Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Latin words were already imported into the predecessor of the German language during the Roman Empire and underwent all the characteristic phonetic changes in German. Their origin is thus no longer recognizable for most speakers (e.g. Pforte , Tafel , Mauer , Käse , Köln from Latin porta , tabula , murus , caseus , Colonia ).
The Old High German speaking area within the Holy Roman Empire in 962. The earliest testimonies of Old High German are from scattered Elder Futhark inscriptions, especially in Alemannic, from the 6th century, the earliest glosses date to the 8th and the oldest coherent texts (the Hildebrandslied, the Muspilli and the Merseburg Incantations) to the 9th century.
A portion of these borrowings come directly from Latin, but some also from Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish; or from other languages (such as Gothic, Frankish or Greek) into Latin and then into English. The influence of Latin in English, therefore, is primarily lexical in nature, being confined mainly to words derived from Latin and Greek roots.
[not verified in body] [4] [page range too broad] English borrowed many words from Old Norse, the North Germanic language of the Vikings, [5] and later from Norman French, the Romance language of the Normans, which descends from Latin. Estimates of native words derived from Old English range up to 33%, [6] with the rest made up of outside ...
Germani (for the people) and Germania (for the area where they lived) became the common Latin words for Germans and Germany. Germans call themselves Deutsche (living in Deutschland). Deutsch is an adjective (Proto-Germanic *theudisk-) derived from Old High German thiota, diota (Proto-Germanic *theudō) meaning "people", "nation", "folk".
The etymology of the Latin word Germani, from which Latin Germania and English Germanic are derived, is unknown, although several proposals have been put forward. Even the language from which it derives is a subject of dispute, with proposals of Germanic, Celtic, and Latin, and Illyrian origins. [10]
The earliest Old High German text is generally taken to be the Abrogans, a Latin–Old High German glossary variously dated between 750 and 780, probably from Reichenau. The 8th century Merseburg Incantations are the only remnant of pre-Christian German literature.
This was a late dialectal development, because the result was not the same in all Germanic languages: word-final ē shortened to a in East and West Germanic but to i in Old Norse, and word-final ō shortened to a in Gothic but to o (probably [o]) in early North and West Germanic, with a later raising to u (the sixth century Salic law still has ...