History

From the point of view of the modern local dialects, the territory within which German and Dutch are spoken is a single speech area. It is possible to travel from Austria, northern Italy, and much of Switzerland into Germany, eastern France (Alsace and part of Lorraine), Luxembourg, northern Belgium, and the Netherlands without encountering a village where the local speech is suddenly different. The only sharp breaks occur when one enters the French-speaking parts of France and Belgium or the Frisian-speaking parts of the Netherlands and Germany.

The most striking dialect differences within this large area are those that divide Dutch–Low German in the lowlands of the north from High German in the highlands of the south. When the Germanic tribes migrated into southern Germany during the early centuries ad, their speech had the voiceless stops p, t, and k in much the same distribution as in modern English. Then, probably during the 6th century, there occurred a change customarily called the High German consonant shift. At the beginning of words and when doubled, p, t, and k came to be pronounced as affricates; after a vowel they came to be pronounced as long fricatives. See table for a comparison of modern results with related English words.

These changes occurred in the south of the German speech area and then spread north, some extending farther than others. The situation at the end of the 19th century was as indicated in the figure. Line 2, maken/machen, is generally chosen as the boundary between Low German and High German, because it is typical for the shift of p, t, and k after vowels to ff, ss, and ch, respectively (hopen/hoffen, bīten/beissen, maken/machen), and of t and tt to z and tz, respectively (ten/zehn, sitten/sitzen). The shift of ik ‘I’ to ich is indicated by line 1, which shows that the shift of k to ch after a vowel in this particular word spread unusually far. Line 3, which indicates the shift of Dorp ‘village’ to Dorf (compare archaic English thorp), shows that shifted p after r and l did not spread as far north as the shifted p, t, and k after a vowel. And line 4, indicating the shift of dat ‘that’ to das, shows that the shift of t to s after a vowel spread still less far north in this word (and in a few others: it/es ‘it,’ wat/was ‘what’). The striking way in which these lines fan out in the west (in the area along the Rhine River) has led to their being referred to as the Rhenish fan.

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The shift of p when doubled or at the beginning of a word occurred in a much smaller area. Line 5, showing the shift of Appel ‘apple’ to Apfel, lies wholly within the High German speech area and is customarily used to subdivide it into Middle German (Appel) and Upper German (Apfel) areas. Line 6, which indicates the shift of Pund ‘pound’ to Pfund, follows much the same course as does line 5 in the west, but it then runs north to join the maken/machen line; it is customarily used to distinguish West Middle German (Appel, Pund) from East Middle German (Appel, Fund—the latter being more common than Upper German Pfund).

As indicated above, Old High German grew out of the South Germanic branch, but both Old Saxon and Old Dutch also can be regarded as forms of South Germanic, albeit with differing ties to North Sea Germanic. Only after the consonant shift is there justification in speaking of a “(High) German” language distinct from the rest of South Germanic. The spread of early loans from Latin throughout all Germanic languages indicates that, at the time of their borrowing, a continuum of mutually intelligible dialects must still have existed, though differences between widely separated points in the continuum may have been significant. The modern German forms of these loans show that they were borrowed before the consonant shift, since they show its effects. Examples include Latin pondō, English pound, but German Pfund; Latin piper, English pepper, but German Pfeffer; Latin tegula, English tile, but German Ziegel; Latin (via) strāta ‘paved (road),’ English street, but German Strasse; Latin catillus, English kettle, but German Kessel; and Latin coquus, English cook, but German Koch.

Toward the end of the 4th century the great migrations (German Völkerwanderung) of Germanic tribes resulted in an expansion of the Germanic-speaking territory. Angles, Saxons, and Jutes crossed the Channel to England; Franks moved southwest into northern France and southwestern central Germany; and Alemanni, Bavarians, and Langobardi moved south into southern Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and northern Italy. At the same time the area east of the Elbe and Saale rivers was largely vacated by Germanic speakers, and Slavic speakers moved in.

In the southern area settled by Franks, Alemanni, and Bavarians, the first Old High German written records began to appear during the 2nd half of the 8th century. Their language is best described as a collection of monastery dialects; there is a certain uniformity in the writings of any given monastery but little for the area as a whole. The first documents are translations into German of Latin word lists. Later documents include prose translations of writings by St. Isidore of Sevilla (c. 800) and by the Syrian Tatian (c. 830), as well as Otfrid’s Evangelienbuch (c. 870), which introduced a new verse form with end rhyme. This literature reached its highest point in the able translations and interpretations of the Swiss scholar Notker Labeo (died 1022). From the north (the Old Low German or Old Saxon speech area), the most extensive documents preserved are Heliand (c. 830), a life of Christ in alliterative verse, and a fragment of a poem based on the book of Genesis.

In this period there were many borrowings from Latin, nearly all connected with Christianization of the Germans. Because these borrowings were made after the consonant shift, they do not show its effects. Examples include predigōn (modern German predigen ‘to preach’), from Latin praedicāre; tempal (modern German Tempel ‘temple’), from Latin templum; and spiagal (modern German Spiegel ‘mirror’), from Latin speculum. On the other hand, borrowings of this period reflect sound changes that had occurred in popular Latin, such as the change of Latin c before e from a k sound to ts in cella ‘cell’ and crucem ‘cross,’ borrowed into Old High German as zella, krūzi, modern German Zelle, Kreuz (the letter z in the German and Old High German examples represents the sound of ts); or the change of Latin medial -b- to -v- in tabula ‘table,’ borrowed into Old High German as tavala, modern German Tafel.

Several developments justify the usual assumption of a new period, the language of which is called Middle High German, beginning in roughly 1050. First, there were changes in the language itself, among which were the unvoicing of final b, d, and g (compare Old High German grab ‘grave,’ rad ‘wheel,’ and tag ‘day’ with Middle High German grap, rat, and tac; in modern German these words are again spelled Grab, Rad, and Tag but are pronounced with final /p/, /t/, and /k/) and the reduction of the vowels of unstressed syllables to a /ə/, usually spelled e (e.g., in the plural of the word for ‘day,’ the Old High German nominative-accusative form was taga, the genitive was tago, and the dative was tagun, but for these Middle High German had tage, tage, and tagen, respectively, and modern German has Tage, Tage, and Tagen). Second, there were great changes in the geographic area in which German was spoken. In the west the Franks of northern France had become romanized, and the French-German language border had assumed approximately its present location; in the east, on the other hand, German began to spread into Slavic territory, a process that was to continue for many centuries and to be reversed only at the end of World War II. Third, writing became independent of the monasteries, and the number of written documents soon increased greatly in both north and south. In the south, especially, a remarkable literature developed that included the courtly epic and Minnesang. There is clear evidence of a trend toward a standard Middle High German literary language, though it seems to have had no influence on ordinary speech. Because this literature was based largely on French models, many French words were borrowed into German.

Four events—the growth of trade, the rise of a middle class, the invention of the printing press, and the Reformation—had great influence on the development of the language. In the north, because of the prosperity of the Hanseatic League, a standard Low German written language began to develop, though it never reached full growth and probably had little influence on everyday speech. In the south the dialects that had arisen in the recently settled East Middle German area were relatively uniform and contained elements from both West Middle German and Upper German. Gradually these East Middle German dialects came to be used as the official languages of the chancelleries of the area, including that of Saxony, and on the latter—the East Middle German dialect of Saxony—Martin Luther based the language of his widely read Bible translation (1522–34). The growth of this type of German, which developed gradually into modern Standard German, was aided by the printers’ desire to make their books appeal to the widest possible audience.

Three striking vowel changes are characteristic of this period. In the southeast, as early as the 12th century, the long vowels ī, ū, and ṻ (IPA y) came to be diphthongized to ei, ou, and öü (IPA øy); this feature is known as the New High German diphthongization. By the 15th century these new diphthongs had spread to East Middle German, and in the standard language they merged with the old diphthongs ei, ou, and öü. Examples include Middle High German mîn ‘my,’ hûs ‘house,’ and hiuser ‘houses’ with the monophthongs ī, ū, and ṻ, in contrast to ein ‘a,’ troum ‘dream,’ and tröume ‘dreams’ with the diphthongs ei, ou, and öü, but modern Standard German mein, Haus, and Häuser appear with the same diphthongs (ai, au, and oi) as ein, Traum, and Träume.

By a specifically Middle German development, the diphthongs iə, uə, and üə, still preserved in the southern dialects, were monophthongized to long ī, ū, and ṻ; this is the New High German monophthongization. Examples include Middle High German tief ‘deep,’ vuoz ‘foot,’ and vüeze ‘feet’ with the diphthongs iə, uə, and üə, contrasted with modern Standard German tief, Fuss, and Füsse with the monophthongs ī, ū, and ṻ. Short vowels remained short in closed syllables before long consonants but were lengthened in open syllables before a short consonant plus an unstressed vowel.

The outstanding developments of the modern period have been the increasing standardization of High German and its increasing acceptance as the supradialectal form of the language. In writing, it is almost the only form used (except for limited printings of dialect literature); in speech, it is the first or second language of virtually the entire population.

Although Standard German is clearly based on the East Middle German dialects, it is not identical with any one of them; it has accepted and standardized many forms from other areas, notably the Upper German sound pf (Pfund, Apfel) and also large numbers of individual words in the forms of other dialect areas. Because it is the only type of German taught in schools, its spoken form is based to a large extent on its written form; and the spoken form that carries the greatest prestige (that of stage, screen, radio, and so on) uses a largely Low German pronunciation of this written form. As a result, the spoken form of modern Standard German has often been aptly described as “High German with Low German sounds.”

Characteristics of modern Standard German

German has the following consonants, given here in phonetic symbols because the spelling often varies: stops, p, b, t, d, k, g; fricatives, f, v, ç∼x; sibilants, s, z, š, ž; nasals, m, n, ŋ; liquids, l, r; glides, h, j. German ç∼x, spelled ch, is the voiceless velar fricative x after a, ā, o, ō, u, ū, and au but is the voiceless palatal fricative ç in other phonetic environments. The German sound ž occurs only in loanwords from other languages.

In the orthography, German w always indicates a v sound symbolized /v/; German v spells an f sound in native words but a v sound in loanwords. German sp and st spell the sounds sp and st in most positions, but they spell šp /shp/ and št /sht/ at the beginnings of words or word stems. In other positions the š (sh) sound is spelled sch—e.g., Schiff ‘ship.’ German z always indicates /ts/. The spelling tz marks a preceding vowel as short, and the spelling z marks it as long.

Voiced b, d, g, v, and z do not occur at the ends of words, at the ends of parts of compound words, before suffixes beginning with a consonant, or before endings in s or t. In these positions they are replaced in pronunciation (though not in spelling) by the corresponding voiceless consonants, namely /p/, /t/, /k/, /f/, and /s/. For example, the g in Tage ‘days’ is pronounced as English g, and the g in Tag ‘day’ is pronounced as English k.

The German vowel system is detailed phonetically in the table. Though the spelling does not always indicate the difference between short and long vowels, the following devices are used more or less consistently: (1) A vowel is always short if followed by a double consonant letter—e.g., still ‘still,’ wenn ‘if,’ Rasse ‘race,’ offen ‘open,’ Hütte ‘hut’—in contrast to the long vowels of Stil ‘style,’ wen ‘whom,’ Glas ‘glass,’ Ofen ‘oven,’ Hüte ‘hats.’ (2) A vowel is always long if followed by an (unpronounced) h—e.g., ihnen ‘to them,’ stehlen ‘to steal,’ Kahn ‘barge,’ wohnen ‘to dwell,’ Ruhm ‘fame’—in contrast to the short vowels of innen ‘inside,’ stellen ‘to place,’ kann ‘can,’ Wonne ‘bliss,’ dumm ‘dumb.’ (3) A vowel is always long if written double—e.g., Beet ‘(flower) bed,’ Staat ‘state,’ Boot ‘boat’—in contrast to the short vowels of Bett ‘bed (for sleeping),’ Stadt ‘city,’ Gott ‘god’; ie counts as the doubled spelling of i—e.g., long i (ī) in Miete ‘rent’ but short i (i) in Mitte ‘middle.’ (4) A vowel (except unstressed e) is always long when it stands at the end of a word.

The “plain” vowels—a, o, u, ā, ō, ū, au—often alternate with the “umlaut” vowels—e, ö, ü, ē, ȫ, ṻ, oi, respectively—as in the following examples with plain vowels in the singular but umlauted vowels in the plural: Gast ‘guest,’ Gäste; Gott ‘god,’ Götter; Mutter ‘mother,’ Mütter. As these examples show, the vowel sounds e, ē, and oi are spelled ä, ä, and äu when they are the umlaut of a, ā, and au sounds. Gast–Gäste, Vater–Väter, Braut–Bräute. Otherwise they are generally spelled e, eh, or ee (beten ‘to pray,’ geht ‘goes,’ Beet ‘[flower] bed’), and eu (Leute ‘people’).

The sound /ai/ is generally spelled ei: Seite ‘side,’ nein ‘no,’ though in a few words ai: Saite ‘string (of an instrument),’ Kaiser ‘emperor.’ The schwa sound, /ə/, pronounced as the unstressed a in English sofa, is spelled e: beginnen/bəgínən/ ‘to begin,’ geredet/gərēdət/ ‘spoken.’