The Early High Upper German language ( German Frühneuhochdeutsch , briefly fnhd. ) Is a period in the development of literary German language that begins in 1350 , that is, from the end of the Middle High German period until 1650 , when the formed version of the High German language took on a form close to modern. A huge role in the formation of the language of this period was played by Martin Luther , the author of translations of the Bible into German.
| Early High German | |
|---|---|
| Self name | Früneuhochdeutsch |
| Status | out of use |
| Classification | |
| Category | Languages of Eurasia |
Indo-European family
| |
| Writing | latin |
| Language Codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | - |
| ISO 639-2 | - |
| ISO 639-3 | - |
Content
- 1 Development of the phonetic, grammatical and lexical structure of the language
- 2 Cultural and historical background of the formation of language
- 3 See also
- 4 Literature
- 5 Links
The development of the phonetic, grammatical and lexical structure of the language
The characteristic processes of this period in the phonetic system of the language were the processes of formation of diphthongs and monophthongs . These two processes were transitional between the Middle High German language, where, for example, the letter combination ei was always pronounced [ei] , and the New High German, for which the interpretation of [ai] is characteristic. The sounds ī, ū, iu took the form ei, au, eu , respectively, which explains the differences between the Alemannic dialects , where this process did not occur, and the literary language itself.
Significant changes have occurred in the morphology and syntax of the language , where there is a tendency to complication. Thus, the morphology of the noun has been significantly enriched by the expansion of the plural education tools. This process, which was noted in the early periods, continued its development in the Early High German language, and its essence consisted in the application of the root vowel umlaut . For example, the word sohn received o-umlaut and in the plural had the form söhne (the vowel at the end is also a way of forming plural forms in previous periods of language development). Significant advances have occurred in word formation, caused by an increase in the number of word-building elements, which have led to the development of subsequent stylistics of the language. The emergence of the suffixes -heit, -nis and -unge determined not only the inclusion of new words in the language, but also the reduction of nouns to a wider semantic category. Word-building elements, new affixes in the language were not the only reason for changing the semantics of individual words. Changes in social relations at the end of the Early High German period led to this.
The German language of the Middle Ages begins to actively absorb vocabulary from Italian and French , which led to the appearance in the German language of completely new concepts adapted to the German-speaking society: Kapitän, Bank, Ballett, Kostüm, Leutnant and others.
The syntactic system, spelling, and punctuation have also been developed. The use of new punctuation marks in the letter also determined the complication of the sentence syntax: if earlier it was impossible to connect parts of a complex sentence without distorting its essence, then in the Early High German language this problem was solved with the appearance of commas . Due to this, the German proposal could have a complex look, without losing meaning due to the cumbersome design, and even more - enrich the language. At the same time, a rule appeared to write capital nouns.
Cultural and historical background of language formation
The cultural and historical prerequisites for the formation of a language include, first of all, an increase in interest in education and a change in the political and economic center. In the period from the XIII to the XVI century, the center shifted repeatedly: from the linguistic version of Flanders and Brabant , the Hansa , through the Bavarian and East Frankish dialects to the South German . The emergence of new universities in the German language space led to an increase in interest in the German language, although Latin remained the dominant language of science. In the XVI - XVII centuries, the number of German-language publications overpowered Latin. This was particularly promoted by the invention of printing under Gutenberg and the activities of Martin Luther , who owns translations of the Old ( 1534 ) and New Testaments ( 1584 ), as well as numerous poetic and prose works. In the Early High German period, the first attempts were also made to systematize knowledge of the language.
See also
- History of German
- Middle High German
- New High German
Literature
- Mikhalenko A. O. Deutsche Sprache // History of German language and linguistics. - Zheleznogorsk, 2010.
- Frédéric Hartweg, Klaus-Peter Wegera. Frühneuhochdeutsch. Eine Einführung in die deutsche Sprache des Spätmittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit. - Niemeyer, Tübingen, 2005.
Links
- Münchner Corpus Für Frühneuhochdeutsch: inklusive Datenbank und Suche (German) . Date of treatment November 4, 2011. Archived on May 17, 2012.