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While there is written evidence of the Old High German language in several Elder Futhark inscriptions from as early as the sixth century AD (such as the Pforzen buckle), the Old High German period is generally seen as beginning with the Abrogans (written c. 765–775), a Latin-German glossary supplying over 3,000 Old High German words with ...
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.
German is a language of Austria, Belgium, Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Switzerland; it also has regional status in Italy, Poland, Namibia and Denmark. German also continues to be spoken as a minority language by immigrant communities in North America, South America, Central America, Mexico and Australia.
Scholars did not clearly differentiate between the Germanic peoples, Celtic peoples, and the "Scythian peoples" until the late 18th century with the discovery of Indo-European and the establishment of language as the primary criterion for nationality. Before that time, German scholars considered the Celtic peoples to be part of the Germanic group.
The English noun "german" (as in "cousin-german") and the adjective "germane" are not connected to the name for the country, but come from the Latin germanus, "siblings with the same parents or father", which has cognates in Catalan, germà, and Spanish, hermano, meaning "brother".
Luther's translation of the Bible into High German was also decisive for the German language and its evolution from Early New High German to Modern Standard German. [181] The publication of Luther's Bible was a decisive moment in the spread of literacy in early modern Germany , [ 181 ] and promoted the development of non-local forms of language ...
The status in the Old High German Tatian (c. 830), as is reflected in modern Old High German dictionaries and glossaries, is that th is found in initial position and d in other positions. It is not clear whether Old High German /x/ had acquired a palatalized allophone [ç] after front vowels, as is the case in Modern German.
It is explained by Ringe that at the time of borrowing, the vowel matching closest in sound to Latin ā was a Proto-Germanic ā-like vowel (which later became ō). And since Proto-Germanic therefore lacked a mid(-high) back vowel, the closest equivalent of Latin ō was Proto-Germanic ū: Rōmānī > *Rūmānīz > *Rūmōnīz > Gothic Rumoneis. [55]