The Earliest Period of Germanic History

The history of the Germanic group begins with the appearance of what is known as the Proto-Germanic (PG) language. It is supposed to have split from related IE tongues sometime between the 15th and 10th с B.C. The would-be Germanic tribes belonged to the western division of the IE speech community.

As the Indo-Europeans extended over a larger territory, the ancient Germans or Teutons ^x moved further north than other tribes and settled on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea in the region of the Elbe. This place is regarded as the most probable original home of the Teutons. It is here that they developed their first specifically Germanic linguistic features which made them a separate group in the IE family.

PG was never recorded in written form.

It is believed that at the earliest stages of history PG was fundamentally one language, though dialectally coloured. In its later stages dialectal differences grew, so that towards the beginning of our era Germanic appears divided into dialectal groups and tribal dialects. Dialectal differentiation increased with the migrations and geographical expansion of the Teutons caused by overpopulation, poor agricultural technique and scanty natural resources in the areas of their original settlement.

Towards the beginning of our era the common period of Germanic history came to an end. The Teutons had extended over a larger territory and the PG language broke into parts. PG split into three branches: East Germanic (Vindili in Pliny's classification), North Germanic (Hilleviones) and West Germanic (which embraces Ingveones, Istsevones and Hermino-nes in Pliny's list). In due course these branches split into separate Germanic languages.

The East Germanic subgroup. was formed by the tribes who returned from Scandinavia at the beginning of our era. The most numerous and powerful of them were the Goths.

The Gothic language, now dead, has been preserved in written records of the 4th—6th с The Goths were the first of the Teutons to become Christian.

The other East Germanic languages, all of which are now dead, have left no written traces. Some of their tribal names have survived in placenames, which reveal the directions of their migrations: Bornholm and Burgundy go back to the East Germanic tribe of Burgundians; Andalusia is derived from the tribal name Vandals; Lombardy got its name from the Langobards, who made part of the population of the Ostrogothic kingdom in North Italy.

North Germanic

The Teutons who stayed in Scandinavia after the departure of the Goths gave rise to the North Germanic subgroup of languages. The speech of the North Germanic tribes showed little dialectal variation until the 9th c. and is regarded as a sort of common North Germanic parent-language called Old Norse or Old Scandinavian. It has come down to us in runic inscriptions dated from the 3rd to the 9th c. Runic inscriptions were carved on objects made of hard material in an original Germanic alphabet known as the runic alphabet or the runes. The runes were used by North and West Germanic tribes. The disintegration of Old Norse into separate dialects and languages began after the 9th c., when the Scandinavians started out on their sea voyages.

The earliest written records in Old Danish, Old Norwegian and Old Swedish date from the 13th c. In the later Middle Ages Danish and then Swedish developed into national literary languages. Nowadays Swedish is spoken not only by the population of Sweden; the language has extended over Finnish territory and is the second state language in Finland.

Norwegian was the last to develop into an independent national lan­guage. During the period of Danish dominance Norwegian intermixed with Danish. As a result in the 19th с there emerged two varieties of the Norwegian tongue: the state or bookish tongue riksmal (later called bokmal)and landsmal. At the present time the two varieties tend to fuse into a single form of lan­guage nynorsk ("New Norwegian").

In addition to the three languages on the mainland, the North Germanic subgroup includes two more languages: Icelandic and Faroese, whose origin goes back to the Viking Age.

Faroese is spoken nowadays by about 30,000 people. For many centuries all writing was done in Danish; it was not until the 18th с that the first Faroese records were made.

At present Icelandic is spoken by over 200 000 people.

Old Icelandic written records date from the 12th and 13th c, an age of literary flourishing. The most important records are: the ELDER EDDA (also called the POETIC EDDA) — a collection of heroic songs of the 12th c, the YOUNGER (PROSE) EDDA (a text-book for poets compiled by Snorri Sturluson in the early 13th c.) and the Old Icelandic sagas.

West Germanic

The dialectal differentiation of West Germanic was quite distinct even at the beginning of our era since Pliny and Tacitus described them under three tribal names On the eve of their "great migrations" of the 4th and 5th c. the West Germans included several tribes. The Franconians (or Franks) subdivided into Low, Middle and High Franconians. The Angles and the Frisians (known as the Anglo-Frisian group), the Jutes and the Saxons inhabited the coastal area of the modern Netherlands, the Federal Republic of Germany and the southern part of Denmark. A group of tribes known as High Germans lived in the mountai­nous southern regions of the Federal Republic of Germany (High Germans , Low Germans ) The High Germans included a number of tribes whose names are known since the early Middle Ages: the Alemanians, the Swabians, the Bavarians, the Thuringians and others.

The Franconian dialects were spoken in the extreme North of the Empire; in the later Middle Ages they developed into Dutch - the language of the Low Countries (the Netherlands) and Flemish - the language of Flanders. The earliest texts in Low Franconian date from the 10th c; 12th с records represent the earliest Old Dutch.

The modern language of the Netherlands, formerly called Dutch, and Its variant m Belgium, known as the Flemish dialect, are now treated as a single languuge, Netherlandish. Netherlandish is spoken by almost 20 million people.

About three hundred years ago the Dutch Language was brought to South Africa. Their dialects in Africa eventually grew into a separate West Germanic language, Afrikaans. Today Afrikaans is the mother-tongue of over four million Afrikaners and coloured people and one of the state languages in the South African Republic

The High German dialects consolidated into a common language known as Old High German (OHG). The first written records in OHG date from the 8th and 9th c. (glosses to Latin texts, translations from Latin. and religious poems). Towards the 12th c. High German (known as Middle High Germarn had intermixed with neighbouring tongues, especially Middle and High Franconian, and eventually developed into the Literary German language. The total number of German-speaking people approaches 100 million.

The first English written records have come down from the 7th c., which is the earliest date in the history of writing in the West Germanic subgroup (see relevant chapters below). The Frisians and the Saxons who did not take part in the invasion of Britain stayed on the continent. Frisian has survived as a local dialect in Friesland (in the Netherlands) and Ostfriesland (the Federal Republic of Germany). It has both an oral and written form, the earliest records dating from the 13th c. In the Early Middle Ages the continental Saxons formed a powerful tribe. Together with High German tribes they took part in the eastward drive and the colonization of the former Slavonic territories. Old Saxon known in written form from the records of the 9th c. has survived as one of the Low German dialects.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 3116