Date: Tue, 26 Mar 96 10:51:36 MET From: Greg Lehey <lehey.pad@sni.de> To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de Cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Althochdeutsch (was: cvs commit: ports/editors/bpatch/pkg COMMENT) Message-ID: <199603260954.KAA10966@nixpbe.pdb.sni.de> In-Reply-To: <199603260814.JAA13797@uriah.heep.sax.de>; from "J Wunsch" at Mar 26, 96 9:14 am
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> > As Marc Ramirez wrote: > >> (my god, I'm citing Althochdeutsch. WHERE WILL THE MADNESS STOP?) > >: -) > > This Althochdeutsch is an interesting language... i've seen it in > school some day, about 20 years back, but certainly nobody here would > manage to understand it immediately today. The trouble with old German is that there were many dialects, and there are extremely few written records. About the only exception is Anglo-Saxon, of which ample records exist. In present-day Germany, just about all written records of the time were written in Latin, and the few records in vernacular tend to be poems, such as the one Marc quoted, or of religious nature. It's interesting to note that the development of the German language has been intimately linked to the Church. The original conversion of present-day Germany was done by Anglo-Saxon monks; is this one of the reasons why modern German appears closer to 8th century Anglo-Saxon than to 9th century German poetry? Or is it that 9th century German poetry had little to do with the vernacular? The poem that Marc quoted isn't the only one like that; the Hildebrandslied is better known, but equally unintelligible. Greg
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