and the highlanders that there are quite some lowlanders using the language of the highlanders.)” In the days of the Hanse, Low German gained much importance in the area of the Baltic sea and in the coastal regions of Germany, but with the decline of the Hanse at the end of the 15th century, High German became increasingly important in the big cities in Germany's North, a tendency which was intensified by Luther's High German Bible in the 16th century. – In contrast to this development, the Netherlands, whose language is not much different from Low German, have not belonged to Germany for quite some time and their culture was more oriented to the cities at the sea, where a literature in their own language had developed since the 13th century; they had thus no reason to follow a High German standard. Consequently, the language of the Netherlands is not regarded as a variety of German. It was formerly, however, called diets from the same root as deutsch, hence the English word Dutch; the etymology of this word will be explained below.
For understanding how the country of Germany came into existence, and hence also a common name for its languages, a short look at the early Medieval political map may be helpful. In the 5th century, there were several countries of West Germanic tribes at the Northern edge of the Roman Empire: the kingdoms of the Saxons (Sachsen) at the German North-Sea coast (they invaded also England together with the Anglians, hence “Anglo-Saxon”), of the Franks (Franken) between the rivers Rhine and Weser in North Germany, of the Alamannes (Alamannen) in South-West Germany, of the Burgundians (Burgunder) in Eastern France, and of the Thuringians (Thüringer) in Central Germany between the rivers Weser and Elbe. In the following centuries, the Franks conquered large parts first of the Netherlands, of Belgium and of Northern France and later of Western and Central Germany until the empire reached its final size under Charlemagne, comprising all continental Europe from France to Western Germany and Northern Italy. The empire was then divided among the sons and grandsons of Charlemagne in several treaties in the 9th century, finally leading to a centralised kindom, France, in the West, a more loosely coupled kingdom of dukedoms, Germany, in the East, a similar kingdom of dukedoms, Italy, in the South, and a kingdom, Burgundy, between France and Italy.
The border between France and Germany was more or less the border between the Romance-speaking West and the Germanic-speaking East. Prior to the division of the Frankish empire, the language name “Frankish” meant the local language as distinct from Latin, and quite different languages may have passed under that name. As a result, until today both a Romance language, French, and a couple of High German dialects, Franconian (Fränkisch), carry a name derived from “Frankish”. The word was no longer unique, and another word had to be found for the vernacular of the Germanic East. The new word for the purpose was diutisc with the meaning “belonging to the people”. It derives from a Germanic root meaning “people” (e.g. Old English þeod) which is now lost in most languages (but compare Icelandic þjóð). Interestingly, the oldest preserved mention of diutisc occurs in Latin texts of the 9th century where it appears as a Germanic loanword theodiscus borrowed into Latin; it denoted the local vernacular as distinct from Latin. In some instances it appears even as a Latin translation for Germanic frencisg then still having its original meaning. At the end of the 11th century, the word diutisc is applied for the first time to both the language and the country and slowly gets more and more into use.
The remaining portion of this article deals only with High German as spoken in Germany and the neighbouring countries.
The German language has undergone a number of changes in history. The main phases are called Old High German (Althochdeutsch, AHD), Middle High German (Mittelhochdeutsch, MHD), and New High German (Neuhochdeutsch, NHD).
Old High German was spoken until the 10th or 11th century. When we compare it with NHD, its most interesting feature is that it contains a full-fledged noun declension and no (or only optional) articles, and also a verb conjugation with distinctive endings and only optional pronouns. In contrast to that, MHD and NHD declension and conjugation endings may be awkward to learn for the foreigner,but they are not sufficiently distinctive to allow case markers (articles) and person markers (pronouns) to be dispensed with. In this respect, AHD grammar resembles Latin and today's Slavic languages. – There are lots of full vowels a, i, and u, in contrast to the prevailing e in MHD and NHD. AHD is mostly unintelligible to speakers of NHD who might guess many words but could hardly understand anything in context. Here is an example of a late – and thus a somewhat more understandable – text in AHD:
Trohtin almahtiger, tu der pist einiger trost unta euuigiu heila aller dero di in dih gloubant iouh in dih gidingant, tu inluihta min herza, daz ih dina guoti unta dina gnada megi anadenchin, unta mina sunta iouh mina ubila, unta die megi so chlagen vora dir, also ih des bidurfi. Leski, trohtin, allaz daz in mir, daz der leidiga viant inni mir zunta uppigas unta unrehtes odo unsubras, unta zunta mih ze den giriden des euuigin libes, daz ih den also megi minnan unta mih dara nah hungiro unta dursti also ih des bidurfi. Dara nah macha mih also fron unta kreftigin in alle dinemo dionosti, daz ih alla die arbeita megi lidan die ih in deser werolti sculi lidan durh dina era unta durh dinan namon iouh durh mina durfti odo durh iomannes durfti. (Otloh's Prayer; 11th century)
Middle High German was the language of the minstrels. Although the time of its oldest documents nearly overlaps with AHD times, it is quite thoroughly different from AHD. The concentration of the word stress on the word stem is now complete, leaving prefixes and suffixes with an unspecific vowel written as e. As a consequence, declension and conjugation endings have disappeared except for small residues, so that pronouns (when there is no other subject) and articles are now obligatory. But the old vowels have left their traces: An i disappearing as a suffix has modified an a, o, or u in the word stem to become ä, ö, or ü, resp., for example gibârida–>gebærde(–>Gebärde), guoti–>güete(–>Güte). In conjugations and declensions, there were already umlauts in AHD but they became more important as distinctive in MHD.
MHD is similar enough to NHD that, at least after getting accustomed to it, speakers of NHD should get the story line of a MHD text, although they will certainly miss many of the details. Here is an example from the most famous of the MHD songs, “Der Nibelunge Nôt”. The NHD translation below seeks to find NHD cognates even when they do not quite fit; when this would result in wrong translation they are bracketed and followed by a more appropriate NHD word.
| Dô sprach zuo dem künege der degen Ortwîn: "welt ir mit vollen êren zer hôchgezîte sîn, sô sult ir lâzen schouwen diu wünneclichen kint, die mit sô grôzen êren hie ze Burgonden sint." |
Da sprach zu dem König der Degen Ortwin: "wollt ihr mit vollen Ehren zur [Hochzeit] Festlichkeit sein, so sollt ihr lassen schauen die [wonniglichen Kinder] bezaubernden jungen Leute, die mit so großen Ehren hier zu Burgund sind." |
| "Des wil ich gerne volgen", sprach der künec dô, alle diez erfunden, die wârens harte vrô; ernbôt ez froun Uoten und ir tohter wol getân, daz si mit ir mägeden hin ze hove solde gân. |
"Dem will ich gerne folgen", sprach der König da, alle die es [erfanden] erfuhren, die waren dessen [hart] sehr froh; entbot es Frau Ute und ihrer Tochter [wohlgetan] schön, dass sie mit ihren Mägden hin zum Hofe sollte gehen. |
New High German had developed out of MHD at the end of the Middle Ages. Besides the unavoidable shift in meaning of many words which always takes place over so long a time, the differences between MHD and NHD are:
There was a major shift in diphthongs and long vowels, especially î–>ai, ei–>ai, û–>au, ou–>au, uo–>û, ie–>î, üe–>ü, öu–>oi. The first four rules show that different MHD vowels were mapped to the same NHD diphthongs; however, many NHD dialects preserve the old distinction: Bavarian (Bairisch) has î–>ai, ei–>oa, û–>au, ou–>a; Saxon (Sächsisch) has î–>ai, ei–>ê, û–>au, ou–>ô; and Swiss (Schwyzerdütsch) preserves the MHD vowels (except uo–>ue). The modern orthography of NHD retains some reminiscences of MHD: long î is mostly spelled as ie, the sound ai as ei, and the sound oi as eu or äu.
Simple vowels (monophthongs) were often lengthened, but also sometimes shortened. NHD has long vowels in syllables without a final consonant (or with a single final consonant at the end of the word): a rule with exceptions in NHD, but not valid at all in MHD. Examples: lengthening in tal–>Tal, legen–>legen, vride–>Friede, wonen–>wohnen, künec–>König; shortening in wâfen–>Waffe, ich dâhte–>ich dachte.
There were some changes with the sibilants. MHD z and zz, developed out of t at the Second Sound Shift, become unvoiced s (written s, ss, or ß) and ts (written z or tz). Consonants clusters with the old Germanic s (that is sl, sm, sn, sp, st, sw), especially in syllable-initial position, had the s replaced by a sh-sound (written sch, except for sp and st which retained their old spelling despite the new pronunciation). Less regularly, the same thing happened to consonants clusters with final s. Examples are: schlagen (Engl. slay), Schmied (smith), Schnee (snow), sparen (spare), Stein (stone), Schwein (swine), Arsch (arse), falsch (false).
Early NHD looks awkward to today's readers, but mostly because of the unusual spelling. Modern readers have no problems in understanding it, except for the words that have become obsolete or have changed their meaning dramatically. Comparing the versions of 1545 and 1912 of Luther's Bible translation shows that the words have remained nearly the same over the 367 years but the spelling has changed a lot. However, one has to take into acount that the language was quite archaic in 1912, especially the word order with the verb early in the subordinate clause. The text is Matth.6:1–4.
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In this section we give a short survey of what has contributed to the development of a standard German language, irrespective of whether this has been a deliberate effort of language planning or just a coincidence of circumstances that favoured a common language.
A first minor standardisation was brought about by the minstrels who wanted their songs to be understood in more than one region and avoided regionalisms or rhymes that would work only in some dialects. Otherwise there was little necessity for a common German language since laws and administrative and judicial documents were written in Latin.
In the 13th and 14th century, German became more and more used in the administration. By the time of Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian (reigned 1314–1347), most imperial documents were written in German, in particular when they pertained to affairs in Southern Germany, and documents he issued as duke of Bavaria were nearly exclusively written in German. His successor, Karl IV (reigned 1347–1378), had his chancery at Prague, which had a still greater influence on the common judicial language. At that time, this common language was not the language of the ordinary people but the jargon of imperial adminstrators and lawyers. This changed significantly with Johannes Gutenberg's (~1400–1468) invention of printing with movable type and with Martin Luther's (1483–1546) translation of the Bible. For the first time, there was a German text of common interest to spread rapidly all over Germany, thus communicating not only the contents but also a specific variety of the German language. Luther put quite some effort in carefully selecting an idiom that would as far as possible be perceived as natural in the different regions of Germany. To this end, he took the chancery language of Prague and Meißen as his standard, but changed its style drastically so that it was no longer the stilted language of lawyers, but resembled more the colloquial language of the man in the street. That both Meißen, and even more so Wittenberg and Thuringia in which Luther lived at various times, are located in the centre of Germany contributed largely to the creation of a language that would be understood in wide parts of Germany.
The mere existence of a document in a common language was but the first step towards the development of a standard language. The next step was the advent of descriptions of the language in dictionaries and grammars. In the time of baroque, poetry was not so much regarded as an art but more so as a kind of craftsmanship adhering to fixed rules. Some of such rules were written down by Martin Opitz (1597–1639) and others. In 1648, Justus Georg Schottel (1612–1676) published his “Ausführliche Arbeit von der Teutschen Haubt Sprache” (Elaborate work about the German main language), Johann Christoph Gottsched (1700–1766) followed later with a grammar and Johann Christoph Adelung (1732–1806) with a dictionary. In the time of the Enlightenment, the motive of writing grammars was no longer the interest in defining rules for poets and writers, but rather the conviction that every observable phenomenon, including language, is subject to scientific laws like those we find in physics. Both attitudes, baroque craftsmanship and Enlightenment science, led to an understanding of grammars as prescriptive rather than descriptive. In the 19th century, interest in the German language shifted towards its purification by eliminating unnecessary foreign words, an endeavour during which many useful words of today's German language were coined, whereas the attempt to replace well-established loanwords by inventing awkward “German” circumlocutions for them rightly failed.
Another important step towards the standardisation of the language was the creation of a generally binding orthography by the kingdom of Bavaria in 1879; the kingdom of Prussia followed one year later when Konrad Duden (1829–1911) created his famous dictionary “according to the new Prussian and Bavarian rules” which has been continued and adapted to language changes until today. This dictionary was regarded as the de-facto standard (and sometimes even the de-jure standard) of German orthography. Since 1880, the orthography has been subjected to two reforms in the first and the last years of the 20th century: In 1901, there was a three-day administrative conference accepting and continuing Duden's innovations, most notably abandoning writing th in German words such as Thal or Rath. The reform in the 1990ies consisted of a long series of academic and bureaucratic debates whose results have remained controversial because they were not an attempt to codify changes already in use but to invent new changes to orthography.
While the orthography followed a compromise between Northern and Southern language, this was not the case for the pronunciation. In 1898, Theodor Siebs (1862–1941) fixed rules for the “Deutsche Bühnenaussprache” (German stage pronunciation) which are still regarded as binding until today. In his work, Siebs declared more or less exclusive Northern pronunciation to be the German standard: voiced s (like English z) and labiodental w (like English v) in syllable-initial positions; long vowels in words like Städte or Husten; initial st less consistently spoken as scht; Honig pronounced as if it were written with -ich; voiced b, d, g; the Schwa (unstressed e) spoken a bit more rounded than in the South. More examples are given here Siebs always favoured the more distinctive pronunciation, e.g. Fliesen distinct from fließen, Städte distinct from Stätte (spoken alike in the South) or Ehre distinct from Ähre (spoken alike in the North).
To sum up: today's standard German is the language of the Southerners in the pronunciation of the Northerners – in principle a reasonably fair compromise. The effect is, however, that North German language is often nearer to the standard (because it does not so easily mix with the dialect, and because of Siebs's preference of Northern pronunciation), and we observe a tendency that Northern regionalisms are often regarded as “more standard” than Southern ones.