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Subject: Althochdeutsch (was: cvs commit: ports/editors/bpatch/pkg COMMENT)
To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 96 10:51:36 MET
From: Greg Lehey <lehey.pad@sni.de>
Cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org
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