Old High Theech

The name Old High Teutonlandish (OHT, Teutonlandish: Althochdeutsch, shortened Ahd.) bespeak the earliest time of the Teutonlandish tung and it often overlays the timespan from around 500 to 1050. Fast writs do not kythe until the second half of the 8th hundredyear, and some handle the time before 750 as 'fore-eretidely' and put the beginning of true Old High Teutonlandish to 750 for this ground. There are, however, scores of Elder Futhark writings from the 6th hundredyear (as byspell the Pforzen buckle), as well as lone words and many names found in Latin writs before the 8th hundredyear.

Ahonesomes
The main unlikeness between Old High Teutonlandish and the West Teutonish byleids from which it grew is that it underwent the Second Loud Shift or High Teutonlandish withloud shift. This is overall put very roughly to the late 5th and early 6th hundredyears - hence putting the start of OHT to around 500. The outcome of this loud-shift is that the withloud framework of Teutonlandish blives unsame from all other West Teutonish tungs, inholding English and Low Teutonlandish. Stavecraftly, however, Old High Teutonlandish blived very alike to Old English, Old Dutch and Old Saxish.

By the mid 11th hundredyear the many unsame selflouds found in unhighlighted loudteams had all been lessened to 'e'. Since these selflouds were a deal of the stavecraftly endings in the namewords and deedwords, their loss led to steep fewfolding of the shiftingly stavecraft of Teutonlandish. Because of these grounds, 1050 is seen as the start of the Middle High Teutonlandish time, though in fact there are almost no writings in Teutonlandish for the next hundred years.

Byspells of selfloud lessening in unhighlighted loudteams: (The New Teutonlandish builds of these words are broadly the same as in Middle High Teutonlandish.)

Byleids
There was no shared or over-landshiplike kind of Old High Teutonlandish - every writ is written in a known byleid, or sometimes a blending of byleids. Broadly speaking, the head byleid splits of Old High Teutonlandish seem to have been alike to those of later times - they are grounded on settled landly teamings and the doings of the Second Loud Shift, which have blived swaying until today. But because the straight showingness for Old High Teutonlandish is made up only of writings made in a few big churchly midspots, there is no byleid-sundryness word of the kind on which new byleid maps are grounded. For this reason the OHT byleids may be named minster byleids.

The main OHT byleids, with their bishoprikes and minsters:
 * Middle Teutonlandish
 * Middle Frankish: Trier, Echternach, Cologne
 * Rhine Frankish: Lorsch, Speyer, Worms, Mainz, Frankfurt
 * South Rhine Frankish: Weissenburg im Elsaß
 * East Frankish: Fulda, Bamberg, Würzburg
 * Thuringish: (no writings)
 * West Frankish: likely byleid of the Franks in Northern Gaul


 * Upper Teutonlandish
 * Allmannish: Murbach, Reichenau, Holy Gallen. Straßburg
 * Bavarish: Freising, Passau, Regensburg, Augsburg, Ebersberg, Wessobrunn, Tegernsee, Salzburg, Mondsee
 * Lombardish: (only bits, teaming as OHT unsicker)

There are some weighty unlikenesses between the landlorely spread of the Old High Teutonlandish byleids and that of New Teutonlandish:
 * no Teutonlandish byleids were spoken east of the eas Elbe and Saale - in the OHT timespan this land had Slavish folks and was not settled by Teutonlandish speakers until the 12th hundredyear
 * the Lombardish byleid of the Lombards who overran Northern Italy in the 6th hundredyear is thought to have been an Upper Teutonlandish byleid, though little showingness of it blives aside from names and onesome words in Latin writs, and a few writings

Frankish
The Franks overwon Northern Gaul as far south as the Loire; the speechcraftly border later steadied roughly along the flow of the Maas and Mosel, with Frankish speakers further west being made Romanlike. However, Frankish is a standout among the old West Teutonish tungs, the Frankish thedes build their kingdom at the same time as the High Teutonlandish withloud shift happened. This meant that the byleids of Frankish in the North of their Kingdom, the Low Lands, did not shift while the byleids in the South did. The byleids in the south are a deal of Old High Teutonlandish, the ones in the North are deal of Old Dutch.

With Karl the Great's loss of the Lombards in 776, nearly all mainlandly Teutonish speaking folks had been inwrought into the Frankish Kingdom, thus also bringing all mainlandly West Teutonish speakers under Frankish leadership. However, since the tung of both the rike and the Church was Latin, this togethering did not lead to any growth of an over-landshiplike kind of Frankish.

Writings
The early share of the time saw heeding errandpreacher doings, and by 800 the whole of the Frankish Kingdom had, guessingly, been christened. All the writings which inhold Old High Teutonlandish writs were written in churchly writingrooms by draughtsmen whose main errand was writing in Latin rather than Teutonlandish. Thereby, the greaterhood of Old High Teutonlandish writings are worshipsome and show strong swaying of Church Latin on the wordstock. In truth, most outlasting prose writings are wendings of Latin stemwrits. Even worldly works such as the Hildebrandslied are often kept only because they were written on spare sheets in worshipsome erebooks.

The earliest OHT writing is overall taken to be the Abrogans, a Latin-Old High Teutonlandish wordlist sundrily put between 750 and 780, most likely from Reichenau. The 8th hundredyear Merseburg Spellcraftspeaks are the only leftover of fore-Christlike Teutonlandish booklore. The earliest writings not hanging on Latin stemwrits would seem to be the Hildebrandslied and the Wessobrunn Prayer, both written in writings of the early 9th hundredyear, though the writings are thought to stem from earlier deals.

The Bavarish Muspilli is the only outlaster of what must have been a broad spoken folklore. Other weighty works are the Evangelienbuch (Gospel banding) of Otfrid of Weissenburg, the short but wonderful Ludwigslied and the 9th hundredyear Georgslied. The border to Early Middle High Teutonlandish (from around 1050) is not clear-cut. The most impressive byspell of EMHT booklore is the Annolied.

Lodestars
The Lord's Prayer in three OHT byleids. Because these are oversettings of a churchly worshipsome writ, they are best not regarded as byspells of lively tung, but they do show byleid sundriness very clearly.

Stem: Braune/Ebbinghaus, Althochdeutsches Lesebuch, 17th wending (Niemeyer, 1994)

Outward links

 * Joseph Wright, An Old High Teutonlandish Futharkbook – whole writ of 1906 work (English)
 * A Short Gathering of Old High Teutonlandish (English)
 * Althochdeutsche Texte im Internet (8.–10. Jahrhundert) - links to a reach of online writs (Teutonlandish)
 * LiTLiNks: althochdeutche Texte - thorough listing of OHT writs with links to online makes. (Teutonlandish)

Stems

 * Althochdeutches Lesebuch, wenders W.Braune, K.Helm, E.A.Ebbinghaus, 17th wending, Tübingen 1994. ISBN 3-484-10707-3
 * J. Knight Bostock, A Handbook on Old High German Literature, 2nd wending, looked again by K.C.King and D.R.McLintock, Oxford 1976. ISBN 0-19-815392-9
 * R.E.Keller, The German Language, London 1978. ISBN 0-571-11159-9
 * Lexikon der Germanistischen Linguistik, wenders Hans Peter Althaus, Helmut Henne, Herbert Ernst Weigand, 2nd againlooked wending, Tübingen 1980. ISBN 3-484-10396-5
 * S.Sonderegger, Althochdeutsche Sprache und Literatur, de Gruyter 1974 ISBN 3-11-004559-1
 * C.J.Wells, German. A Linguistic History to 1945, Oxford 1987. ISBN 0-19-815809-2