Course Overview

About the Language :

German is a branch of West Germanic Language and is mostly spoken in Central Europe, and it is also an official or co-official language of Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Liechtenstein, and the Italian province of South Tyrol. It is also a co-official language of Belgium and Luxembourg. It is also a national language in Namibia. German is similar to other languages including English, Dutch and Africans, Low German, Frisian Language, Scots, Yiddish and Luxembourgish. There are lots of close similarities in some languages such as Swedish, Danish, North Germanic Group and Norwegian. German is the most widely spoken language after English.

History of the Language :

Old High German – began with High German consonant shift, during the Migration Period which separated Old High German dialects from Old Saxon. It was a big shift as there were sound shift as there were drastic change in the pronunciation of both voiced and voiceless stop consonants. The shifts primary effect are given as-
Voiceless stops became affricates in word-initial position or following certain constants. Voiced stops become voiceless in certain consonants, Voiced stops become voiceless in certain phonetic setting. There are written evidence of Old High German Language in several Elder Futhark inscriptions as early as the sixth century AD. The Old High German period is generally seen as beginning with the Abrogans (written c. 765–775), there is a Latin German Glossary which supplies over 3000 Old High German Words with their Latin equivalents. The Old High German then occurred in 9th Century AD the Merseburg Charms, the Muspilli, and the Hildebrandslied, and other religious texts.

Origin of the Language :

Modern New High German begins with the Early New High German (ENGH) period, which the influential philologists Wilhelm Scherer dates 1350 to 1650, with the ending of Thirty Years War. This period saw the displacement of German and Latin as the primary language of the courtly proceedings and increasingly of the literature in German states. While these are states which are still part of the Holy Roman Empire, and it was very far from unification, the desire for cohesive written languages that can understandable under many principalities which are German Spoken and kingdoms much stronger than ever. During this period the German Language was highly fractured throughout this period, and there were vast number of regional dialects, and they were spoken throughout German States, then invention of printing press occurred in c. 1440 and Luther's vernacular translation of the Bible was produced in 1534 and effect were immense on standardizing German as a supra dialectal written language. The ENHG period saw the rise of several important cross-regional forms of chancery German, one being Deutsch used in Electorate of Saxony in the Duchy of Saxe-Wittenberg. One of the most important events in the development of ENHG was the publication of Luther's translation of the Bible into High German (the New Testament was published in 1522, the Old Testament was published in parts and completed in 1534).

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