From the Dialects to Standard Modern German

FROM THE DIALECTS TO STANDARD MODERN GERMAN The language spoken during the Old High German period is remarkable for the fullness and richness of its vowel sounds in word-stems as well as in inflexions. Cf. elilenti, Elend; luginari, Lugner; karkari, Kerker; menniskono slahta, Menschengeschlecht; herzono, Herzen (gen. pl.) ; furisto, vorderste; hartost, (am) liartesten; sibunzug, siebzig; zioliemes, (wir) ziehen; salbota, (er) salbte, gaworahtos, (du) wirktest, etc.

Literary Use.

Of the dialects enumerated above, Bavarian and Alemannic, High and Rhenish Franconian as well as Old Saxon are more or less represented in the literature of this peroid. Cf. the "Hildebrandslied" (mixture of High and Low German), the Old High German "Isidor" (Rhenish Franconian), "Tatian" (East Franconian), Otfrid's "Evangelienbuch" (South Rhenish Franconian), "Muspilli" (Bavarian), "Heliand" (Old Saxon), Notker's prose (Alemannic). There was no recognized literary lan guage (Schriftsprache) during this period; though the schools in the large monasteries, such as Reichenau, St. Gall, Murbach and Fulda, contributed to the spread and acceptance of certain ortho graphical rules. Nor did the next period—that of classical Middle High German—give birth to a Schriftsprache. At this period the German language made great advance as a vehicle of literary ex pression ; it acquired a lucidity, flexibility and beauty of style hitherto unknown ; although the language lost in richness of sounds owing to the weakening of unstressed vowels to neutral -e or their complete disappearance (cf. O.H.G. aro: ar[e] Aar; zala: zal: Zahl; salida: saelde). This was the period of the Minnesang (Walther von der Vogelweide) and the great heroic and court epics (Nibelungenlied, Hartmann von Aue, Wolfram von Eschen bach and Gotfrid von Strassburg) ; when literature enjoyed the fostering care of the courts and the nobility (court of Vienna and of Eisenach in Thuringia) . At the same time German prose cele brated its first triumphs in the sermons of Berthold von Regens burg, and later in the i4th century in the mystic writings and ser mons of Meister Eckhart, Tauler and others. History (Eike von Repkow's Weltchronik) and law (Sachsenspiegel, Schwabenspie gel) used the vernacular, and from about the middle of the 13th century German became the language of deeds and charters.

How far did this period aspire after a Schriftsprache?' About the year 1200 there was undoubtedly a marked tendency towards a unification of the literary language by poets like Walther von der Vogelweide, Hartmann von Aue and Gotfrid von Strassburg, who avoid dialectic peculiarities more particularly in their rhymes, and do not make use of archaic words or forms. There was thus, if not a Middle High German literary language in the widest sense of the word, at least a Middle High German Dichtersprache or poetic language, on an Alemannic-Franconian basis. Whether or how this affected the ordinary speech of the nobility or courts is a matter of conjecture ; but it had an undeniable influence on Low German poets, who endeavoured at least to use High German forms in their rhymes. But the efforts of the High German poets to form a uniform language were short-lived. By the end of the 13th cen tury the Dichtersprache disappeared, and the dialects again reigned supreme : yet the desire for a certain degree of uniformity was never again entirely lost. At the close of the 13th century litera ture had passed from the nobility to the middle classes of the towns ; the number of writers who used the German tongue rap idly increased ; later the invention of printing, the increase of the schools, the progress of commerce and travel, and above all the religious movement of the Reformation, awakened a desire to be understood by a wider 'community. A certain amount of uni 'Cf. H. Paul, Gab es eine mhd. Schriftsprache? (Halle, 1873) ; A. Socin, Schriftsprache and Dialekte (Heilbronn, i888) ; 0. Behaghel, Schriftsprache and Mundart (Giessen, 1896) ; S. Singer, Die mhd. Schriftsprache (Iwo); C. Kraus, Heinrich von Veldecke and die mhd. Dichtersprache (Halle. 1899) ; G. Roethe, Die Reimvorreden des Sachsenspiegels (1899) ; H. Tiimpel, Niederdeutsche Studien (1898) .

formity could be found in the language used officially by the great chanceries (Kanzleien), the imperial chancery (first under Charles IV. [ at Prague, then from Frederick III. [ ] at Vienna) and that of the Saxon electorate. About the year 1 soo there was no essential difference between the languages of the two chanceries and others soon followed suit.

Luther.—In the midst of this development arose the imposing figure of Luther, who, although by no means the originator of a common High German speech, helped very materially to establish it. He deliberately chose (cf. the often quoted passage in his Tischreden, c. 69) the language of the Saxon chancery as the vehicle of his Bible translation and subsequently of his own writ ings. The differences between Luther's usage and that of the chan cery, in phonology and inflection, are small; still in his writings after 1524 he shows more pronounced tendency towards East Middle German. The adoption of the language of the chancery gave rise to the mixed character of sounds and formas which is still a feature of the literary language of Germany. Thus the use of the monophthongs, u and ii instead of the old diphthongs ie, uo and lie, comes from Middle Germany; the forms of the words and the gender of the nouns follow Middle rather than Upper German usage, whereas, on the other hand, the consonantal system (p, to pf ; d to t) betrays in its main features Upper German (Bavarian-Austrian) origin.

The language of Luther no doubt shows greater originality in its style and vocabulary (cf. its influence on Goethe and the writers of the Sturm and Drang), for in this respect the chancery could obviously afford him but scanty help. His vocabulary is drawn to a great extent from his own native East Middle German dialect. However, it would be a mistake to infer that his language in the orthography given to it by the correctors of the Wittenberg printing presses made any rapid conquest of Germany. It was immediately acceptable to the eastern part of the Middle German district (Thuringia and Silesia), and it found no great difficulty in penetrating into Low Germany, at least into the towns and dis tricts lying to the east of the Sale and Elbe (Magdeburg, Ham burg), thus crushing the aspirations of Low Germany to have a literary language of its own. Protestant Switzerland, on the other hand, resisted the "uncommon new German" until well into the I7th century. The Catholic Lower Rhine (Cologne) and Catholic South Germany held out against it, for to adopt the language of the reformers would have helped their ideas. At the same time, geographical and political conditions, as well as the pronounced character of the Upper German dialects, formed an important obstacle to any speedy unification, in spite of the ever-increasing number of printing presses in all parts of Germany.

Thus in the 16th century Germany was still far from real unity in its language. During the i 7th century men like M. Opitz (Buch von der deutschen Poeterey) and J. G. Schottelius (Teutsche Sprachkunst, 1641, and Von der teutschen Sprach kunst, 1663), insisted on the claims of the vernacular to a place beside and even above Latin (in 1687 Christian Thomasius held for the first time lectures in the German language at the Uni versity of Leipzig), and established a firm grammatical basis for Luther's common language which, especially in the hymnals, had become modernized and more uniform. About the middle of the I7th century the disparity between the vowels of the singular and plural of the preterite of the strong verbs practically ceases; under East Middle German influence the final e is restored to words like Knabe, Jude, Pf a fje, which in South German had been Knab, etc.; the mixed declension (Ehre, Ehren; Schmerz, Schmerzen) was established, and the plural in -er was extended to some masculine nouns (Wald, Walder) ; the use of the mu tated sound has now become the rule as a plural sign (Vdter, Baume). Thus the unification of word-forms and the agreement in the vocabulary made great strides, but the exclamation of the Swiss A. von Haller (1708-7 7) "I am a Swiss, the German lan guage is strange to me," or the language used by the great preacher Abraham a Sancta Clara (I 709) are characteristic of the backwardness of the South.

Eighteenth Century Developments.—In the 18th century the Leipzig Professor J. C. Gottsched (Deutsche Sprachkunst, 1748) insisted on the claims of the spoken language (Umgangs sprache) of the educated classes of Upper Saxony (Meissen) ; i.e., the East Middle German dialect which since the Reformation had much esteem throughout the greater part of Germany, and J. C. Adelung published his Grammatisch-kritisches Wdr terbuch der hochdeutschen Mundart (1774-86). Later came Bodmer and Breitinger, the Swiss writers, and Klopstock (Mes sias, 1748), who, partly under the influence of Milton, opposed Gottsched's pedantic conception of the standard language in favour of a more poetical and flexible diction. The "Sturmer and Dranger" like the Romanticists later, enriched the vocabulary by many an archaic or vigorous word, and then came the classics Wieland, Herder, Schiller, Goethe, when the movement towards a standard literary language reaches its culmination. But this unification did not imply the creation of an unalterable standard; for, just as the language of Opitz and Schottelius differed from that of Luther, so—although naturally in a lesser degree—the literary language of our day differs from that of the classic writ ers of the i8th century. Local peculiarities are still to be met with, as in modern German literature from Switzerland or Austria.

But this imperfect unity is limited to the literary language. The differences are much more sharply accentuated in the Um gangssprache, the language spoken by educated people throughout Germany: with regard both to pronunciation, where it is naturally most noticeable, and to the choice of words and the construction of sentences. Compared with the times of Goethe and Schiller a certain advance undoubtedly has been made, but the differences between north and south are still great. The question as to whether a unified pronunciation (Einheitsaussprache) is possible or even desirable has occupied the attention of academies, schol ars and the educated public during recent years, and in 1898 a commission of scholars and theatre directors drew up a scheme of pronunciation for use in the royal theatres of Prussia,' which has been recommended to all German theatres by the German Buhnenverein.