A HISTORY OF THE GERMAN LANGUAGE BY CHARLES W. SUPER, A. M., PH, D., President of the Ohio University; Translator of Weil's Order of Words, Etc. "Glib is the tongue of man, and many words are therein of every kind, and wide is the range of his speech hither and thither." Iliad xx : 248-9. COLUMBUS, OHIO : H ANN & ADAIR, . 1893 . Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1893, by CHARLES \V. SUPER, In the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D. C. "Von alien Orgamsmen gehen die sprachlichen unser in- ner stes Wesen am ndchsten an; macht dock die Sprache erst den Menschen" SCHLEICHER. "/ dew Menschen liegt ein Etwas, eine quahtas occulta, wenn man so will, das ihn von alien Thieren ausnahmslos sondert. Dieses Etwas nennen wir Vernunft, wenn wir es als innere Wirksamkeit denken, wir nennen es Sprache, sobald wir es als Auszeres, als Erscheinung gewahren iind aujffassen. Keine Vernunft ohne Sprache, keine Sprache ohne Vernunft. Die Sprache ist der Rubicon, we I c her das Thier vom Menschen scheidet, welchen kein Thier jemals ilberschreiten wird" MAX MtJLLER. "Al/e Geschichte beruht bei uns auf dem Gegensatz des religiosen und pohtischen Lebens, auf der Anerkennung beider als selbstdndig neben einander ; nie hat der Glaube uns die tr disc hen Aufgaben verges sen lassen, die dem Men- schen doch auch obliegen und die ihn beschdftigen, so iange er im Schweisz seines Angesichts sein Brot essen musz. Diese irdischen Aufgaben verlangen vor allem eine wirt- schaftliche Ordnung, in der sie allem gelost werden konnen, ein Recht, wodurch das duszere Leben gepflegt und ge- schult wird, und einen Staat, der den zeithchen Bedurf- niszen entspricht und das Recht im innern wie auch nach auszen zur Erjullung bring I" ARNOLD. TABLE OF CONTENTS. PREFACE, 7 INTRODUCTION, 11 GENERAL PART. PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS, 25 THE GERMAN LANGUAGE CONSIDERED CHRONOLOGICALLY AND TOPOGRAPHICALLY, 26 PRE-GERMANIC PERIOD SHIFTING OF SOUNDS AND ACCENT, . 29 THE GERMANIC AND ITS SUB-DIVISIONS, 38 THE OLD HIGH GERMAN PERIOD, . 44 THE MIDDLE HIGH GERMAN PERIOD, 59 LANGUAGES AND DIALECTS 66 THE NEW HIGH GERMAN PERIOD 1. Extent of Territory, 69 2. The Written Language and Folk-Speech, . . . . 72 3. Unification in a Common Literary Language, . . 77 4. Uniformity in the Spoken Language, . . . .101 5. Some Disadvantages of Uniformity, . . . . 110 6. Characteristics of the New High German, . . .113 THE INNER HISTORY OF THE GERMAN LANGUAGE - The Influence of Analogy, ( What is Analogy? ) . . 122 INADEQUACY OF THE TRADITIONAL VOCABULARY, . . . 137 AMPLIFICATION OF THE MATERIALS OF SPEECH, . . . 156 1. Changes of Meaning, . . 156 2. Coinage of New Words, 174 3. The Influence of Foreign Language on the German . . 181 SPECIAL, F>ART. THE NEW HIGH GERMAN ORTHOGRAPHY, 215 THE ACCENT OR INTONATION OF THE GERMAN, . . .217 v i Table of Contents. THE DOCTRINE OF SOUNDS IN THK GERMAN, 2 THE INFLECTIONS OF THE NEW HIGH GERMAN 1. The Noun, or Substantive, 237 2. The Pronoun, 3. The Adjective, 253 4. The Verb, ... 255 WHAT is ANAIAXJY IN LANGUAGE ? THE SYNTAX OF THE NEW HIGH GERMAN, THE PARTS OF SPEECH, . . 272 The Noun, The Verb, 285 PROPER NAMES Names of Persons, 292 Names of Places, 306 APPENDIX. PREFACE. I WAS led to prepare this volume under the conviction that there are persons enough in this country inter- ested in the historical development of the German lan- guage to justify the undertaking. My object has been to produce a book that would be read with interest, and could be read with profit, by people whose knowledge of Ger- man does not extend much beyond the rudiments and who know next to nothing of comparative philology. While not primarily intended as a manual for the class- room, it is believed that it can be used with advantage in connection with any German grammar. It has been my constant aim to make duly prominent the common origin of the English and German languages, and to use the facts of the one to elucidate, as far as possible, the facts of the other. It is only by the study of what has been that we are able to understand what is. I have now and then called attention to those general phenomena which all languages exhibit in common, and have thus, in a slight measure, invaded the domain of the comparative philologist. It has also been my special object to show the relation of dialects to the language of literature, so that I would fain hope this volume may contribute some- what to dissipate the erroneous notions so widely preva- lent on this subject. The importance and persistence of the dialects of the German make it particularly well fitted for exhibiting the relation of the two modes of speech to each other. My original plan was to prepare a translation of Behaghel's Geschichte der deutchen Sprache. But I soon became convinced that the author's point of view viii A History of the German Language ought not to be that of one who has before his mind's eye an English-speaking public. One who writes for Ger- mans can count on a more thorough and more general knowledge 6f phonetics, and on a larger measure of pop- ular interest in the exposition of its laws. Professor Be- haghel accordingly confined himself more closely to, and expressed himself more briefly on, this part of his subject than seemed to me advisable in an English work. Besides, I am inclined to believe that most of my readers will share with me the belief that a word or a sentence is of more general interest as the visible expression of a thought than as an exemplification of a phonetic law. Though the statement may seem to involve a contradic- tion, the literary and pedagogical sides of my subject have been made more prominent than the scientific and technical. It seemed to me better, in the long run, to arouse an interest in the subject that would stimulate further inquiry than to furnish indisputable facts, even sup- posing such a thing to be possible. When we recall that Comparative Philology has been several times rewritten, both in general and particular, during the last two or three decades, and that many of its problems are still unsolved, such a course must be regarded as decidedly advisable. The result has been that while my book is based on that of Professor Behaghel, it contains a good deal of matter that he might not approve, and for which it would be un- just to hold him responsible. I desire, however, to ex- press my great obligations to his excellent volume and to the clear manner with which he treats his theme. I know no German writer on this subject who combines in an equal degree both learning and lucidity. I have also made some use of Kluge's Etymologisches Woerterbuch der deutschen Sprache; Socin, Schriftsprache und Dia- lekte im Deutschen; Welker's Dialektgedichte, Skeat's Principles of English Etymology, first and second series ; Paul's Grundriss der germanischen Philologie ; and Balg's A History of the German Language ix Glossary of the Gothic Language. I have likewise profited by the lectures of the late Professor von Keller, of Tuebiugen, with whom I read the Heliand more than a score of years ago. Several other works have been named where they throw light on special subjects discussed in the volume. I am under special obligations to my brother, O. B. Super, Professor of Modern Languages in Dickinson College, for suggestions and assistance. His co-operation has, I feel sure, added no little to the value of my work. It is probable that^ have fallen into some errors in trac- ing the origin and development of words. The path of the linguistic sciences is thickly strewn with defunct and decay- ing etymologies, and that I have added some to the num- ber is more than probable. Nevertheless, I have adopted none for which Idid not have competent I would fain believe the best authorities, so that I have reason to be- lieve my mistakes will be found to be comparatively few. It should be remembered, too, that the necessity of being brief, may now and then lead the reader to think that I have been mistaken, where a fuller discussion of the point in question would show that I am probably correct in the conclusion I have accepted. Against premature ver- dicts of this sort I know of no remedy except a careful examination of the evidence on which I have proceeded. The chain may occasionally seem to be broken merely because some of its links have not been exposed to view. I would fain believe that under more favorable condi- tions I could have produced a better book than I have. Most of it was written at long intervals, in brief periods of an hour or two in length. The official demands of a laborious position ; daily recurring duties as a teacher ;. frequent calls for editorial work in another field, made such large drafts on my time that but little was left for any self-assumed task. What could have been done under fairly favorably conditions in a little more than a 2 x A History of the German Language year, occupied me nearly four years. All this can be no excuse for any errors of fact the volume may contain, but it may be some palliation .for minor defects in their ar- rangement and for infelicities of style of which I fear at- tentive readers will find only too many. For these the generous indulgence of the reader is asked. My experi- ence is but a counterpart of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of American teachers : whatever they do in the line of systematic study except so far as it serves the immediate purposes of the school and class-room, is generally at the sacrifice of no little personal ease and at the expense of hours of rest and recreation. If this volume contributes somewhat to the better knowledge of a language, which, in my opinion, embodies a larger number of excellencies than any other of aficient or modern times, except the Greek, I shall feel that my labor has not been in vain. I am not unaware that we have a number of American scholars whose attainments in Germanic Philology are much superior to mine, and who are in position to pro- duce a better book than this. As they have not, however, thus far undertaken the task, at least so far as the public is informed, I am led to put forth this modest work in the hope that it may, at least, prepare the way for something more excellent. CHARLES W. SUPER. Athens, O., June, 1892. INTRODUCTION. SO far as we know, the Germans from the remotest times have lived substantially in the same place where we now find them. It was formerly believed that they had originally emigrated from Asia, but many of the best authorities at present favor the theory that the Aryans originated in Europe; and if this is true, the Ger- mans must have come into existence on or near the terri- tory which they now occupy. When we ask the question intelligently, What was the original abode of the Aryan race? we can only mean, What part of the earth's surface did they occupy before splitting up into the frag- ments that subsequently developed into a number of nationalities? To answer this we have nothing except the slender evidence of a very limited vocabulary which was formed in accordance with the fauna, flora and general topographical conditions among which the race originally dwelt. But if in their unity they wandered about, as it is universally admitted they did, over countries having substan- tially the same physical characteristics, their vocabulary would not change either by increase or elimination. If these conditions changed, new words would be formed, which would correspond to the new habitat. But how are we now to distinguish these from the older stratum, if the people who used them were still homogeneous ? Do the primitive words that still survive, date from the beginning of their career, or from the time when they had become comparatively stable? The inquiry must always remain barren of trustworthy re- sults, fascinating as it is for the student of language. The first mention that is made of the Germans is found in a description of a voyage made by Pytheas of Massilia about 340 B. C. He speaks of them as Teutones and calls them a part of the great Skythian stock. This mistake on his part in confounding Germans and Skythians is at- tributable to the ignorance of the writer. To the Greeks all the people of northern and eastern Europe were Skythians, wherever definite knowledge ended there the 12 A History of the German Language Skythians began. For the name "German" we are directly indebted to the Romans, who received it from the Kelts. It probably means " neighbors," the Germans being for a long time the only foreign nation with whom the western Kelts came into contact. There are other signifi- cations of the name proposed, one of the best authen- ticated being " dwellers in the forest." Pytheas probably advanced along the coast of the North Sea as far as the mouth of the Eider, and in the region of the Elbe, according to his account, was the dividing line between Kelts and Teutons. Later investigations tend to show that Pytheas was correct in this matter, for many of the proper names in northwestern Germany, especially in the valley of the Ems, are now known to be of Keltic origin. The dividing line on the south of the Germans was the Hercynian Forest, which is merely*a general term for the range of hills and mountains extending entirely through central Germany. Hercynia is itself a Keltic name allied to Kymric erchymiad, elevation. Precisely at what time they extended their boundaries westward, it is impos- sible to say, but the extension in that direction occurred earlier than in a southern direction, for in Caesar's time the Rhine was substantially the boundary between the two nations, the Menapii being the only Keltic tribe still remaining east of the Rhine, and they only in part. It was about this time that the Volcse, who were then living in the valley of the Main, were driven out by the Mar- comanni and Chatti. Near the same time three German tribes, the Vangiones, Nemeti and Triboci settled along the Rhine, occupying the territory in the above order from the mouth of the Neckar to the Swiss boundary. Shortly before this (about 72 B. C.) Ariovistus had led his Ger- mans across the Rhine and settled in eastern Gaul. On the east, the Germans were shut in by the Slavs who were pressing westward. A line drawn from Koen- A History of the German Language 13 igsberg, in Prussia, to the confluence of the Bug and Vistula and then following the latter to its source, will indicate the boundary between Slavs and Germans. Although Sweden has been regarded by some as the original home of the Germans, it is more likely that that country was at one time inhabited entirely by Finns, and that these were gradually driven northward by the en- croachments of the Germans, who crossed over either from Germany or Denmark. Certain it is that Finnish antiquities have been found in almost every part of Sweden. But this limited space soon proved too small for a people who increased so rapidly as the Germans, and emigration became a necessity, especially since their eastern neighbors not only prohibited expansion in that direction, but were actually crowding them westward. However, there is not much doubt that the rapid in- crease of population common among the Germans will furnish a sufficient explanation of these vast swarms of emigrants. The first of the German tribes to leave their homes en masse was the Bastarnae, who are found north and west of the mouth of the Danube as early as the second century B. C. Next came the great emigration of the Cirnbri and Teutons. The latter started from the shores of the North Sea, and there is a tradition that they were compelled to leave their homes on account of an incursion of the ocean ; which is not improbable, since the whole north- west coast of Germany is so little elevated above the sea level that the tide can only be kept out by artificial means. Notwithstanding the dykes, about 15,000 persons perished in a single night in 1634 by a high tide on the west coast of Schleswig-Holstein. These Teutons moved toward the southeast, and the Cimbri, who lived on the left bank of the Elbe in the region of the present Magdeburg, joined them in their expedition and formed its van-guard. On 14 A History of the German Language their march they came in contact with the Boii, a Keltic tribe living in what is now called Bohemia (i. e. home or land of the Boii). Prevented from settling here, they continued their journey to the southeast, across the Danube, through Pannonia until they came into the land of the Scordisci, a Keltic tribe living about the junction of the Save and the Danube. They must have arrived here about 114 B. C. Defeated in a battle with the Scordisci, they retreated toward the northwest, and on their way met and defeated the Roman Consul, Papirius Carbo, at Noreia, 113 B. C. They then advanced west- ward, passing apparently unhindered through the territory of the Helvetians, and arriving on the Rhone, on the confines of the Roman Province, 109 B. C. Here they defeated the Consul Silvanus, but instead of marching directly into Italy, they began to plunder Gaul, which they subjugated almost entirely. In the year 105 they gained another great victory over the Romans at Arausio (Orange) after which the Cimbri separated from the Teutons and returned into the heart of Gaul. They soon afterwards made an expedition into Spain and plundered the northwestern part of it, but having been defeated by the Keltiberians, they returned to Gaul in the year 103 B. C. In the year following, the Teutons were defeated and nearly annihilated by Marius at Aquae Sextise, in the Province, and the Cimbri at Vercellse, in northwestern Italy, in the following year. It does not lie within the scope of the present volume to give in this Introduction a history of the various Ger- man tribes. Such a history must, from the nature of the case, consist largely of the discussion of obscure points and contradictory, or, at least, apparently contradictory state- ments made by ancient writers about them. But it will be proper to give a brief account of those tribes that made expeditions beyond the German territory, and for a while exerted an influence upon the destinies of the countries A History of the German Language 15 through which they passed, or in which they sojourned for a greater or less time. We shall thus get a fuller in- sight into the character of the German people than their language alone is able to give us. Such a preliminary sketch is the more important for the reason that it relates, for the most part, to a period from which the existing lin- guistic remains are very scanty. The German nation as such is some eight hundred years old ; but during most of this time it was broken up into an almost countless number of different governments under many different names, and varying greatly in ex- tent of territory. At the beginning of this period the tribal differences had been to a considerable extent oblit- erated, and tribal affinities no longer formed a bond be- tween the subjects of the different rulers. The Bastarnse were, according to Zeuss, the first Ger- man tribe of whom we have any fairly definite knowledge. At this time they dwelt about the headwaters of the Vistula. They are subsequently found north and west of the Danube. In the reign of Perseus, king of Macedon, they formed an alliance with this monarch against the Romans. Still later they are found in the service of Mithridates, king of Pontus. In fact, they appear several times among the enemies of Rome, until the time of the emperor Probus, toward the close of the third century> when they disappear from history. We first hear of the Burgundians in the present pro- vince of Posen. In the third century of our era they emigrated toward the southwest, and lived, during nearly the whole of the fourth century, along the upper Main. Toward the end of the century they came to the Rhine, where they founded a kingdom with Worms as its capital. It is here that the legends of the Nibelungen find them. In consideration of their services to the Romans as mer- cenary troops, they were permitted to establish themselves in eastern Gaul, especially in the basin of the Rhone. 16 A History of the German Language Toward the close of the ninth century we find in this region two Burgundian kingdoms, one of which was called the ''cisjuran,'' the other the '' transjuran." These ex- isted separately for some twenty-five years, when they were again united. For more than four centuries Burgundy was regarded as at least nominally a part of the German Empire. The dukedom of Burgundy lay north of these two kingdoms, and under a succession of ambitious rulers played an important part in the history of France. Though varying considerably, at different times in extent of territory, it had a separate existence until near the close of the seventeenth century, when it shared the destiny that had befallen the larger part of the Burgundian king- doms much earlier, and was absorbed by France. The Lombards, whose tribal affinities allied them with the Suevi, first appear about the lower course of the Elbe. They were probably the last of the German tribes to leave their homes en masse. For a long time they do not seem to have played a prominent part in the various tribal wars and expeditions. So late as the middle of the fifth century they were subjects of the Heruli in Moravia. Subsequently they defeated these and made themselves masters of considerable territory in what is now Hungary. Later still they formed a union with a horde of Saxons with whom they marched across the Alps, and before the end of the sixth century they had made themselves mas- ters of all northern Italy. Here they founded a kingdom, with Milan as its capital, that lasted two hundred years. Their history, which is' a turbulent one, can be traced until the time of Karl the Great, who made their territory a part of his empire. Though never numerous, they main- tained their supremacy by their valor. Few traces of them now remain, the most conspicuous being the name Lombardy, which is still applied to that part of Italy which they once held in subjection. The Vandals first emerge into the dim light of history A History of the German Language 17 dwelling along the mid-course of the Oder. Like most of their brethren they joined various expeditions against the Romans, but subsequently adopted a more settled life in Pannonia. About the beginning of the fifth century they forced their way across Gaul into Spain, where they founded a kingdom, the name of which is still preserved in that of the province Andalusia. They afterward passed over into Africa, subdued its northern portion, captured Carthage, which they made their capital, built large fleets with which they plundered the islands of the Mediter- ranean, as well as the adjacent coasts, and finally took Rome itself. As is wont to be the case, they now began to degenerate by reason of their prosperity and fancied security. In the year 524 their King Gelimer was defeated by the Roman general Belisarius, and taken to Constantinople to grace his triumph, while the kingdom of the Vandals was made a part of the Eastern Empire. The Goths had a tradition that their original. home was on an island called Scandzia, and there may be some con- nection between their name and that of the southermost province of Sweden. In the time of Tacitus .they lived along the lower course of the Vistula. Probably about the middle of the second century they started on their long march toward the southwest, which ended by their settling in the regions north and west of the Black Sea. Here they soon appear as Eastern and Western Goths, these appellations designating the relative geographical positions which their two main divisions occupy to each other. For a period of nearly two centuries they made occasional incursions into the Roman empire. It was in one of these raids that they burned the splendid temple of Artemis in the year 260. (See Acts of the Apostles, chapter 19.) A few years before the beginning of the fifth century the Eastern Gothic tribes were subdued by the Huns, but the Western Goths continued to plunder southeastern Europe, and crossing over into Italy they 18 A History of the German Language finally captured Rome itself in 410. Still continuing to move westward they are found for three centuries longer in France, Spain, and Africa, when they disappear from history. The remembrance of their former presence is still preserved in the name of the Spanish province, Cata- lonia (Gotalonia). The Eastern Goths, as subjects of the Huns, took part in several of the expeditions of their king Attila. After the death of this monarch they achieved their independence, and settled in what is now Austria proper. Somewhat later they made an expedition into Italy, the northern portion of which they brought under subjection, and finally extended their rule over the entire peninsula. After varying fortunes they disappear as a separate people, toward the end of the sixth century. A glance at the map of Europe in the last quarter of the fifth century, when their power was at its zenith, shows the following territory in the possession of the Germans : The Suevi were masters of the northwestern portion of the Iberian peninsula. Their kingdom was about as large as Portugal. The Western Goths possessed the remainder of the peninsula and France as far northward as the river Loire. The kingdom of the Burgundians lay in the basin of the Rhone. The Franks held sway over an extensive territory lying on both sides of the Rhine between Treves, Mayence and the North Sea. North and east of them were the Saxons. Toward the south between the Franks and the Burgundians were the Alemani, and east of the Saxons, Franks and Alemani were the Thuringians, a people whose eastern boundary cannot be defined. The head-waters of the Oder were occupied by the Longobardi ; directly south of them dwelt the Heruli ; and still further south, between the Danube and the river Aluta, were the lands of the Gepids. West of the last two tribes lay the kingdom of the Ostrogoths, some of whom were, however, in Illyria and subjects of the Eastern Empire. The Rugians had settled in the Grand Duchy of Austria on. A History of the German Language 19 both sides of the Danube. From here to the Mediter- ranean, including Italy and Sicily, stretched the kingdom of Odoacer, while the Vandals held in subjection most of Africa west of the Great Syrtis, Corsica, Sardinia, and the Balearic Isles. The Saxons and Angles had just begun to make settlements on the coast of England. After this brief survey of the earliest history of the Ger- mans we next proceed to define the relation of the Teu- tonic to the other most important languages of the world. It seems important to do so here, though we shall find it necessary to repeat some of our statements farther along. The German is an important member of the great family of languages variously designated as the Aryan, the Indo- Germanic and the Indo-European. This family is usually divided by philologists into nine different groups or branches of which three belong to Asia and six to Europe. The Keltic, the most westerly of these groups, is at present the native speech of three or four millions of people in Scotland, Wales, Ireland and a few departments of France. Aside from a small number of inscriptions found chiefly in the region of the central Saone little is known of the Keltic in its earliest forms. The oldest monuments of the Welsh dialect date from the eighth century and consist chiefly of legendary poems and chroni- cles. The Breton, another dialect of the Keltic, was probably transplanted into France in the fifth century. It closely resembles the Welsh though its literary monu- ments are not older than the fourteenth century. Some- what later it is largely represented in glosses to Latin authors and in the Middle Ages it possessed an extensive literature in the form of Chronicles, Legends, and Laws. The Slavic is the most easterly of the European groups and is spoken by about ninety millions of people. Numerically it is the first in importance of the exclusively continental groups. It is the principal language of Russia in Europe, and to it belong the Polish, the Bohemian (or 20 A History of the German Language Czech), the Servian, the Bulgarian and a number of less important dialects. The earliest monuments of the Polish language date from the tenth century, and Bohemia had .an extensive literature dating from the Middle Ages and ex- tending to the time of the Hussite wars. The alphabet of the Slavic was adapted from the Greek though very in- adequate to its intended purpose, by the brothers Cyrillus and Methodius who first preached Christianity to the Bulgarians in the ninth century. Its oldest literary re- mains are the Gospels translated by the missionaries and some liturgical works in the Old Bulgarian, which, though not the mother of the other Slavic tongues, stands in the relation of an older sister. Where this language was spoken has not been definitely determined, but probably somewhere in the region between the Black and Adriatic Seas. Slavic dialects are still used to some extent in Saxony and Prussia and at one time a considerable por- tion of what is now Germany was occupied by Slavs. The Lithuanian group is spoken by about two and a half millions of people in northeastern Prussia and the adjoining territory of Russia. Its literature is of very little importance and it hardly at any time attained the dignity of a written language. But this group is of great interest to philologists because it has conserved in a remarkable degree some prominent characteristics of the primitive Indo-European language. The Italian group has no extant literature of any im- portance of earlier date than the comedies of Plautus, though there are some fragments of older date both in Latin and other Italic dialects. Its most important ex- tant representatives are the French, the Spanish, the Portuguese, and the Italian. The Greek group has been confined from the remotest times to substantially the same territory it now occupies. Its literary monuments are several centuries older than those of any other European language. It has never been A History of the German Language 21 spoken by a very large number of persons, but its influ- ence upon the civilization of the world has been much greater than that of any other group. Its dialects have diverged less, generally speaking, from the parent lan- guage than has been the case with any other member of the Indo-European stock, and modern Greek is still sub- stantially the same language it was nearly three thousand years ago. The Germanic or Teutonic group embraces the Ger- man proper, the Dutch, the English, the Danish, and the Swedish. German proper is the native language of about sixty millions of people in continental Europe,, but the Teutonic group of languages is not only spoken by a larger number of persons than any other of the Indo- European stock, but it represents the most potent influ- ence in literature, science and all the arts of civilized life. Its oldest extant literature is represented by the Maeso- Gothic dialect and dates from the close of the fourth cen- tury. This dialect was at that time spoken in the region of the lower Danube, probably in what is now Bulgaria. The earliest literary monuments of the German lan- guage, aside from the translation of the Bible by Ulfilas,. are confined, roughly speaking, to southwestern Germany. We first meet with the so-called glosses or interlinear translations of Latin texts into German, and lists of Latin words arranged either alphabetically or according to subjects with their equivalents in German. These were prepared for pedagogical purposes. There are extant two- longer poems dating from the ninth century the old Saxon Heliand, a sort of New Testament history by an unknown author, and Otfried's Harmony of the Gospels. Toward the end of the eleventh century we meet with sev- eral longer religious poems. Nevertheless, the literature of the ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries, must be called scanty, and all of it together makes a volume of but mod- erate size. To the close of the eighth century belong like- 22 A History of the German Language wise some brief translations of liturgies and catechetical writings. The ninth century adds some other religious writings and translated portions of the Bible. The Com- mentary of Notker is usually assigned to about the year 1000, and it is believed that Willeram's Paraphrase of the Song of Solomon is about a century younger. Both these contain a liberal intermixture of Latin. This literature is somewhat widely distributed, but it belongs chiefly to Austrian Germany, Bavaria, eastern Switzerland, Alsatia and Fulda, once an independent bishopric, but now a part of Prussia. The Heliand above mentioned is of a more northern origin. With the twelfth century German poetry entered upon a career of rapid development and toward its close the culmination of the first classical period had been attained. It was, however, still confined chiefly to South Germany, and it is only in the two following centuries that there is an intellectual movement northward. The prose literature of the twelfth century consists chiefly of sermons, and its mass is largely increased during the thirteenth and fourteenth cen- turies. To the first part of the thirteenth century must be assigned the so-called Sachsenspiegel, a collection of provincial laws, and this is a few decades earlier than the Schwabenspiegel, a similar collection. These are the first legal writings in German. Of about the same age is the first historical work in the native language, a Chronicle of the World, in Low-German. Toward the close of the thirteenth century we begin to meet with German title- deeds and other official documents. With the fourteenth century they increase in number rapidly. The earliest of these belong to southwestern Germany, but before the end of the thirteenth century they are met with in almost all parts of the nation, except the eastern parts of what is now Prussia. The German is employed to considerable extent for purposes of historical narration, and in the fif- teenth century literature proper (belles lettres) is exten- 23 sively cultivated. During this period many devotional books and translations of portions of the Bible were pub- lished and widely read. The rise of Protestantism was favorable to the cultivation of German, and in the six- teenth century it had become the recognized medium for the adherents of this faith, while the Latin continued to be the official language of the Church of Rome. But the rise of the German universities was unfavorable to the German language. The Latin continued to be the means of communication among the learned in all the profes- sions, and the use of the German was considered unworthy of the scholar. According to Paulsen seventy per cent, of the books printed in Germany about the year 1570 were in the Latin language. At no other time does the Ger- man seem to have been so far in the background, and from this point it begins to move slowly to the front. But not until 1680 were more German books published than Latin. In 1730'only about one-third of the issues from the press were Latin, and toward the close of the century this lan- guage had virtually ceased to be in general use even among scholars. The proportion of Latin and German seems to have varied considerably in the writings pertain- ing to the different professions and departments of learn- ing. In the domain of Protestant theology German probably predominated from the first, except in purely doctrinal discussions. In historical works German was chiefly used as early as the end of the seventeenth cen- tury ; it also predominated for philosophy and medicine at the beginning of the eighteenth century. For writings on jurisprudence Latin continued to be chiefly employed until about the middle of the eighteenth century, when for the first time German works are in the majority. At the universities Latin was exclusively used in the lectures until 1687. From this time German came into use grad- ually, but Latin was not entirely superseded until quite recently. It was largely owing to this preference for 24 A History of the German Language Latin as the language of books that the Germans were the latest of all the important nations of Europe to develop a modern classical literature. For about two hundred years anterior to the appearance of Goethe, Germany produced hardly a single work belonging to the department of belles lettres. The best intellects devoted themselves to the study of antique life, and the literature in which it is embodied, in apparent ignorance of the unlimited capabil- ities of their mother tongue. This unwise and almost ex- clusive devotion to foreign languages had a deleterious effect on even those authors who wrote in German. Not having had the rhetorical training of the writers of an- tiquity their sentences are generally long and lumbering, inartistically constructed and heavy. During a part of the eighteenth century this predilec- tion for foreign languages and literature manifested itself in a new direction, and French was cultivated to a consid- able extent. This was especially the case among the nobility, and those who aped their manners. It is chiefly due to the influence and writings of L,essing, Goethe, and Schiller that modern German literature attained the high place it now holds. GENERAL PART. PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. THERE is, perhaps, nothing that we can study and investigate that is more mysterious than lan- guage. We may divide and subdivide, and analyze as much as we please, there always remains a resi- duum that defies our closest scrutiny. We know that a word belonging to an unfamiliar foreign language affects the mind, the sensorium, differently from one to which we are accustomed. We may say that one enters the intel- lect, while the other only enters the ear. We talk about an awakened image, a responsive chord ; but there is no real image and no actual chord. These are but figures of speech taken from the material world intended to illus- trate, as well as they may, psychic processes. They are symbols of which the value is pretty generally under- stood, but they are only symbols. We have no name and no designation for the thing itself. no words that in the first instance were used, only of mental operations. Lan- guage is something with which we operate, something of which the power and functions are well known, but of Us essence we know little or nothing. We often talk of lan- guage as if it was something external, or as if it were the dead matter that we find written or printed, when in truth it has no existence, is not language in the proper sense of the word, if it is not vitalized by life and thought. The body of language, the living and only real word exists but the moment it is uttered ; its imperfect image is sometimes fixed on the printed page, or on some plastic substance ; which, however, tells us nothing until brought in contact with the living, thinking mind. 3 26 A History of the German Language There are languages that are not written ; tens of thousands of dialects exist, or have existed, that were never put in books or on paper, and yet they were or are as truly human speech as those that are the custodians of the most extensive literature. We are too apt to regard the language we find written or printed as the only real language, when, in fact, it is nothing more than its faint image. I look at the instrument with which I write. I think of it as the pen, die Feder, la plume, designating it by a different name in each language with which I am acquainted. Here the thing awakens in my mind what I may call a vocal image, even though I do not necessarily give it voice. Or I hear some one pronounce the name of the object, and it at once brings before my '' mind's eye " the concept of the pen, and so there goes on incessantly in the world, and has gone on for countless ages, this transition from concept to vocal expression, this transla- tion of thought into words; and from vocal expression to concept, the transmutation of vocal expression into thought. We think, then speak or write ; others speak or write, and their words stimulate thought in us. THE GERMAN LANGUAGE CONSIDERED CHRONOLOGICALLY AND TOPOGRAPHICALLY. Matters of every day occurrence rarely attract our atten- tion or stimulate us to reflection. Nothing is more com- mon than the words that make up our speech the sen- tences we meet in our ordinary reading. These things are, however, rarely the subject of remark among the illit- erate, to whom language is something that exists as a mat- ter of course. But among people of intelligence there is a lively interest in the phenomena of speech or language, and they are frequently the theme of friendly discussion. How are certain facts to be explained? If we ourselves- A Jfisfory of the German Language 27 always used the same form of expression for the same thought, or saw others doing so, there is no doubt that questions of language would interest us as little as the observation that water flows down hill, or that iron rusts. But the phenomena of speech do not have this uniformity '> our attention is continually drawn to differences in the time, the place, and the personality of the speaker. While it may seem perfectly natural for the educated man of the present day to take note of these phenomena, and in accordance with the scientific spirit of our time, to arrange them so far as may be in categories, the world has made slow progress toward this attainment. The Hebrews had no grammar of their language until more than a thousand years after Christ. The Greeks made no scientific study of their language during its Golden Age ; and not till it had sunk far in decay, or about half a century B. C., was the first Greek gram- mar composed. This became the basis of nearly all subsequent grammars of both the Greek and Latin lan^ guages. The grammatical study of the Teutonic Ian-, guages, in a truly scientific spirit, dates from the appear- ance of Grimm's Deutsche Grammatik, at the beginning of the present century. But good grammars of either English or German for young learners are hardly, older than the present generation. It is the different ways in. which the same thought may be expressed that more than, anything else awakens reflection upon language. These differences are not merely casual, but are the necessary phenomena which make up the life of a language. To record and explain, as far as it can be done, the changes which a language undergoes, is to write its history. This present work is intended to be a brief resume of the most important changes the German language has undergone from the earliest period within our knowledge up to our day ; for it is only after a study of its growth that we are. in a position to understand its present structure. 28 A History of the German Language The German language, as the term is generally under- stood and as it is here employed, is the speech used by the different members of the German family, but this should be carefully distinguished from the Germanic family, which is more comprehensive. Its territory is in the main, that embraced within the German empire, but extending somewhat beyond its borders so as to include a part of Switzerland, German Austria, contiguous por- tions of Russia, and settlements in other parts of the world. The language of the Netherlands may also be reckoned as belonging to the German. Authorities differ considerably as to the number of per- sons whose native speech is German. Meyer's Lexicon gives the number of Germans in the empire as 42,000,000, and a recent writer in the London Times, as 47,000,000. Hovelacque estimates those in Austria at 9,000,000, and in Switzerland at 2,000,000. Morfill puts the number of Germans in the Russian empire at about 1,240,000, and Meyer- Waldeck at 2,000,000. The following table is be- lieved to be substantially correct : Number of Germans in the Empire - - 45,000,000 Number of Germans in Austria - 10,000,000 Number of Germans in Switzerland - - 1,800,000 ' Number of Germans in Russia -.--.,- 1,500,000 Number of Germans in France - 1 50,000 Number of Germans in Holland - - - 100,000 Number of Germans in Italy - - - - 30,000 ' Number of Germans in all other lands - - 100,000 Total - - - - - - - 58,680,000 The Allgemeine Erdkunde, published by Tempsky, in Prague, says that Europe contains one hundred and five millions of people belonging to the Germanic race ; ninety-eight belonging to the Romanic ; ninety-six be- longing to the Slavic; and three millions belonging to other Indo-European races. About thirty millions are not of Indo-European stock. A History of the German Language 29 The census of the United States for 1880 shows that there were in this country at that date about two million persons who were natives of the German Empire. The number of persons whose father or mother was a native German was considerably larger. These should be added to the table given above. If we wish to examine the beginnings of the Geiman language and to trace its historical development from its inception it will not suffice to confine ourselves within the limits above prescribed. Our first and introductory chap- ter will take us far beyond these. It will be necessary to consider the language in its remoUst discoverable rela- tionships. PRE-GERMANIC PERIOD SHIFTING OF SOUNDS AND ACCENT. The different members of the German family are only a fragment of a larger whole ; they are a portion of the great Germanic stock to which belong, among the nations of our time, the English and the Scandinavians. The sepa- ration of the Germans proper from their remaining kins- folk, necessarily brought with it a change in their lan- guage. If, therefore, there is an agreement on any point in the structure of the German and Scandinavian lan- guages, it may in most cases be assumed with confidence that it takes us back to a period anterior to that separa- tion. A comparative study of the different Germanic dia- lects enables us then to form a pretty correct idea of the lan- guage used by all the Germanic tribes in common. This language is called the General Germanic or Primitive Teutonic speech. But the science of language enables us to do more. By it we are placed in position to prove that just as the English and Scandinavians are related to the Germans in a certain degree of kinship, so the latter are in turn 30 A History of the German Language related, but more remotely, to a larger circle of people of the same blood. This larger circle embraces the natives of India, of Iran, of Armenia, as well as the Greeks, the Italians, whose chief representatives were the ancient Romans, the Kelts, the Slavs and the Lithuanians. All these formed, at one time in the far distant past, a homo- geneous nation, and spoke a common language, now gen- erally known as the Indo-Germanic The people them- selves are called Indo-Europeans or Aryans. It is possi- ble to form a fairly definite idea of this language by a com- parison of the various languages that are descended from it. No amount of research can take us further back than this point. The attempt has been made by several differ- ent scholars to show that ultimately a relationship existed also between the Indo-European and Semitic languages, the best known of which is the Hebrew, and the most im- portant, the Arabic, but the results of their labors have convinced few competent scholars. See, for instance, Andreas Raabe, Gemeinschaftliche Grammatik der arischen und der semitischen Sprachen, Leipzig, 1874; Delitzsch Studien ueber Indogermanisch-Semitische Wurzelverwandschaft, Leipzig, 1873 ; and von Raumer, DIP Urverwandschaft der semiti- schen und der ariscben Spracheu, in Kuhn's Zeitscbrift, Band XXII. More accessible are tbe articles Philology and Shemitic Languages in McClintock and Strong's Cyclopedia. They are written by different authors and maintain radically different views. The belief seems to be gaining ground that all languages are descended from one parent speech, though it is at present held for anthropological rather than linguistic reasons. But if it is as yet impossible for the most thorough in- vestigation to penetrate beyond the point above indicated, this does not prove or even make it probable that the Indo-European bore a close resemblance to the primitive human speech. It was, on the contrary, a highly devel- oped language that postulates a long period of formation and development, and, so far as structure is concerned, there is no radical difference between Indo-European (or Indo-Germanic) and Germanic. The former had about A History of the German Language 31 the same and an equal number of sounds as the latter; in richness of grammatical forms it was superior. In the structure of the complete sentence it was, however, in- ferior, though it already exhibits the principle of subordi- nating one sentence to another by means of conjunctions. The following pages set forth the most important sounds of the Indo-European tongue, together with the specific terms used to designate them. It is customary to divide them into vowels and consonants. The vowels were: Simole/*' e ' *' "' short m P le \a, e, i, 6, u, long. Compound (or diphthongs) ai, au, ei, eu. Until a few years ago, philologists, almost without exception, held to the opinion that the vowel system of the Indo-European had but three sounds, namely, a, i, u. Herein they followed such leaders as Grimm, Schleicher, and Curtius. The investigations of the so-called " Junggrammatiktr" (ueo-grammarians) have, however, caused this view to be generally abandoned by ah 1 except those whose long ser- vice in defense of the old theory has made it morally impossible for them to adjust themselves to the newest discoveries. The consonants are divided into sonants (voiced) and surds (voiceless). Of the former class the Indo-European possessed the semi-vowels j (English y) and w, the liquids r and 1, and the nasals m and n ; of the latter there were two classes : (a) Simple and momentary, because they did not ad- mit of lengthening ; (b) Continuative, or enduring. The momentary or explosive consonants are further sub-divided into gutturals, k and g ; labials, p and b ; and dentals, t and d ; or into tenues k, t, p ; and medials, g, b, d. The continuative consonants, or those that may be in- definitely prolonged, sometimes called fricatives or spir- ants, are chiefly represented by s. 32 A History of the German Language The compound consonants are combinations of the media with the letter h, thus forming gh, dh, and bh. These two letters were, however, sounded separately, somewhat as in log-house, god-head, etc. At a time, which cannot now be determined, the Ger- manic language separated from the primitive Indo- European tongue in other words changes began to take place in one part of this tongue, from which the remain- ing portion continued free. When we examine the list of words which the Germanic has in common with the Greek and Latin, we notice that the vowels and sonant con- sonants are, in the main, the same in all three, but that the surds, except s, have, in all cases, undergone a change ; however, with such regularity and consistency that we commonly find a certain consonant in Greek and Latin represented by a certain other consonant in the Germanic. This phenomenon of sound-shifting is usually called Grimm's Law, for the reason that Jacob Grimm, acting on a suggestion of the Danish philologist Rask, first clearly stated the conditions under which it takes place This law, however, expresses only the first of two similar changes that took place during the life of the Germanic language. The facts may be ranged under three general heads : (1) The tenuis of the Indo-European, which is repre- sented for us by the Greek and Latin, becomes a spirant (fricative) in the Germanic. It is necessary to make a dis- tinction here which could fitly be omitted in describing the sounds of the Indo-European. Just as there are surd and sonant, or voiceless and voiced momentary-conso- nants, so there are likewise surd and sonant fricatives. Now, the spirant that represents the Indo-European tenuis is voiceless. It is also to be remarked that the guttural spirant is represented in the Germanic by h. Accordingly k becomes h, p becomes f, and t becomes th, pronounced as in "third." The following words illustrate this law: A History of the German Language 33: icepas KVV09 KWTTT) PRIMITIVE INITIAL K-SOUNDS BECOME H. LATIN. GERMAN. ENGLISH. cord-is Herz heart cornu Horn horn canis Hund hound capulum Heft haft PRIMITIVE INITIAL P-SOUNDS BECOME F. LATIN. GERMAN. ENGLISH. 7TT-0/Aat pater Vater (fater) father penna (petua) Feder feather pluit flieszen fleet Flotte float PRIMITIVE MEDIAL T BECOMES TH. LATIN. GERMAN. (jtpdrrjp frater mater pater Bruder (bruodar) bro-ther Mutter (muotar) mo-ther Vater (fatar) fa-ther NOTE. - These three examples are given because they illustrate the- phonetic law in a general way, though they do not all strictly be- long to the same category. See also page 51. These lists might be considerably extended, and the student will do well to search for other examples. It needs to be kept in mind that the object here is to give equivalents in form, as far as possible, though not in meaning ; for the farther we go from the parent speech the more widely do the significations of words generally part asunder. The four words for "father" and "mother" have precisely the same meaning in the four languages above given, but the Greek (j>pa.TT)p is not the same in sense with the other words placed opposite. So " canis " and " Hund '' mean the same thing, but the meaning of " hound " is more restricted. The words placed with TTCT- and TrAe- or TA.O-, are all related both in form and signification, but the minor differences are important- It will be noticed that the English often bears a closer re- 34 A History of the German Language semblance to the primitive Germanic than the modern German. (2) The law, % stated in its most general terms, is that the Indo-European aspirates appear as medise in the Ger- manic. We need to remember, then, that the primitive gh, dh, and bh correspond to the Greek x, # and <, and to the Latin h, f and f. We thus get : PRIMITIVE INITIAL, GH BECOMES G. GREEK. LATIN. GERMAN. ENGLISH. hortus Garten garden (h)anser Gans goose INITIAL DH BECOMES D. GREEK. LATIN. GERMAN. ENGLISH. Ovpa fores Thiire, Thor door 6vya.T-i)p Tochter daughter 6r)p6 or p are sometimes represented by h, th, or f, and sometimes by g, d, or b. How the accent de- termines which of the two it shall be may be seen by the following examples : The Latin pater, mater and frater all have the original medial t ; but in German the words appear as Vater, Mutter and Bruder. We find, however, that the two former had in the pre-Teutonic period the accent on the final syllable, while the latter had it on the first. The Greek en-rd represents the original accent. Here 7T- alone would, according to Grimm's Law, become sef, and we find, for example, capt-us appear as haft. But the exception above noted gives us the O. H. G. sib-un, a word that also has the Gothic consonants, while regularly we should get sif-un. The cases where h stands in place of the regular g are comparatively rare. An article in the Eclectic Review for July, 1892, by Max Muller, reprinted from the Nineteenth Century, and entitled, " On the Enormous Antiquity of the East," incidentally discusses the effect of the shifting accent on certain English words. THE GERMANIC AND ITS SUB-DIVISIONS. These two processes, namely, the rotation of the conso- nants above given, and the shifting of the accent, achieved the independent existence of the primitive Germanic tongue. It still possessed considerable wealth in forms. The verb had a separate form for the passive voice and the noun one to be used in answering the questions, .where? A History of the German Language 39" whence? wherewith? The verb has also suffered consid- erable curtailment in its tenses. But the Germanic verb exhibits a mode of expressing time that is peculiar to itself; i. e., it did not exist in the earlier language. This is the so-called weak preterit, klagte, legte, and corres- ponds to what most English grammarians call the regular verb. In the structure of its sentences the primitive Teutonic used methods no longer in use in the German. To express cause or time the latter is obliged to employ a subordinate sentence ; but the primitive Germanic, like the Greek and Latin, could do this by means of a noun and participle : als der vater kam was faderi kumondi. In like manner where the modern German employs als or denn to designate a comparison, the parent tongue could, like the Greek and Latin, make use of a case. Niu saiwala mat's ist fodeinai jah leik wastjom ? Matt. vi. 25. Here ''than food" and "than raiment" (garments), is expressed by nouns in the dative case. The Germans and the primitive Germanic language first broke up into three grand divisions, each embracing three groups of tribes whose members were more closely related to those within than to those without. The first is called the Gothic, the second the Scandinavian. These two probably resemble each other more closely than either resembles the third group. They are usually called the East Germanic, and the third group the West Germanic. It is reasonable to suppose that the last named, though still constituting a homogeneous people, separated from the main s'ock some time before it split into two branches. The first appearance of the ancient Goths on the stage of history is a brilliant episode in the national life of the Germans. In the plentitude of their native power they founded a monarchy on Roman territory. Not long, how- ever, were they able to resist the seductive influences of Roman civilization. Rome yielded to the superior cul- -40 A History of the German Language ture of Greece, though her all-conquering arms and invin- cible valor easily destroyed her political independence. So the Germans all along the line of contact were in their turn subdued by Roman arts and Roman letters. The language of the Goths fell into decay ; though doubtless a considerable portion of its vocabulary passed into Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, where it is still preserved. The syntax of these languages likewise bears traces of Ger- manic influence. But no written memorials exist from which we may learn the language in which Gelimer sang the sorrows of captivity ; we know next to nothing of the speech of the Gepidae and the Bastarnse ; nor have the Ostro-Goths left us any written memorials of their exis- tence. Of the Visi-Goths the branch that once dwelt in the Balkan peninsula we possess somewhat extended literary monuments in their own tongue. These are the oldest existing remnants of any Germanic language. They comprise fragments of a translation of the Bible made for the most part by Wulfila or Ulfilas, the first bishop of the Goths, about A. D. 350. This translation, while to some extent under the influ- ence of the Greek and Latin, from which it was made, furnishes a fair sample of the language of the Goths. In its sounds it does not differ materially from the primitive Teutonic type, and affords us in the main a true picture of the same. In richness of etymological forms, it has, however, suffered some losses, and is somewhat less prim- itive in certain regards than the West Germanic dialects that have come down to us from a much later period. Speaking accurately, the extant remains of Gothic literature com- prise the larger portion of the four Gospels, Paul's Letters to the Romans, Corinthians, Ephesiaus, Galatians, Philippians, Colossians, Thessalonians, to Timothy, Titus and Philemon. There are a few fragments of Ezra and Nehemiah, of a Commentary on the Gospel of John, some charters of the time of Theodoric the Great, and a few additional trifles. As an interval of several centuries lies between the Gothic as we know it and any other German dialect, it may in- A History of the German Language 41 terest the reader to compare a specimen with modern German. "We accordingly subjoin a sample of each : Atta unsar thu in himinam, veihuai namo them ; quimai Voter unser du in Himmeln geweihet werde Name dein komme thiudinassus theins; vairthai vilja theins, swe in himina, jah JTerrschaft dein werde wille dein soivie in Himmel, aneh ana airthai ; hlaif unsarana thana sinteinan gif uns himma auf Erden Brod unseres dies fortwahrende gieb uns diesen daga, jah aflet uns thatei skulans sijaima svasve jah veis Tag und erlasse uns das Schuldige wir seien soutie auch wir afletam thaim skulam unsaraim ; jah ni briggais uns in erlassen diesen Schuldigen unseren und mcht bringest uns in fraistubnyai, ak lausei uns of thamma ubilin ; unte theina ist Versuchung sondern lose uns ab diesem Uebel denn dein ist thiudangardi jah mahts jah vulthus in aivins. Amen. Herrscherhaus und Macht und Glauz in Ewigkeit. Amen. " The remnants of the Gothic consist of about 3,000 native words; of which, however, a large majority are compounded out of a com- paratively small number of simpler words. Some of the simpler words are not preserved ; but their existence in the time of Ulfilas or previously is certified by their compounds. Unfortunately the 3,000 and odd words are but a fraction of the whole Gothic vocabulary. Of the language of native song and saga, of war and sport, of political, social, and family life, of the older national religion, of commerce, agriculture, and other arts ; and of the terminology of natural ob- jects, celestial and terrestrial, animal, vegetable, and mineral ; either very scanty specimens or none at all are preserved. This loss is the jaore to be regretted because Ulfilas shows, in the treatment of alien subjects and events, not only ease and elegance, but sometimes an exuberance and sometimes a precision and refinement of expression that even surpass his model." Douse, An Introduction to the Gothic of Ulfilas. London, 1886. Only a small fragment of the Goths preserved a separate existence until comparatively recent times. These dwelt in the Crimea where they were visited in the sixteenth century by a Belgian physician named Busbecq, who has left some record of their language, and a list of words which he heard, in Constantinople. We do not have the Scandinavian or Norse in its unified form, but only in the various languages into which it sub- sequently broke up ; from these, however, it is possible to 42 A History of the German Language construct the- original. It embraces the Swedish, the Norwegian, the Danish and the Icelandic. There are no manuscripts in these languages of earlier date than the twelfth century. Neither have we access to the third and, for us, most important branch of the Germanic languages in its primitive unity. We have no means of -knowing when the Visi-Goths separated from their brethren, nor where this separation took place. Neither is it possible to ascertain the extent of territory covered by the various languages during the first centuries of our era before the time when the literary monuments begin. In that proto- historic period the Germanic tribes were a mass that was almost constantly in motion. Ancient tribes and tribal names disappear; new confed- eracies and new names appear on the pages of history. It is not until the sixth century, or about the time when the conquest of Britain was achieved, that the shifting masses become to some extent stationary. At this period the West Germanic tribes embraced the following sub-divi- sions as nearly as can now be made out : The Lombards, the Bavarians, the Alemanians, the Burgundians, the Franks, the Hessians, the Thuringians, the Angles, the Saxons, the Jutes, and the Frisians. The German tongue anciently extended over a larger territory than at present. It included Great Britain about as far north as the river Clyde, while in the west and south of the European continent it was bounded by the Atlantic ocean and the Pyrenees. Its southern limit was the summit of the Alps. It must be remembered, however, that the German occupation of much of this territory was not ex- clusive. It was still settled by other nationalities, chiefly Kelts, over whom they had gained the supremacy by conquest. On the other hand its eastern boundary was considerably farther westward than it now is. Here the Elbe was the limit, and the country lying east of this river was settled by Slavs. A History of the German Language 43 If we had documents written in the dialects of the various tribes above named, dating from the fourth or fifth century, they would, in all probability, exhibit but slight divergencies from each other and from the Gothic. The main difference between the Gothic and the Scandi- navian on the one hand, and the West Germanic on the other, lies in the inflection of the verb. In the former the second person of the singular number of the preterit of the strong verb ends in t. For example, namt (du nahmst), gaft (du gabst)=(ihou gavest). In the West Germanic tongues the equivalent forms end in i, as namz\ gdbi. But at the period from which we possess MSS. written in the West Germanic, or at least a number of verbal forms, the various branches of the original tongue diverge considerably from each other, and likewise from the Gothic ; and these divergencies kept getting wider. The Germanic language of Britain has gone farthest from the primitive type. This is the speech of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, gen- erally known as the Anglo-Saxon, but which is also called *' English : ' by those who insist that the language of Eng- land has remained substantially unchanged since the con- quest of Hengist and Horsa. This difference was caused partly by the insular position of Britain and partly by the subsequent fate of its inhabitants. The Norman conquest tinged the vocabulary of the natives with a considerable admixture of Romanic words ; besides which the frequent irruptions of the Danes, and their subsequent temporary occupation of the island, were doubtless not without their effect on the language. The English, however, does not further concern us here ; nor does the Frisian, a language, or rather a dialect, still spoken on the islands and along the coast of the North Sea. It differs considerably from the other Germanic dialects of the continent. There remain, therefore, for our further consideration : the Lombards, the Bavarians, the Alemanians, the Burgundians, the Franks, the 44 A History of the German Language Hessians, the Thuringians, and those of the Saxons and Angles who remained behind when their fellow-tribes- men crossed over into Britain. The history of the Ger- man language naturally falls into three great epochs or periods, an older, a middle, and a modern. THE OLD HIGH GERMAN PERIOD. This period closes about the year 1100 ; but the reader should remember that in a matter so largely subject to the laws of growth and decay as language, to assign defi- nite dates that are of much value, is impossible. The be- ginning of this period is not coincident with any particu- lar year. We can hardly say more than that it may be put about the time when credible history begins, and is in the main coeval with the epoch from which the earliest contemporary literary and historical documents have come down to us. These documents are, however, by no means entitled to the epithet " literary," in the proper sense of that term ; often they do not even consist of connected discourse. The oldest German poetry, like that of all other nations, had its life in oral tradition ; and, if now and then,. a fragment was written down, it would have been little short of a miracle if it had survived the hostility of the clergy to the national songs and sagas and the reminiscences of heathendom which they perpetuated. The language of science and learning, of public intercourse, of law, was the Latin, and continued to be for several centuries longer. It is true, Charles the Great (Charlemagne) made earnest efforts to place his mother- tongue in honor. He gave German names .to the months, caused a German Grammar to be compiled, and took great pains to collect from Ger- man minstrels the ancient heroic songs of his country- men. But his son Lewis, who was wholly under the in- fluence of the priests, was zealous in undoing the work of A History of the German Language 45 Tiis father. The Latin has, however, preserved a quantity of material that is valuable for the history of the German language ; this is especially true of the records and title- deeds pertaining to persons and places within the German territory. These documents contain a large number of German words ; chiefly proper names, it is true, furnished with Latin terminations. By a judicious use of this material we are enabled to some extent to recover the native pronunciation and the inflection of the substantive, -and to get some idea of German word-formation. But its greatest value is historical because of the dates and names of places given. Many of the words in these Latin parch- ments are accompanied with glosses, that is, translations of single Latin words for pedagogical purposes. These are either written over the words in the text which they are designed to elucidate, where they are called interlinear glosses, or are brought together into little lexicons or glossaries. With the age of Charles the Great connected and continuous records begin. They consist chiefly of translations of biblical and ecclesiastical works, a number of Christian hymns, and some meager remnants of popular poetry. This literature, if we choose to call it by so dig- nified a name, is by no means equally distributed among the various Germanic tribes. The Angles have no share at all in it, and of their dialect 6nly a few words of uncer- tain authenticity now remain ; neither have the Hessians, nor the Thuringians, nor the Lombards, nor the Burgun- dians. The Saxon portion is small ; still less that of the Franks along the lower Rhine. The largest portion falls to the rest of the Franks, the Bavarians, and Alemanians, or territorially to the country along the Rhine from Con- stance to the Moselle," and about the head-waters of the Danube. This is the section of Germany in which Chris- tianity first gained a firm foot-hold. There is a special reason for the absence of records in the language of the Lombards and the Burgundians. At 46 the beginning of the period that here concerns us the ter- ritory embraced by the Germanic tongues had been con- siderably curtailed. The fate that overtook the Goths on Roman soil was shared by the Burgundians, the Lom- bards and the Western Franks ; their language was dis- placed by the Latin and its descendants. Still, these lan- guages did not remain free from Teutonic influence, least of all, the French. Many French military terms are de- rived from the German, and also words relating to feudal- ism and law. The French word la guerre is itself of Ger- manic origin, and related to wirren, the O. H. G. being werra. Strangely enough in this case the English word " war " clearly bears the family traits, while the modern German has displaced it by Krteg, a vocable of obscure an- cestry. The gender of an entire class of French words those ending in eur, such as " la fureur," " la couleur" that would according to the rules of the language to which they belong be masculine, has been changed to feminine by the influence of the German. With these facts before us, we are now able to draw the southern and western boundary of the German language, The line begins on the shores of the North Sea near the straits of Dover between Gravelines and Dunkirk, runs southward almost to the river Lys, then eastward between Maestricht and Liege as far as the river Meuse, thence southeastward toward Malmedy, thence southward toward Longwy, but leaving both these towns on the French side. From here it passes southward as far as Pfalzburg (Phals- bourg), thence southward, west of Colmar, to the point where the little river Liitzel crosses the boundary between the Ger- man empire and Switzerland. From here it runs eastward to the river Birs, then follows the western boundary of the Swiss canton of Solothurn (Soleure) in a direct line to Lake Biel (Bjenne) and the foot of Lake Neuchatel, thence it passes across Lake Murten (Morat) and the town of the same name, through Freiburg, thence almost directly A History of the German Language 47 south toward the Matterhorn, crossing the Rhone at Siders (Sierre). From the Matterhorn its course is eastward by Monte Rosa, then northeastward as far as the St. Gott- hard, whence it follows the northern boundary of the Grisons, about as far as the town of Tamins, thence east- ward past the city of Chur (Coire) in the direction of Klagenfurt in Austria. It will thus be seen that the pres- ent eastern boundary of France is very nearly the line that for many centuries separated the French from the German language. The internal changes that took place in the language during this period were chiefly confined to the consonants. Here, too, a process of shifting took place, it being the sec- ond of a similar character. This is like the first in the fact that the transitions took place independently of each other, and at different times. In the case of the second shifting we are able to follow its course and observe its re- sults almost step by step by means of contemporary docu- ments still in existence. The two shifts, however, differ in so far that the second affected a much smaller number of consonants than the first. The different parts of the territory occupied by the Ger- man, participated in the second shift in a much more un- equal degree than the first. Its influence was earliest felt and is the most marked in the south. The farther we come north the feebler is the wave-beat of the movement. The extreme north exhibits but faint traces of it. By this fact we are enabled to distinguish the various dialects, each being marked by the distance its characteristic con- sonants have moved away from their original value. The earliest and most complete shifting was that made by the smooth mutes (tenues) k, t, and p. This began and went farthest with the Germanic t. But it is neces- sary to make a distinction between initial t on the one hand, and medial or internal, and final t on the other. The former did not pass into a simple sound, but into a 48 A History of the German Language compound of tennis and spirant, a so-called affricative. In old documents this is usually indicated by z which was pronounced tz or ts. The Low German teihn became zehn in High German. Here the English has preserved the original sound in the word ten. Medial and final t was changed into a spirant. But while the Indo-European t was transformed into the German th (See ante, p 33), the new spirant of the second shift had passed into a sound which the MSS. also generally indicate by z. Its pronunciation probably bore a close resemblance to the German s, or rather ss, with which it subsequently be- came identical It is by this change of t to z, which took place about the year 600, that a most important dialectic difference was marked, namely, that between Low Ger- man and High German, between the north and south of Germany. In the Low German it is retained ; in the High German it has been superseded by the other sound. Where " that " or " dat " was regularly used in the terri- tory of the former ; where dasz, that of the latter. The philologist Schleicher was in the habit of designating the one class as '' dat-languages," and the latter as " dasz- languages ; " for it must not be forgotten that there were, as there still are, many other minor divergencies between them. Generally speaking, the consonants of the Low German underwent few changes, and we shall often have occasion in the future to employ words from its vocabu- lary as representatives of the General Germanic. The fate of k like that of t depends upon its position in a word. When initial or final it was aspirated throughout the entire High German territory to ch ; for the English " to speak " we get the High German sprechen, Low Ger- man sprecken. The L. G. ik, A.-S. " ic,' 1 corresponds to the H. G. ich. Only in one dialect of the L. G., the West Fran- conian, it becomes ch when final. Initial k generally per- sists over the whole region, except in certain districts be- longing to the Bavarian and Alemanian where it has given place to kch and ch. A History of the German Language 49 P both initial and medial becomes f whenever k changes to ch : Low German, schap, slapen, Eng. " sheep," " sleep," are equivalent to H. G. schaf, schlafen. When initial, it becomes pf in the Alemanian, Bavarian and part of the Franconian. The linguistic province of the latter lies along the river Main and south of its eastern portion. The dividing line between the two sections, the northern p and the southern pf, runs be- tween Bruchsal and Heidelberg, so far as it lies in Baden. In respect to the dialects of middle Germany, which we shall consider more at length further on, it may be here remarked incidentally, that pf is likewise one of the char- acteristics of the Thuringian, the Upper Saxon and the Silesian. Of spirants the hard h and f remain unchanged ; but th passed into d everywhere, even in the Low German. For example, brother is equivalent to Bruder, in which case the English has preserved a close resemblance to the Gothic brothar. The sonant labial mute was turned into an explosive (the same sound it already had as an initial letter) in the Alemanian, the Bavarian and some of the other High German dialects. Here it was the same sound that had already taken its place initially. The transformation of this labial mute is of prime importance for a general characterization of the Germanic dialects. Throughout the territory occupied by the Low German, the difference between b and p was the same as in the Romanic languages ; the vocal chords were at rest while the sound represenied by p was produced, but in the case of b they were in a state of vibration and a faint m was heard in connection with it. In Central Germany the at- tendant sound was gradually lost ; as a result, a distinction ceased to be made between p and b. The habit is still al- most universal among the illiterate, and even the educated often unwittingly fall into it. But still farther south the distinction is again observed ; in the Alemanian and 50 A History of the German Language Bavarian the b is pronounced with less and the p with greater force. This state of things prevailed as early as the O. H. G. period. The effect of this phonetic change was to displace b as the representative of the weaker labial mute on High German territory, though it remained on Low, as it no longer represented the Romanic b ; but p was used in its stead. For example, the N. H. G. Buck and the Eng. " book '' have the same initial, but its O. H. G equivalent is puoh. The late Latin " bedellus " still survives in our " beadle, 1 ' but its O. H. G. representative is petit, N. H. G. Pedell. Between the Bavarian and the "Alemanian there was this further difference that the latter generally retained initial b while the former turned it into p here also. The fate of the soft guttural mute (g) was similar to that just described, in so far as it was developed out of the spirant. In the districts possessed by the Low Ger- man, the distinction between the Romanic g and k was preserved, but in Middle Germany the former lost its sonancy and then became virtually identical with k. In the Bavarian, Alemanian and the South Franconian there is some difference in the energy with which the two letters are uttered. In the oldest stage of the two former this middle mute is sometimes written g and sometimes k. This indicates that these letters were intended to repre- sent a sound which partook of the nature of both. In the High German the d loses its sonancy under all circum- stances and is replaced by t. The Gothic dags and Eng- lish " day '' is tac and tag in O. H. G. These differences prevail during the entire further de- velopment of the language represented by the three stages pointed out above. In view of these divisions it is cus- tomary to speak of Old, Middle and New Low German, and of Old, Middle and New High German. With these facts before us we are now prepared to see how the principle of consonantal mutation or shifting ap- A History of the German Language 51 pears when applied to individual words. This plan is preferable to the mere presentation of literal equivalents. It may be well to call attention again to an important fact in the history of words, namely, that widely diverse mean- ings are often developed from the same radical syllable. Indo-Ewropean k corresponds to Greek or Latin k or c, Germanic h. Sanskrit kalamas ; Greek /caAa/w/ ; Latin calamus ; English halm or haulm. Indo-European t corresponds to Latin t, Low German th, High German d. Sanskrit tarsh ; Latin torreo ; Gothic thaursjan ; English thirst ; High German Durst. Indo-European p corresponds to Greek or Latin p, Ger- manic f. Sanskrit padas ; Greek Latin *&-, ped, pod- ; Gothic fotus ; English foot ; High German Fusz. Indo-European gh corresponds to Greek Latin g, Ger- manic g. The primitive form would probably be ghans, but Sanskrit hansas ; Greek Latin x 7 ?", (h)anser ; A.-S. gos ; English goose, gander ; High German Cans. Indo-European dh corresponds to Greek 0, Latin f, Low German d, High German t. Hypothetical dhur ; Greek Ovpa; Latin fores ; Gothic daur; English door from A. -S- duru ; O. H. G. tor. Indo-European bh corresponds to Greek 4>< Latin f, Low German b, High German b or p. Sanskrit bhag ; Greek <^yo's ; Latin fagus ; Gothic boka ; English book, buckwheat and beech ; A.-S. boc ; O. H. G. buoh and puoh ; N. H. G. Buche and Buch. It should, however, be mentioned that the original identity of these two words in Teutonic is not quite certain. 52 Indo-European g corresponds to Germanic k or ch. Sanskrit gaus, where the Greek and Latin are /3ovs and bos; Gothic kos (hypothetical); English cow from A.-S. cii; O. H. G. chuo; N. H. G. Kuh. Indo-European d corresponds to Greek-Latin 8 and d, Germanic t, N. H. G. z. Sanskrit da9an ; Greek-Latin Se'Kw, decem ; Gothic taihun ; English ten, from A.-S. tyn ; N. H. G. zehn. Indo-European b corresponds to Latin p, Germanic p, N. H. G. p or pf. Latin pondo ; Gothic pund and Eng- lish pound ; N. H. G. Pfund ; but Gothic sleps, English sleep ; O. H. G. slafan and slaf ; from which it will be seen that the mutation of a consonant at the end of a syl- lable is sometimes different from that at the beginning. Very few words can be found that have congeners in a majority of the languages of the Indo-European stock. This will explain the gaps in our series above. In a few instances the phonetic laws here set forth are subject to slight modifications. These I have not thought necessary to exhibit because my object is to show general principles rather than minute facts. A mute does not generally un- dergo the same transformation at the beginning, the mid- dle and end of a word. When philologists speak of the Indo-European the Ursprache - as having split up into the various branches still represented in dif- ferent languages of Europe and Asia, they do not mean that this took place simultaneously. Neither did the General Germanic break into several linguistic fragments. That phonetic changes always take place slowly is abundantly proved by the testimony of those that have taken place within historic times. The oldest records of the Sanskrit probably do not go further back than the sixteenth century B. C. At this period it had already diverged considerably from the primitive stage. Where the people who spoke this language dwelt we do not know. Very likely they were wanderers with no fixed place of abode. Of the Greek we have no remains earlier than the eleventh or twelfth century B. C., while those of the Italic dialects A History of the German Language 53 are several centuries younger. The history of both Greeks and Italians before these dates rests on a very insecure foundation. Of the Germanic tongues, as we have seen, there are but faint traces earlier than the fourth century after Christ. But we have occasional notices of German tribes in the fourth century B. C. These, too, ap- pear now at one place, now at another, in both Europe and Asia. The various consonantal shifts that play so important a part in the history of the Aryan languages must be regarded as having taken place from the parent speech, and not from auy of its branches. Yet it is possible and even probable that this primitive speech broke up into two or more different parts, one or more of which were again further sub-divided. Nor do we know the causes of this differentia- tion. They were probably climatic and topographical the result of slight changes in the vocal organs of the different people. We do not know when the Primitive German languages shifted from the Aryan, but it was at a prehistoric period ; for we find the process almost com- plete in the earliest Gothic known to us. The bifurcation of the Primitive Germanic into High and Low German was much later, and took place in historic times. It seems to have been in progress during the period lying between the sixth and the tenth centuries after Christ. It began, as we have seen, in South Germany and moved northward until its energy had gradually spent itself before it reached the region of the lower Rhine. It could be proven by the testimony of the German language, if no other were forthcoming, that those who spoke it were originally a homogeneous mass when they began their independent career which first separated into two main divisions. The minor divergences that still exist partake more or less of the chief characteristics of one or the other of these divisions. The lines which bound the various dialects have chang- ed but little from the earliest times except that the L. G. has been gradually losing ground before the encroach- ments of the H. G. We shall, therefore, 'not go far wrong if we supply the missing links in the older boundaries by the linguistic facts gathered from more recent observa- tions. The dividing line between Low and High German passes nearly east and west. Beginning on the Meuse at a point midway between Liege and Msestricht it passes down the Meuse as far as Roermonde (Ruremond) and from here eastward past Diiesseldorf to Elberfeld. Here it turns south and runs parallel with the Rhine almost to 54 A History of the German Language the little river Sieg. Bending thence to the northeast it passes in an almost direct course past Minden, and thence to Magdeburg on the Elbe. This line marked off the ter- ritory of the O. L. G. which embraced the Saxons and a portion of the Franks. Their two dialects are called the Old Saxon and the Low Franconian. The boundary between the Franconian and the Upper German in the valley of the Rhine is formed by the forest of Hagenau in Northern Alsace and the lower course of the Murg, a small river that flows into the Rhine from the southeast, a short distance from Carlsruhe. Following the Murg a little way it turns nearly east a little south of the city of Calw in Wiirtemberg, crossing the river Nagold it runs northeast as far as the Neckar, near Besigheim, thence directly east to Ellwangen. Here it turns north- east again to Feuchtwangen, then southeast to Wasser- trued, whence it runs off in the direction of the Fichtel mountains. The dividing line between the Alemanian and Bavarian is formed in the main by the rivers Woernitz and Lech, the one flowing southward, the other northward into the Danube, at no great distance from the city of Augsburg, though the Alemanian is also spoken on the right bank of the Lech in its upper course. The differences between the dialects were in earlier times much less marked than at present. Taking them as a whole and comparing them with the Gothic on the one hand and the German as written to-day on the other, they are found to be more closely akin to the former than to the latter or N. H. G. Compared with this the dissimi- larity is greatest in the form of the individual words. A majority of these now end in a monotonous has a separate existence in Eng. ; not so the Ger. -lick, which in its modern form is gleich. We know further that -haft, -schaft and -turn were likewise independent words at an early stage of the language, and there is little doubt that the same is true of all words used in the formation of derivatives. This -schaft is A.-S. scipe, and -turn is the Eng. -dom found in such words as ' friendship ' and ' Christ- endom.' If, then, syllables like the foregoing, that no longer exist independently continue to be used in the for- mation of new words, these can hardly in strict justice be called mere derivative appendages, but the words into which they enter are in a certain sense compounds formed according to existing models. There is then, in reality, no radical difference between composites with prefixes and such derivatives as have just been considered : in both cases a self-existent word, at least in external appearance, is combined with part or parts of another. But it is not necessary to the formation of new words that they be com- posed of such as already exist, although there is no doubt A History of the German Language 177 that the coinage of entirely new vocables destined to gen- eral recognition is comparatively rare. Children not un- frequently invent names for objects with which they come in contact. Besides the words thus purposely coined there are others produced almost unwittingly in the ef- fort to imitate the speech of older persons, and these often continue to be used by them after they have learned to use their mother-tongue with a considerable degree of correctness. If a group of children were isolated for sev- eral years there is no doubt that they would invent a lan- guage of their own. But words, in order to make them worthy of permanent preservation, must supply a felt want, in which case they will secure a more or less gen- eral recognition. Many a word coined in the spirit of in- novation on the spur of the moment to suit the occasion is soon forgotten even by its author, because he hears no one else repeat it. There is an exceedingly slight de- mand for new words, simply because the stock on hand is amply sufficient for almost every actual and imaginary use. We have apparently in the English word " dude," that has gained remarkable currency within the last half dozen years, an example of spontaneous coinage, as it has no discoverable origin or traceable ancestry. " High- falutin '' is a somewhat similar instance, though here the model was probably at least in part the compound ' high- flying,' to which it is allied in signification. " Boom '* came into prominence several years ago, and seems to have gained a permanent place in the English vocabulary. The history of these words is similar to that of many in the German and in all other civilized languages. It is probable that within the historic period of the German new words have been coined in imitation of existing ones and endowed with related significations. Such a vocable as trippeln probably gets its initial sound from traben, trappen, treten, with which it is also connected in meaning. The termination was most likely patterned 178 A History of the German Language after such a word as zippeln. Zupfen suggests both ziehen and rupfen, and is related in meaning to both ; schwirren and klirren seem to have been influenced by girren, and knarren by schnarren. Randal is modeled after Skandal. It is not necessary that we be able to account for each sep- arate sound and syllable in a new word that may occur, or that it has been previously used in a word having a like meaning. A large number of words are still formed, as they have been continuously throughout the past, in the same manner and in obedience to the same impulse that called words into existence thousands of years ago ; it is the voluntary imitation of sounds occurring in nature, the so-called onomatopoiesis. For example, bammeln, bimmeln, patschen, plumpsen, klatschen and many more, are quite recent creations. Often, however, it is difficult to deter- mine in any given case whether a word is an intentional specimen of fresh coinage or merely the modification of existing materials. Eng. ' clap,' ' clash ;' French ' cla- quer, claque,' the Teutonic root of which is also repre- sented in klatschen above, are doubtless entirely onomato- poetic, plus the various terminations, while such a word as " highfalutin '' is only in part original. In the case of new words that have no relation of form to others in use the hearer has generally no difficulty in divining their meaning, for the reason that they are a sort of word-painting. But if new material is added or used that has no evident connec- tion with or relation to that already in existence and there is no similarity of sound to suggest the meaning to the speaker or hearer it is not easy to discover it ; the new word must be learned as a child learns a language from the beginning. The German, like the English, has re- ceived a very large increment of this sort in the shape of borrowed and adopted words from other languages. But new life and vigor have been imparted to the classic lan- guage from pure German sources. This has been brought about in part by the introduction of words from the dia- A History of the German Language 179 lects : Haller, Lessing and Goethe, of set purpose, trans- ferred many vocables from this source into their writings. In some cases, too, these and other writers reintroduced into the language words that had become obsolete. Romanticism the recurrence to the study of mediaeval times and the historical study of German have also had considerable influence. The stories of knight-errantry written toward the close of the last century and the his- torical novels of our day, particularly those of SchefFel and Freytag, have contributed their part. Sir Walter Scott's writings likewise exercised an important though indirect influence toward the same end. In this way such antiquated terms as Fehde (feud), Gau (district), Ger (jave- lin), Hain (copse), Halle, Hort (hoard), Kampe (champion), and Minne, came into use again as a part of current speech. The boldest innovator was Richard Wagner (died in '83), whose style is otherwise often difficult on account of the extent of his vocabulary, and is made still more obscure by the introduction of such words as freis- lich (schrecklich), Friedel (husband, lover), glau (bright, stirring, joyous), neidlich (neidiscli), Nicker ("Old Nick") and more of the same sort. This genesis and decay of words ; the gradual changes in their signification and the various modes of word-for- mation by composition, together with the transformation in sound and appearance that words undergo in the course of their history exhibit to us the different aspects which the German language presented in the different periods of its existence. But the transitions from phase to phase are very gradual, so that it can never be said, one period ends here and another era begins with this date. Every abso- lutely new word is from the nature of the case, an instan- taneous creation. There are a number of words and phrases to the genesis of which a tolerably definite date can be assigned. Yet this only means that certain ex- pressions are used for the first time in the writings of a 180 given author ; but these may have been in oral use long before it occurred to any one to write them down. The number of periodicals and the multifarious interests and tastes represented by them is so great in our day that al- most all words and expressions orally used soon find their way into print. Strictly speaking, a definite birth-year can be assigned to a word only when it is given to a new discovery or invention by the discoverer or inventor, and such words are generally adaptations from some other language, as telephone, phonograph, cablegram, etc. The modern word ' gas,' is a good example of new coinage in the true sense. Its discoverer, Van Helmont, says he will call the newly discovered compound ' gas,' though he has furnished no clue to the name. It is probable, however, that he had in mind some form of the word Geist, ghost, or geest. With the introduction of the thing into the dif- ferent countries of the civilized world the name also made its way. Luther designates beherzigen, ersprieszlicJi and tugendreich as new words in his day. Gehen zvir, nehmen wir'vn. the sense of wir wollen gehen, zvir wollen nehmen came into use in the last century. Lessing seems to have first employed empfindsam and weincrlich; Jahn, turnen, volkstum and volkstiimlich ; abrilsten is of still more recent origin. Durchblilhen was coined by Uhland. But the decay and ultimate extinction of words is a gradual process, just as new words gain currency step by step. In some cases not all the parts of a compound word pass out of use at the same time. The English auxiliaries are now more or less defective, yet it is almost certain that at an early period of the language they were as complete as any other verb. Most of the missing parts can still be supplied from the A.-S. In German the participles of a number of verbs still exist as adjectives, though the verbs themselves have become obsolete : among these are aufgedunsen, abgefeimt and entruckt. Sometimes substantives live on in certain combinations with prepositions, as tn die Irre, in der Irre A History of the German Language 181 gehen, zu Ruste gehen. In the second part of Brautigam, the Eng. ' bridegroom ' where the r is sporadic, we have the Gothic ' guma,' later ' gomo,' Latin 4 homo ;' in Karjreitag, there is preserved an old ' kara,' complaint, pain ; and durchblauen (drub) has no connection with blau, but has as its verbal part an obsolete bleucn (beat). But again, there is no uniformity in the manner and rapidity with which the changes in the different depart- ments of a language take place. Words and mean- ings that in one locality or in one class of society have long fallen into desuetude continue in current use in others. Sailors, for example, still use the term Wanten to designate knit gloves, an old German word preserved in ' gant,' ' guanto,' the modern French and Italian designa- tion for gloves. Many archaic words are also found in the language of the chase ; as, for instance, abprosseh, means to bite off buds. Here we have a reminiscence of the M. H. G., broz (bud). RaJimen means iiberholen, and is from the M. H. G. ramen (strive after), while w'olfen is the same as gebaten and is related to M. H. G., welf, Eng. whelp.' THE INFLUENCE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES ON THE GERMAN. The language of a people mirrors not only its intellect- ual and spiritual development, but also, in a large measure, its civilization and political history. By using language as a guiding thread we may find what intercourse a nation has had with other nations ; what influence it has exerted on them, and to what influences it has in turn been sub- ject ; for there is probably no language in existence that has not taken up and assimilated foreign elements to a greater or less extent. It was not the privilege of the German people to work out their own destiny free from foreign interference, and their language bears abundant traces along the course of its entire history of the influence exerted upon it by the various nations with whom they came in contact. Notwithstanding this fact there is 182 A History of the German Language reason to believe that no language of Western Europe contains so large a proportion of words of native stock as the German. Still the question is one to which it is at present impossible to give a definite answer. Two lan- guages may come into contact with each other in one or more different ways. There may be a direct intercourse between two nations speaking different languages but liv- ing in territorial contiguity ; or one nation may conquer the lands of another ajid settle upon them, or a country may be invaded by a foreign army but which comes with no intention of remaining permanently. Instances of the first are common ; the conquest of Gaul by the Romans and of England by the Normans are familiar instances of the second, while the various military expeditions of the French into Germany and Italy furnish examples of the third case. Under such circumstances the number of foreign words introduced will be few and generally of a kind that designate thoughts and things with which the borrowers were hitherto unacquainted. They belong for the most part to the class of substantives ; borrowed verbs and adjectives are comparatively rare. It lies in the nature of the case that almost every portion of the earth possesses objects not found elsewhere and that the name of these objects will spread hence to the surrounding nations. But new qualities and new modes of action will rarely be met with. The contact of one language with another is not necessarily the result of intercourse between individuals and through the medium of the ear ; it may be purely in- tellectual resulting from the perusal of the printed page. When contact takes place in the way first indicated only a few persons are generally participants and the number of languages is necessarily limited to two or at most to three. But their reciprocal influence will be much greater than in the second case. Here the appropriation of foreign words is conscious and intentional, usually the result of a fair A History of the German Language 183 knowledge of the language from which the appropriation is made. It may therefore happen that persons will intro- duce into their native speech along with some foreign words that are a real gain others that are entirely superflu- ous. As a foreign language is always of later acquisition than the mother tongue and is, moreover, the result of an effort of will, some of its words and phrases enter so readily into one's consciousness as to take the place of native words that are adequate and equally expressive. Then too, a pride of knowledge often leads to the use of foreign words. Not only are occasional substantives introduced but even verbs and adjectives. Now and then the mode of inflection shows traces of a foreign model ; the interior life of the language has been affected. This is more likely to be the case when words of native stock have for some time been exposed to the corrupting influence of a foreign tongue and retain in their form the traces of that influence. In both English and German there are a number of pure Teutonic words that have been reintroduced from the French but which still bear the marks of their sojourn among foreigners. A word may be coined in a more or less close imitation of a foreign word to express a concept for which no native word exists, or at least is known ; or a native word may undergo a gradual change of meaning under foreign influences ; or compounds may be con- structed according to foreign models of sentence-composi- tion. The various ways here spoken of, in which the language of a people has been instrumental in modifying that of another are for the most part impersonal and con- fined to the higher classes. Words acquired from for- eigners through direct personal intercourse are not usually the result of conscious effort or intelligent adaptation. In this case the influence of the individual counts for less than in the former. In the one case foreign words are in- troduced by the educated and in the other, appropriated by the illiterate in the spirit of imitation. The earliest 184 A History of the German Language borrowings are those that result from the contiguity of settlements of two nations speaking different languages and the later acquisitions that is, those that grow out of the systematic study of a foreign tongue, are made after a higher degree of civilization and a more advanced stage of culture has been attained. The German language has taken up foreign elements from the earliest period of its existence or at least from the earliest period accessible to historical research. But, of course, the nearer we approach its origin, the less the . confidence with which we can assert the extraneous origin of words that have an un-German appearance ; and the difficulty is the greater because in many cases it is impos- sible to discover, in regard to certain words, who were the borrowers and who the lenders ; or to express the fact otherwise, when the essential parts of a word are common to two languages, it is often difficult to decide which is the older when we have no other means of determining the relative age of the languages. The oldest words adopted by the German are names of metals and cultivated plants. We are in position to assert with reasonable confidence that silver and hemp do not bear native German designations, but from what people they were borrowed it is as yet impossible to say. We can form only more or less plausible conjectures. Their adoption must have taken place long before the division of the primative German into the later Germanic dialects. Somewhat subsequently, but nevertheless still in the pre- historic period, the Germans came in contact with Finns and Kelts. That there must have been considerable intercourse between Finns and Germans is evident from the unmistakable traces of their language in that of the former. Some of these adopted words have undergone such modifications that their original form can be inferred only from the application of the phonetic laws of the Teutonic. The influence of the Finnish upon the German A History of the German Language 185 has left but faint traces ; from which we may safely assume that their civilization during the period of contact was of a lower type. The relations between the Kelts and Germans were more intimate and of longer continuance ; in fact, it was Keltish territory upon which the Southern and Western Germanic tribes planted their settlements. The Keltic background is plainly seen in proper names. Rhine, Main, Danube, Melibocus, Vosges, Mainz, Worms, of which the Latin forms are Rhenus, Maenus, Dan- ubius, Maguntia, Vogesus, Borbetomagus, are names that have a clearly discernable Keltic ancestry. Keltic names are likewise of frequent occurrence in England, almost every river bearing an appellative that still retains traces of the nomenclators in spite of subsequent Roman and Teutonic invaders. Isaac Taylor, in his " Words and Places," says : " Over the greater part of Europe in Germany, France, Italy, Spain we find villages which bear Teutonic or Romance names, standing on the banks of streams which still retain their ancient Celtic appella- tions. Throughout the whole of England there is hardly a single river-name which is not Celtic." One of the most remarkable items of evidence testifying to Keltic influence is the German word retch. Its present meaning is 'rich,' but it originally meant 'mighty' or powerful; a trace of this signification is still present in the noun Reich, meaning ' realm ' or ' empire.' The word is related to the Latin rex, reg-num, but phonetic laws prove that it can have come only from the Keltic into the German. Its root is found in such proper names as Dumnorix, Vercingetorix, from which it would appear that even in political matters the ancient Germans were not entirely outside the pale of Keltic influence. The words Dime, Falke, Habicht and Pferch are likewise sup- posed to be of Keltic ancestry, and have their living English representatives in 'down' (a plateau), 'falcon,' ' hawk ' and ' park.' The influence of the Latin upon the 13 186 A History of the German Language German may likewise be traced to prehistoric times. It can be noticed as early as the beginning of the Christian era and continues still. But it differed greatly at different times, and it is not always possible to determine whether a given word was transferred into the German directly from the Latin, or indirectly, by way of a Romance language. The earliest loan-words aie popular in form, and have come in partly through the early intercourse between Germany and Italy, and partly by way of the Roman settlements in the Southern and Western por- tions of Germany. It was through the Romans that the Germans first made the acquaintance of a number of animals and plants. Among these were the elephant, the pea-cock (Pfau}, the fabulous dragon (Drachen}, the pear (Birne), the fig (Feige), the cherry (Ktrsche), the cole or caul (Kohl\ the gourd (Kiitbis), the lily (Lilie), the almond (Mandel), the mulbeny (Maulbeere}, pep- per (Pfeffer), the radish (Rettich}, the rose (Rose}, etc. Pflanze, Frucht and Marmor are also from the Latin. NOTE. It may be well to remind the reader that in placing to- gether several words because they are related it is not intended to in- dicate anything as to the nearness of their relationship. For example, dragon and Drachen mean the same thing and were originally the same word, though the former is only indirectly derived from the latter through the medium of the French. A direct descendant of Drachen is found in the obsolete drake-fly. In like manner Latin calx, Ger. kalk and Eng. ' chalk ' are the same word, but chalk and calx do not mean the same thing. The resemblance of chalk to lime evidently led to the confusion of terms. The study of etymol- ogy reveals many similar mistakes. Nothing can be affirmed with certainty about the etymology of a word until it has been carefully studied by the light of established phonetic laws. Mere external resemblances are entirely misleading. Of the above words it may be well to trace briefly a few through some of the changes through which they have passed. The original of Kwbis is cucurbita, the French forms of it being coourde, gohourde and others with initial c and g. In the early English it is likewise spelled several different ways but they all have the initial g showing that in the dialect which was its prototype this letter prevailed. Whether the Germans them- selves shortened the Latin form or received it after it had already A History of the German Language 187 been so changed is not yet established. Knrois and ' gourd ' are not, however, exactly equivalent in meaning. The Latin marmor, which is also the German form though the gender is different, appears in the Romance languages as rnarme, marmo, marmore, marmel, marbre, etc., and in English as 'marbre,' 'marbel,' marble,' usage finally settling upon the last as the normal form. Mandel and al- mond were originally the same word. Its earliest Latin prototype is amendela. In the Romance tongues it appears as almendela, ale- mandle and alemandre. The O. H. G. form is mandala, correspond- ing to the Italian mandala, but other languages, among them the English, have retained the initial syllable. The interchangeable 1 and r in the final syllable is the same phenomenon that we see in the final syllable of marble. The higher civilization of the Romans made its impress upon the German language in three different directions : in architecture, in viticulture and horticulture, and in the culinary art. Under the first head belong such words as Kalk, Pflaster (Lat. plastrum, Eng. plaster, later, a paved way), Strasze (Lat. strata, Eng. street), Platz (platea), Mauer (murus), Pfosten (postern), Pforte (porta), Kerker (career, retained in the Eng. incarcerate), Keller (cel- larium), Turin (turrem), Pfalz (palatium), tiinchen (related to tunica) Ziegel (tigillum), Schindel (scandula and scin- dula). Under the second head we have to place Wein (vinum), Most (mustum), Winzer (vinitorem), keltern (cal- citrare) , /n?/>/, 0, and tie appear in Modern German as /, u, and z/, that is, //^/"becomes lief^ guot becomes^/ and grtiesen becomes gruszen. This process of simplification begins to show itself at the close of the M. H. G. period and seems to have started in Central Germany. The Bavarian and the Ale- manian, however, retain the old diphthongs to the present day, with here and there a slight change in the second yowel, though the variation is not quite the same in the A History of the German Language 225 two dialects. In the Alemanian the words Bube, Blut, Gut, Hut, of the N. H. G. are Bueb, Bluet^ Guet, and Huet, but in the Bavarian, usually, Buab, Bluat, etc. In view of the fact that the long i-sound of the Modern German generally originated from ie, it is easy to understand how this diphthong comes to be written for every long /, in- cluding even those cases where it has a different origin. Such instances are numerous. It is easy to observe that in the same word the radical vowel sound is sometimes pronounced long and sometimes short, either because cer- tain words exhibit a long, others a short vowel ; or because the same vowel is at one time pronounced short and at another, long. We have, for example, wir nehmen, ihr nehmt, but er nimmt, du nimmst, nimm, where the double consonant is the sign of a short vowel; geben, wir geben, but du gibst, er gibt, gib or giebst, giebt, gieb. The pronun- ciation of des Gldses, des Tages, des Weges is universal ; but the South Germans say Glas, Tag, Weg, while in North Germany one often hears Glas, Tag and Weg. In like manner we get Herzog and Hersog, jenseits and jenseits. How are these variations to be explained? The reply is that where the same word exists in two forms that have but a single signification it is probable that one represents the regular process of phonetic development, but that the other is due to the force of analogy, a process that has been briefly explained on p. 122. Applying these principles to the cases just cited we find that the North German pro- nunciation exhibits the original, that is, das Glas, des Gldses. Going back to the M. H. G. we find glas, glases, in conformity with a law according to which a short vowel in the M. H. G. always appears long in the N. H. G. when it stands before a single consonant followed by another vowel. In closed syllables the radical vowel remains short except that the presence of an r makes an exception to this rule. This lengthening process first appears in Mid- dle Germany and in the M. H. G. period. In the case of 226 A History of the German Language closed syllables that contain a long vowel contrary to the law here laid down, the phenomenon is to be attributed to the influence of those forms which contained an open rad- ical syllable : that is, the reflex influence of Glases pro- duced Glas and of wir gaben modified er gap into er gab. In the same manner the primitive weg became Weg through influence of Weges ; the adverbial weg (away) is simply the accusative of this noun which has maintained its original short vowel because its connection with the substantive ceased to be felt. It is true there are excep- tions to the law that the vowel of an open syllable is al- ways long. If the simple consonant following the radical vowel is in turn followed by e\-l, e+n or e+r the radical vowel may be either long or short. We accordingly find both Makel and Makel, gesotten, M. H. G. gesoten, but^v?- boien though the M. H. G. is geboten, wider, the M. H. G. form also, and wieder, besides Vater, with the dialect form V&tter and its derivative Vetter. These apparent irregu- larities have not yet been satisfactorily explained. The same vowel sounds that have in some cases re- mained short have in others become short though orig- inally long. We find nie alongside of nimmer, the old form being niemer, that is, me mer. That Putter and Mutter were once Filter and Muter is shown by the Alemanian and Bavarian forms Fiteter and Mueter. That the ancestors of Blatter and Jammer are blAter andjdmer is proven by the wide spread dialectic forms Bloter and Jomer ; for in many dialects still current the vowel 6 rep- resents not only the 6 of older words, but is not unfre- quently a development of an original a. The literary High German contains a number of words taken from dif- ferent dialects that exhibit this change from long a to long o. Thus, we find existing alongside of each other Atem and Odem, Wahn and Argwohn, Magsamen and Mohn, etc. Mond is mane in M. H. G. and the ancestor of Wage is wac. Further back in the history of the German Ian- A History of the German Language 227 guage than all these variations we find the process taking place which the Germans call Umlaut. This is a modifi- cation of the radical or root vowel. It is thus that Krafte is formed from kraft, mochte from mochte, Hduser from haws, trdumt from traum, filhre from fuhr. In all cases the unmodified vowel is the original. It will thus be seen that the same root, though not the same form of it, con- tains both the shorter and less open vowels a, o and n, as well as their variants , o and ii. Now it can be shown by the history of the German as well as by that of other languages that a is more primitive than , o, than o, etc. The N. H. G. furnishes some hints on the origin of the unmodified vowels : we have, for example, Kraft and kraftig, Rom and romisch, Thor and thoricht, Ruhm and ruhmltch, kosten and kostlich, Graf and grcifin, with a host of others. It will be seen that in all these instances the modified vowel is followed by an i in the next syllable ; and the fact is that as long ago as the O. H. G. period it was this i that brought about the change in the preceding vowel : for even those words from which it has now dis- appeared once had it. In the O. H. G. period krafti cor- responded to the modern Krafte, mochti to mochte, husir to Hduser, troumit to trdumt, fuori to filhre. We may, there- fore, define Umlaut as the modification of a vowel by the influence of a subsequent i. There are some words in German which seem to have a modified vowel in the root form and a primitive vowel in some of the derivative forms. This is sometimes called Rilckumlant on the supposition that the second change is simply a return to the original form. Examples are bren- nen, preterite brannte; rennen, preterite rannte; senden, preterite sandte ; schon and schbn, fast and fest. In fact, however, appearances are here deceptive. It is the cus- tom of grammarians to designate certain words or sylla- bles as radical, or primitive, and others as derivative. The base of the verb is usually found in the present tense, 228 A History of the German Language that of the noun in the singular number, and that of the adverb in the adjective. But the theory does not always correspond with the facts, and does not in the above ex- amples, since brannte, schon and fast exhibit the primi- tive, unmodified vowel, while brennen is derived from brannian, fest from fasti, and schon from sconi. The sound represented by e in the N. H. G., of which the ancestor is a, is written in two ways, either as a or e ; in like manner the Umlaut of au, as du or en. The modi- fied a (a] is employed when there is a real or fancied con- nection between it and the original or radical #, as Band and Bander, Wahl and wdhlen, Haus and Hauser, Traum traumen; on the other hand, e is used where the connec- tion has been forgotten, as streng, O. H. G. strangi; leugnen, M. H. G. lougnen, O. H. G. louginon. These are cases in which the same radical vowel exist in a number of deriva- tives, in some of which it is felt and in others not. For example, faJire is the ancestor not only of Fdhrte and Fahrmann, but also of Ferge ( ferry-man ) and fertig; to Schlacht belong not only Schldchter, but also Geschlecht, which originally meant the same with Schlag, as may be seen in MenscJienschlag (race, type of men). In the study of these and similar phenomena the reader needs to keep constantly in mind that the spoken lan- guage preceded the written by a long interval, and that even after writing had come into vogue to some extent there were thousands who used their native speech orally only. When words began to be put on parchment and paper their pronunciation had been in the main fixed, and could rarely be modified. Besides, most languages are written a long time before the etymological relations of words are understood, and the efforts of scholars, where they have tried to represent these relations, have for the most part remained without permanent results. Different from, and yet closely related to the umlaut, is the breaking or splitting of a vowel. In many cases the 229 same radical vowel contains both e (a) and /, as in gebdren and gebiert, Erde and irden, Herde and Hirte. These changes have likewise been wrought by the influence of the final vowel. In the O. H. G. the words above given were phonetically represented by gaberan gabirit, erda irdin, Jierta hirti. In all cases the radical vowel of the stem is *-, as may be seen in the corresponding Latin and Greek words fero and vyij. At the basis of these changes lie the general principles of vocalization common to the entire stock of Indo- European languages : the accented syllables have for the most part stronger vowels and the unaccented weaker and thinner vowels. The underlying causes we do not understand, and they will doubtless remain forever impen- etrable. All we can say is that human thought and feel- ing are wont to manifest themselves through speech in this way. There is in man an inherent dislike of monot- ony, and variety is produced by running up and down, or by touching now this and now that note of the vowel scale. In order to avoid repetition the general subject of vowel gradation will be more fully discussed in the chap- ter which treats of the inflection of the verb. When we compare German substantives and adjectives with their cognates in Latin we at once notice the ab- sence of endings in the former compared with the latter. We have Halm but calamus, Wind but ventus, Fisch but piscis, Haul (M. H. G. Mi) but cutis, Jock (Gothic juK) but jugum, Hals but collum, collus and colsum, Horn but cornu. This difierence did not exist in the remotest times ; but after the general Germanic tongue had broken up into its various branches, we find, even earlier than the existence of any literary monuments, a tendency to neglect, in pro- nunciation, the final syllables. First final s and m began to be dropped ; and later the vowels shared the same fate. We have already mentioned that the weakening of the ultimate syllables characterizes the transition from the O. H. G. to the M. H. G. Similar phenomena are again observable in the development of the N. H. G. from the 232 M. H. G. We have des Tages or des Tags, dem Tage or Tag, Werkes or Werks, Wcrke or Werk; but usually des Landtags, dem Landtag, Handwerks and Handwerk, but not Landtages or Handwetke. Des Konigs, dem Konig are used in preference to des Koniges, dem Konige. Alongside of Friede we have its derivative friedlich ; alongside of Heide, nieder and Himmel, the relative words heidnisch, niedrig and himmlisch. In nearly all cases we observe apocope of final e in unaccented syllables. In those words where this let- ter has been suppressed in the middle of a word it was likewise unaccented. The German present participles are almost always traceable to fuller forms, as, for example, lebend to lebende. Wirtinn represents the M. H. G. wir- tinne, Weisung M. H. G. wisunge, Hetzog herzoge, Hduslin hiuselin. In N. H. G. dissyllables an unaccented e is sometimes retained, and sometimes suppressed or apoco- pated, a fact that may be explained by the place of this letter in connected discourse. As a further illustration of the tendency to abbreviate, it may be stated that in the German dialects which have not attained the dignity of literary rank many words are still more abbreviated than in the written speech. Nearly all those words which have come from the A.-S. into English have been shortened unless they were monosyllables, where abbreviation was impossible. In like manner the French, which is hardly more than corrupt Latin, is almost entirely made up of words that have lost one or more syllables in their passage from the ancient to the modern language. In some cases syllables that were originally but feebly accented suffered mutilation even when their vowel was full-toned. Jungfer and Junker are referable to older Jungfrau and Jungherr ; Nachbar (neighbor) may be traced to the M. H. G. nachbure, one who abides near, the modern German words Bauer and bauen having developed a some- what different signification. The doubles Schultze and Schultheisz take us back to the M. H. G. schultheize. Zwei- A History of the German Language 233 tel, Drittel contain the word Teil in the final syllable, while Urteil and Vorteil are also found as Urthel and Vorthel. These last double forms resulted either from their receiv- ing a heavier or lighter accent, as the case might be, in connected discourse ; or they for a time followed the gen- eral law above enunciated until with the spread of intelli- gence it began to be perceived that -thel is really a sepa- rate word, when it was restored to its original form. The latter is the most probable explanation, as illiterate per- sons still use the lighter syllable. In general the dialects, especially those of South Germany, carry the process of abbreviation and lightening farther than the literary lan- guage. Hebel, a native of Basel, who wrote largely in the Alemanian uses Arfel, Hampfel, Mump/el, for Armvoll, Handvoll and Mundvoll. Wingert signifies Weingarten, while Rechnig and Zitig mean Rechnung and Zeitung. The most important phenomenon noticeable among the conso- nants is due to what is known as the law of the rotation of mutes. We have been constrained to examine this part of our subject earlier because the division of the German language into its various dialects is chiefly dependent thereon. Apart from this single fact the changes which the consonants have undergone are far less important and far reaching than those through which the vowels have passed. The influence of this law may be traced back to that early stage of the language when it had not yet broken up into its various dialects. Here, for instance, we find that t can stand only after a spirant. In this way we can explain the relation Imogen to Macht, of pflegen to Pflicht, of tragen to Tracht, of geben to Gift (originally the same as Gabe, as may be seen in Mitgift. Cf. for a similar development of meaning our word dose, from Socris) and of treibe to Trift. It is true we have klagte, sagle, liebte and lobte, but this is owing to the fact that in former times there was a vowel between the g and the /, which was dropped long after the law had ceased to be operative. In 16 234 A History of the German Language the earliest Germanic period, when the language was still in a stage of which no records have come down to us, there was in force a law which did not permit the use of a w at the end of a word. Where this letter happened to be final it was changed into o, rarely u. The nominative milo (Eng. meal) makes its genitive melwes. The final vowel was first weakened to e and this was in some cases dropped, but medial w was changed to b after / and r. In this way we get Mehl alongside of Milbe (older form milwe, the insect that makes meal) and Melberei, the Bavarian designation of a flour-store ; likewise gat with gerben which originally meant ' to make ready.' Sometimes medial / was transferred to the end of a word, in which cases we have usually doublets, as fahl and falb, or gelb alongside of the dialectic gehl. The O. H. G. forms were falo, Gen. falwes, gelo Gen. gelwes, the Eng. equivalents being ' fal- low' and ' yellow.' In the M. H. G. we meet with many cases where the consonant is different according as it stands in the middle or at the end of a word. In the N. H. G. the influence of analogy has generally obliterated these differences, but some isolated instances remain which show the effects of the law. In the first place, every me- dial sonant in M. H. G. is changed into a final surd : tac has for its genitive tages, sane sanges, liet liedes, lop lobes. In the N. H. G. the medial consonant is transferred to the end, that is, we have, by the force of analogy Tag, Lied, Lob, because the genitives have the form above given. When we examine the endings -ng and -nk we find that in Northern Germany the old forms have to some extent per- sisted, which gives such pronunciations as Gesank, though written Gesang, Gesanges, ich gink, wir gingen. In isolated cases the final letter or letters of a word have taken the place of the medial. We have, for instance, the N. H. G. Mark Markes while the M. H. G. is marc marges, and in ausmergeln the original g is retained. Der Wert, des Wertes belongs to the same category with wurde and was wert A History of the German Language 235 werdes in the M. H. G. In like manner Welt Welien points to M. H. Q.iventiverlde. In those cases where in the Low German initial g was pronounced as a spirant it was changed into final ch, and it is by this law that we can ex- plain such forms as Menge alongside of manch mancher for the older manech maneger, M. H. G. manec maneger. In the second place, medial h of M. H. G. corresponds to ch final, as sehen, ichsach, schuoch schuoches. But in the N. H. G. this h has taken the place of ch so that we find not only sehen, but also ich sah and der Schuh. The older relation remains only in hoch ho her am hbchsten, and partly in nah with the superlative ndchst and in the adverb nach. Alongside of schmahen we have Schmach; the M. H. G. form of rauh was ruch which persists in the modern Rauch- werk, a collection of furs. The old nominative is main- tained in the proper name Schuchardt, which in M. H. G. was schuoch worhte, that is, ' shoe-worker.' There is evident in the M. H. G. as in the N. H. G. a tendency to pro- nounce contiguous consonants with the same vocal organs, or rather, with the vocal organs in the same position, in order to greater ease of utterance. In this way the two consonants are brought as near together as possible. In ordinary conversation we do not say anbeiszen or einbrechen. but ambeiszen and eimbrechen; but in deliberate discourse generally, and almost always in spelling, this phonetic tendency is neutralized by the influence of analogy in words whose prefixes are maintained in their integrity, as, for instance, anhalten, anlaufen, anstoszen, einatmen, einlegen, eintranken, etc. Assimilation, however, takes place in some cases where the etymological relation of the prefix has been forgotten. For this reason empfangen and emp- finden used for entfangen and entfinden ; empfehlen for entfehlen, Imbisz for Inbisz, Himbeere for Hindbeere (berries which the hind likes), Hamburg for Hohenburg, Schaumberg for Schauenberg, Wimper for Windbraue (the brow that moves), cf. the Eng. wend, move, turn about. Complete assimilation 236 A History of the German Language has taken place in Eilanthr Einland (the land that is alone) ; in Grummet for Griinmahd (grass that is mowed while green, aftermath); in Hoffahrt for Hochfahrt, and in some other instances. The law of assimilation as we see it ex- emplified in German is of wide-spread application. In Latin and Greek a number of prepositional prefixes are accommodated to the initial sound of the word with which they are joined, among them the same prefix ' in ' or ev we have been considering above. There are two other phon- etic peculiarities of the German that are to be noted. First, final r was dropped before a consonant and presisted before a vowel. We have thus da but darin and darum; wo, but worin and warum (dialectic woruni}, and alongside of ehe and hie we find eher and hier. This final r is retained in the English cognates there, where and ere, the A.-S. equivalents being aer, hwaer and thaer respectively. Sec- ond, the combination ag and eg are sometimes changed to ei. In the M. H. G. occur both Magd and Maid, Vogt and Voit, Hag and Hain. Getreide is related to tragen and sig- nifies that which is carried, clothing, baggage, etc. (M. H. G. getregede). Verteidigen is derived from the M. H. G. tagedinc (Gerichtstag], its older form being vertagedingen, to bring before a court of justice or arbitration. Reinhard and Reinecke have no connection with the adjective rein, but the first syllable is a shortened form of regin, an old Germanic word which was nearly equivalent to Rat. Partly in the M. H. G. and partly in the N. H. G. we find a tendency in and s, when at the end of a syllable, to generate a succeeding d which under some circumstances is changed into f. Though we have gelegen and offen we say gelegentlich and bffentlich; entzwei and entlang are traceable to enzwei and enlang, which are simply in zwei and in lang, or ' in two ' or ' along.' Jemand and Niemand are in full je(eiri)Mann, and nie(ein) Mann; zusammt is equal to zusa- ment which in turn is zusamen; einst, mittelst and selbsl represent an older eines, mittels and selbes, and A History of the German Language 237 are adverbial genitives of ein, Mittel and selb. Papst is in M. H. G. babes from the Greek Trc^-as, while the dialectic jez(ie ze) corresponds to the H. G. jetzt. Another phonetic change that began in the M. H. G. stage of the language in Middle and Lower (or Northern) Ger- many and afterward spread over Upper Germany is the disappearance of an h between two vowels which then coalesced. It is owing to this phenomenon that h came to be used to lengthen the preceding vowel. The Germans write Stahl, zehen, Buhl, because M. H. G. exhibits stahel, zehen and buhel. The change of an older rs into rsch is confined to the H. G. The Low German Bars is repre- sented by the South or H. G. Barsch, Kng. barse or bass. The Lombard word verza, a kind of cabbage, reappears in the modern German Wirsching. A peculiarity of the L. G. is the assimilation of h before s, so that Ochsen becomes Ossen, while Fucks and* wachsen are pronounced Vosz and wassen. The M. H. G. tw was sometimes doubled. In South Germany it appears as zw and in Middle Germany as kw or qu. Quer reappears in Zwerchfell and in uber- zwerch, M. H. G. twerch; qudngeln is related to H. G. twingen. THE INFLECTIONS OF THE NEW HIGH GERMAN. THE SUBSTANTIVES. The N. H. G. noun exhibits great variety in its inflec- tions. This is particularly noticeable in the cases of the singular and in the relation that exists between the singu- lar and the plural. The latter is, on the other hand, sub- ject to but little variation : either its cases are all alike, or the nominative corresponds to the genitive and accusa- tive and the dative takes an additional -n. In the first category belong those words that form the nominative 238 A History of the German Language plural in -n or -en, such as Drachen, Ochsen, Bauern, Wur zeln, etc.; in the second such words as Nom. Plur. die Tage, Dat. den Tagen;die Worter, Dat. den Wortern. Taking the genitive singular and the plural as bases we have, in mod- ern German, the following types : 1. The genitive singular ends in -es or -s, the plural ending in -e: (a). Der Tag, die Tage, (b). Der Cast, die G'dste, (c). Das Ding, die Dinge ; or in -er, (d.) Das Huhn, die Hiihner; or in -n, (e.) Das Ende, die Enden; or is without a characteristic ending, (f ). Der Eber, die Eber ; der Wagen, die W'dgen, (g). Der Kdse, die Kdse, (h). Das Gebirge, die Gebirge. 2. The genitive has no inflection, as in all feminines, the plural ending in -e: (a). Die Kraft, die Kr'dfte ; die Kuh, die Kuhe ; or in - or -en, (b). Die Klage, die Klagen; die Katze, die Katzen, (c). Die Saat, die Saaten ; die Insel, die Inseln; or is without a characteristic ending, (d). Die Mutter, die Mutter, die Tochter, die Tochter. 3. All other cases of the singular and plural have an additional -n as compared with the nominative sin- gular : (a). Der Bote, die Boten; der Knabe, die Knaben, (b). Der Graf, die Graf en; der Mensch, die Mcnschen. These paradigms differ from those of the M. H. G. in two respects : first, the N. H. G. exhibits a greater variety of forms ; and, second, diverse forms have coalesced into one. The types marked above 1. (a), (b), (d), (g), (h) ; 2. (a), and 3. (a), are the only ones represented in the A History of the German Language 239 older language. It will be seen that the modern forms are twice as numerous as the more ancient. The types represented by Tag and Cast date from the M. H. G. stage, and we have before stated the reason why words of one syllable and words of more than one are dif- ferently inflected. But when we go back to the O. H. G. stage we find a divergence in the plurals. The words tac or tag (day) and gast (guest) are thus declined in the plural : Nom. taga, gestt, Gen. tago, gestio, Dat. tagum, gestim, Ace. taga, gesti. Here the forms of the second word show the reason of the umlaut in the plural of Gast. In a still older stage of the language, one of which no monuments have come down to us, but about which many conclusions may be drawn by inference, there was also a difference in the end- ings of the singular. Der Tag, den Tag were once tagos and tagom; der Gast, den Gast were gastis and gastim, where we have terminations corresponding to the Latin 'lupus' and 'lupum,' 'turns' and ' turrim.' It may be well to call attention to the fact that in the above examples only -s and -m can properly be regarded as case-endings. What remains after the removal of these is the stem (or root), and since one of them ends in -o and the other in -i they belong to the class of vowel stems. They may be still further differentiated by being classed as o-stems and i-stems. It is also to be observed that the Latin ' lupus ' was ' lupos ' in an earlier stage of the language, just as the German tagum was tagom and taga was tagons. Moreover, the final o of the German stems was pronounced with a close approximation to a ; indeed, it may have passed en- tirely into the sound of this letter before it dropped off. Now, since the two types had become alike in the M. H. G. stage, except the stem vowel of the plural, it is easy to see that the paradigms would sometimes be confused. 240 A History of the German Language It has happened that the M. H. G. umlaut was dropped in the N. H. G., as where lehse and liihse have become Lachse and Luchse. A great majority of the o-stems have followed the same course with the word Cast G'dste. Hof Hofe was in M. H. G. hof hove, and in O. H. G. hof hova; the old form without umlaut is latent in the names of places like Adelshofen and Konigshofen, which are in fact datives plural. The same is true of the names end- ing in -%on } occurring so frequently in the the vicinity of Lake Zurich, such as Pj'dffikon, Sissikon, Zetzikon, where the final syllable is a contraction of -ichofen. Doublets like Schachte and Sch'dchte, Drucke and Abdriicke and Ein- driicke, are due to the permanence of an older form and the creation of a corresponding modernized new one. In some instances the dialects exhibit forms with umlaut where the literary language has retained the vowel with- out change, as, for instance, the Alemanian Arm for Arme, and Franconian Dag for Tage. The type der Eber die Eber is in a sense a transformation of the type repre- sented by Tag Tage. The older forms of the latter word tac tages, Plur. tage, represents the M. H. G. declension of eber eberes, Plur. die ebere; himel, himeles, Plur. die himele; wagen wagenes, Plur. die wagene. But since in these words the final was preceded by an unaccented syllable, its vowel was suppressed in the N. H. G. in accordance with a phonetic law explained on p. 232, and the older forms were shortened into Eber Ebers, Plur. die Eber. Since, now, the nominative and accusative plural had be- come identical with the same cases in the singular it was natural to make a distinction in some way. This was done by introducing the umlaut which was a character- istic of the i-stems. Compare Hafen Hafen, Hammer Hammer, Nagel Nagel, Ofen Ofen, Vater Vater, Vogel V6gelvi\\h the older havene, nagele, etc. In this category we have likewise both old and new forms still existing alongside of each other, but only among words terminat- A History of the German Language 241 ing in -en, as die Bogen and die Bogen, die Laden and die Laden, die Wagen and die Wagen. In the older language the type represented by the neuter das Ding die Dinge was closely related to the masculine o-stems represented by der Tag die Tage. The only points of divergence were in the nominative and accusative plural where one had die tage and the other diu dine in other words, the neuter lacked final e. A tendency to bring these two types into harmony begins to manifest itself in the M. H. G. stage, and by the time the language has reached the N. H. G. period but very few words remained unaffected: such are Lot, Mass, Pfund, Stuck, and others used in con- nection with numbers. This usage became a type to which both masculines and feminines in the course of time conformed. Accordingly we not only say zwanzig Pfund, zwanzig Stiick, but also zwanzig Fusz, zwanzig Zoll, zwanzig Ohm (Eng. aam, awm) or Saum and Last. As we have shown above, some neuters form their plurals in -er : the M. H. G. of huon is hiiener. In the older lan- guage this type embraced a smaller number of examples than now come under it. Many of its modern representa- tives belonged to other categories in the O. H. G., or at least had the alternate ending without -er; for example, Haupt had the M. H. G. plural diu houbet only, but the modern form is Hdupter. The older form survives in proper names, such as Berghaupten and Roshaupten, both datives plural. The same statement applies to Feld, Plur. die Felder, but in the M. H. G. diu velt is represented by such modern names as Degerfelden and Rheinfelden. Die Hduser corresponds to M. H G. diu hiuser and diu hus. It is represented in names of places like Rheinhausen, Schaffhausen, Sangershausen, etc. An occasional word has retained a double plural to the present day, but in every case it is evident that the ending -er is regarded as preferable ; the other is either archaic or belongs to the elevated style. Compare, e. g. Bande and Bander, Dmge 242 A History of the German Language and Dinger, Lande and Lander, Worte and Worier. A few masculines have taken the termination -er in the plural of the N. H. G. Examples are der Gets I die Geister, der Leib die Letber, der Wald die Walder, of which we have the archaic form in Unterwalden, i. e., 'unter den Waldern.' Some additional plurals similar in form are found in several dialects. The primitive Ger- manic neuter in the singular was represented by thingom or wordom, which latter corresponds to Latin 'verbum,' older 'verbom' for verbhom. In this case the true termi- nation is -m, and as it is preceded by -o- these words must be classed among the o-stems. Just as the Latin exhibits words of which ' odium ' and ' exordium ' are a type, so there are in German words in which the final o of the stern was preceded by an i. This type is represented above by das Gebirge die Gebirge, which has remained unchanged from the M. H. G. stage, the O. H. G. being daz gabirgi diu gabirgi, and before the loss of the final letter gabirgiom- gabirgio. It is thus, evidently, an io-stem. In the N. H. G. but few nouns belong to this class, and all are com- posites with the prefix ge-, such as Gefilde, Gebilde, Gefiige, Gewolbe. As they are all to a greater or less extent col- lective nouns, it was of small importance to distinguish the singular from the plural. The two words, Gelage, older form gelac, and Gestade, older form gestat, have been drawn into this class by the force of analogy, in spite of the fact that they belong to the a-stems. The absence of the umlaut is sufficient evidence that there was never an i in the final syllable. A large number of words belonging to this class have been confounded with that represented, by Ding since the two paradigms correspond externally except in the nomi- native and accusative singular. In the older N. H. G. a considerable number of the original forms in -e are retain- ed and are still occasionally used. We find both Gliick and Glucke, Gemiite and Gemiit, Kreuze and Krenz, Stiicke A History of the German Language 243 and Stuck. The plural of Gemut follows the type represent- ed by Hiihner and is Gemiiter; the dialectic plural Stilcker is common. The latter plural is not used in the familiar phrase "etn Stiicker seeks' 1 ' 1 in the sense of "etwa seeks" but is a mutilated contraction of "ein Stuck oder seeks" In the earlier stages of the language there were a few mas- culine stems ending in -io, but of these only a single one still exists in the modern German, viz., der Kase die Kdse (A.-S. cese, Eng. cheese). It is, however, not originally a Germanic word, but is a modification of the Latin ' caseus.' All the rest have taken their places under other types. A different kind of stems from those hitherto considered is represented by type 3. (a) der Bote die Boten, above. The M. H. G. inflection corresponds exactly with the N. H. G- which is Sing. Plur. The O. H. G. was Sing. Plur. Nom. Bote Boten bofo bolun Gen. Boten Boten bo tin botono Dat. Boten Boten botin botun Ace. Boten Boten botun botun. But before the force of the phonetic law had wrought comparative uniformity in the final syllables the paradigm was probably as follows : Sing. Nom. boto, Gen. botonis, Dat. botoni; Plur. Nom. botones, Ace. botonas; which corresponds pretty closely to the inflection of homo, hominis, homini, etc., in Latin. If we remove the terminations -is, -i, etc., there remains a series of stems ending in the consonant -n, which gives a paradigm closely akin to our number 3, above. These n-stems are often spoken of by grammarians as representing the weak declension as distinguished from those ending with a vowel which is called strong. In the N. H. G. the type represented by Bote split into two general classes, the final e of the nominative falling off in some cases. This took place in accordance with a phonetic law already set forth, after an unaccented syllable, in such M. H. G. words as schultheisze, steinmetze, truhsaeze which became in N. 244 A History of the German Language H. G. Schultheisz, Steinmetz, Truchsesz. Words employed as titles of honor were often used before the proper name of persons bearing them and, therefore, but slightly ac- cented. Thus it came about that final e was generally dropped even when it came after an accented syllable- Fiirst, Graf, Herr were in M. H. G. fiirste, grave, herre; whence arose our type 3. (b). The number of nouns be- longing to this class is considerably smaller than in the older language. The type represented by Graf formerly corresponded with those represented by Tag and Gast; which resulted in confounding the two and the vowel stems taking the place of the consonant stems in the para- digms. In some cases double forms are equally correct, and we may say des Bauer s or des Bauern, Plur. die Bauern; des Nachbars or des Nachbarn, Plur. die Nachbarn. We find des Marzes, dem Marz, alongside of the archaic des Marzen, im Marzen, the latter form also appearing in such compounds as Marzenbier, Marzenschnee, Marzenstaub. Some words have, however, passed completely from one class to the other, as der Herzog des Herzogs, Plur. die Herzoge; der Mond des Afondes, Plur. die Monde; der Schwan des Schwans, Plur. die Schwdne. The old geni- tives corresponding to the nominatives herzoge, mane and swane may be still seen in the compounds Herzogenbuch- see, Herzogenstand, Mondenschein, Schwanenhals. To the type represented by Wagtn that represented by Boten cor- responds in all its parts except the nominative and geni- tive singular. Compare Nom. Gen. Dat. Ace. Sing. Wagen Wagens Wagen Wagen Plur. Wagen with Sing. Bote Boten Boten Boten Plur. Boten. This general similarity led to a confusion of the two types and they were made alike in all the cases, the nomi- native in -e receiving an additional -, and the genitive in -en an additional -s. Consequently, many words that originally belonged to class 3. (a) (Bote) passed into the A History of the German Language 245 class represented by Wagen. Der Balken, der Bogen, der Braten, der Brunnen, der Daumen, der Garten, were in M. H. G. balke des balken^ boge des bogen, brate, brunne, dume ^(thumb), garte. In many compounds the old forms have, however, been conserved : IVildbret (M. H. G. wildbrat} is simply Wildbraten; the South German Winger t (M. H.G. wingarte) means Weingarten, and in Schonbrunn (a royal villa near Vienna) we have an older form of Brunnen. Three modern doublets Franken Frank, Lumpen Lump, Tropfen Tropfe are peculiar for the reason that they have arisen from the M. H. G. forms franke, lumpe and tropfe. The three former have the characteristic in common that they designate things while the latter are applied to living beings. We have thus three words signifying respectively a coin (franc), a rag, and a drop having the same origin with words signifying a Frank, a good-for-nothing fellow, and a poor devil (as in armer Tropf}. The peculiar fact here noted is of pretty wide application. In all cases where the modern nominative ends with -en it relates to things, while, on the other hand, almost all words where this case without -n persists they designate persons or animals without reason such as Affe, Ahne, Bote, Buhle, Surge, Jude, Fink or Finke, Falke, Hase, etc. A probable expla- nation of this fact is that one class has been used as a sub- ject-nominative much oftener than the other ; and the more frequently a word is used the more it is exposed to mutilation through the influence of analogy. As a com- pensation for the losses which type 3, has sustained in favor of type 1. (f ), it has also received various increments. Many words represented by the types Tag and Gast have, besides their original plurals in -e, another plural like the type represented by Graf Grafen. To this class belong die Maste die Masten, die Sinne die Sinnen, die Sliefel die Stiefeln, and alongside of Manner, which forms its plural like das Wort die Worte, we find die Mannen. Der Hirte belonged originally to the type represented by Kdse its 246 A History of the German Language form was hirti. Many words in -o, or -io have transiently belonged to type 3, and subsequently passed into the type represented by Eber or Wagen. Der Riicken is in M. H. G. der riicke des ruckes, which is the type represented by Kdse ; the next step was der Riicke des Riicken, then the present form. The original is preserved in Hundsruck (a plateau in western Germany) and also in hmterriicks, zuriick, archaic zurucke. In like manner Nutzen comes from the M. H. G. der nutz des nutzes, the old inflection being preserved in Eigennutz, sich zu Nutze machen, zii Nutz und Frommen (for use and advantage). The conso- nant stems were not originally confined to masculine nouns but were spread over the neuter and feminine n- stems as well. To the first belonged, in the M. H. G., das herze, das ore, das ouge, the last of which was declined, in the four cases of the singular, das ouge, des ougen, dem ougen, das ouge, Nom. Plur. diu ougen, Dat. den ougen. This paradigm corresponded in part with that of Gebirge and ran thus, e. g. with such words as Ende, Erbe or Hemde : daz ende, des endes, dem ende, daz ende, Plur. dtii ende, Dat den enden. The result was that a number of in- flections grew up like the modern das Auge des Auges, Plur. die Augen;das Ende, des Endes, Plur. Dat. den Enden. Herz has retained the old dative form, but makes its geni- tive like Wagen. We come next to the consideration of the feminine con- sonant stems. The word die Zunge ( tongue ) was declined in M. H. G. with final -en in all cases except the nomina- tive singular, but in O. H. G. it ran as follows: Nom. Gen. Dat. Ace. Sing, zunga zungun zungun zungun Plur. zungun zungono zungon zungun But even here the real case-endings have nearly all dropped off and -un represents the stem-ending. Along- side of this there was another feminine, as follows : A History of the German Language 247 Nom. Gen. Dat. Ace. Sing, klaga ' klagd klagu klaga Plur. klaga klagono klagon (ni) klaga Here, as may be easily seen, we are dealing with a vowel stem, and it will be noticed that it corresponded to the Latin mensa and the Greek \u>pa. ^ n the M. H. G. these two paradigms corresponded in several points, as may be readily seen on placing them side by side : Nom. Gen. Dat. Ace. Sing, zunge zungen zungen zungen Sing, klage klage klage klage Plur. zungen zungen zungen zungen Plur. klage klagen klagen klage ; whence re- sulted the modern declension of Klage Klagen. That the forms of Klage have persisted in the singular but not those of Zunge is easily understood when we notice that they exhibited a difference between the genitive and da- tive and the corresponding forms of the plural. On the other hand, the forms of klage in the singular were yielded in favor of zungen because klage was the form of the nominative and accusative in the singular. Remnants of the consonant declension of the feminine are still fre- quently met with, as "unser lieben Frauen^ "Festge- mauert in der Erden" (Schiller's Song of the Bell), Er- denleben, Erdensohn, Gassenbube, Harfenton, Hollenthal, Muhlenbach, Sonnenlicht. In view of the fact that two older types have united in the one represented by Klage it has become very copious. But it has been still further en- larged from various other sources. One has been those words whose nominative likewise ended in e. This type is rep- resented in our list by Gebirge. Old forms were daz grilize, das wette, das nppe. We may still hear the phrase, "das alte Ripp" (the old rip), to designate a contentious wo- man. Another has been the masculine stems in n belong- ing to the type Bote ; the M. H. G. was der grille, der 248 A History of the German Language imbe (die Imme), der slange, etc. In many words the South German spoken language still retains the mascu- line gender where the literary language together with the Central and North German dialects have yielded to the force of analogy and changed to the feminine. Hence have arisen the doublets in gender der Backen and die Backe, der Schneck and die Schnecke, der Trauben and die Traube, and der Zacken and die Zacke, der Butter and die Butter, der Schurz and die Schiirze, together with many others. Even in the literary language we find der Schnupfen alongside of die (Stern} schnuppe, the latter a survival from the Low German : it being assumed that the stars snuff themselves. But further, the masculine vowel-stems also end in e ; die Tage is exactly parallel with die Klage. Such plurals were accordingly treated like the singular of the feminine and a new plural in -n created : to take the place of the M. H. G. der slaf we now find die Schldfe, the old form being not yet wholly obsolete. Die Socke was in M. H. G. der soc, in South Germany, der Socken; die Tilcke is the M. H. G. der tuc, and the South Germans still say, "einem einen Tuck anthun" "sich einen Tuck thun" (to injure another or one's self). Die Woge is the M. H. G. der wdc. In addition to those words that have been transferred from one gender and from one declension to another because of their similarity in the nominative singular, there are others where a trans- fer was brought about by the likeness of the plurals, die Wagen, e. g., corresponding exactly to die Klagen. The modern die Waffe (weapon) was in the M. H. G. daz wafen; "em gute Wehr und Waff en" occurs in Luther's famous hymn, and das Wappen (coat-of-arms) is a survival of the Low German. It yet remains to consider the types 2. (a) and (c), Kraft Kr'dfte and Saat Saaten. The former only is primitive and its modern inflection is found in the M. H. G. The plural in the O. H. G. is declined thus : krefti, kreftio, kreftin, A History of the German Language 249 krefti. In the M. H. G. there are alternate forms of the genitive and dative singular, viz., der kraft and der krefte, but only one nominative, kraft. In the O. H. G. krefti is -the sole form. How, then, are we to explain the M. H. G.? The Germanic originally possessed not only consonant stems ending in n, but also in other letters. Among the most common of these was the word Nacht. In the O. H. G. it inflected as follows : Sing, naht, naht, naht, naht, all the cases being alike ; Plur. naht, nahto, nahtun, naht, where only the genitive and dative vary from the singular form. Compare with this the four cases of the Latin nox, noct-is, noct-i, noct-em. Diu naht, Gen. der naht came to be taken as patterns for the genitive and dative of diu kraft, der kraft in the singular ; and, conversely, a plural, die Niichte, came into use after the model of die krefte. Eventually der kraft was employed to the exclusion of der krefte, doubtless because the latter was exactly like the plural and could not easily be distinguished from it when unaccompanied by the article ; but even with the article this was not possible in the genitive of both numbers. Remnants of the e-forms are seen in Br'dutigam for Br'du- tegam ( bride-g(r)oom, man of the bride), M. H. G. der bnute ; in Biirgemeister the archaic form of Bur germeis- ter, and in Magdesprung. Behende is the modern form of M. H. G. bi hende, at hand, although Hand did not origi- nally belong to the i-stems, as may be seen in the datives plural without the umlaut, zu Handen, von Handen gehen, abhanden kommen, vorhanden (vor den Handen}, but was an u-stem. That Nacht was not originally an i-stem may be seen in the current Weihnachten, zu den wihen nahten (in the holy nights). The type Kraft exhibits points of contact with that of Klage. In the case of some words belonging to the latter, final e had dropped off. For ex- ample, Frau Frauen corresponded in the singular with words like Kraft, and plurals were formed in -en, as Bur gen M. H. G. die biirge, Fahrten M. H. G. die verte, 17 250 A History of the German Language Thaten M. H. G. die taete. But plurals in -en might arise from two forms of the singular, one with e and the other without e. In consequence of this, the type Kraft, Burg was sometimes confounded with that of Klage. E. g., the modern Blute was bluot in the M. H. G., and Etche, Leiche, Stute were respectively etch, tick, stuot. The type 2. (d) is solitary, for to it belong only the two words above given. These were originally consonant stems and had the same endings as Bote ; that is, they were without umlaut. By a false analogy they were classed with words like Acker Aecker, Bruder Bruder, etc. THE PRONOUN. Pronouns differ from nouns not only in their endings but also in several other respects. In the primitive Indo- European language there were three numbers, the singu- lar, the dual, and the plural. The ancient Greek affords the most familiar instance of the frequent use of the dual number. In the general Germanic the dual forms of the nouns early became extinct ; but they were preserved in the pronouns after this had split up into several dialects. ' We two ' is wit, ' ye two ' git, in the Old-Saxon poem called the Heliand (composed probably in the ninth cen- tury). The corresponding words in the O. H. G. were probably wiz, iz. In the Old-Saxon, ( to us two ' is unk and ' to you two,' ink, the Dat. and Ace. being alike. The dual of the second person plural is still in use in the modern Bavarian and has even displaced the regular plural, es or os taking the place of ihr and enk that of euch. The German pronoun like the English, the Greek and the Latin, forms the singular and the plural in great measure from different stems. Compare meiner, mir (my, me) with wir, unser (we, our), and deiner, dir (thy, thee) with ir (ihr], euer (you, your). But the language in the course of its development tended more and more to obliterate these distinctions. We accordingly find in A History of the German Language 251 widely divergent dialects mir and mer alongside of wir, as likewise dir and der alongside of ihr. Here again we see the influence of analogy : the initial sounds vimeiner, mir, mich and diener, dir, dich were transferred to the plural number. In some cases the final syllables are made alike. Meiner, deiner are formed, at least in part, after the pattern of unser, euer, the older words being mein, dein. These, though archaic, are by no means obsolete. After mein and dein had assumed the additional syllable, sein followed suit and became seiner. The German pronoun exhibits the somewhat remarkable phenomenon of having in part obliterated the distinction between the dative and the accusative. In English, on the other hand, the dative has displaced the accusative entirely. As long ago as its earliest stages the Low German had but a single form each for the dative and accusative plural of the two persons : uns representing both nobis and nos, while iu is either vobis or vos. The dative singular is mi and thi, corre- sponding to the current mir and dir, where the final r is a development of s which dropped off in Low German; this branch of the Teutonic being in nearly all cases nearer the English than the German proper. The accu- sative was probably mik and thik. This distinction was obliterated very early : in some dialects of the L. G. mi and thi, in others mik and thik are employed for both cases, these following the analogy of the plural and becoming alike. Owing to the habit of neglecting to make a dis- tinction between the two cases it is easy to understand why the native Low German constantly fails to distinguish between mir and mich, dir and dich when he uses a H. G. dialect. The influence of analogy extended yet farther. After it had become a matter of usage to make no distinc- tion between the first and second person, it was natural to follow the same course with the third, and accordingly we find the dative ihm, em used for the accusative ihn. While in the M. H. G. we still have the dative and accusative 252 A History of the German Language uns, but dative in, accusative -inch, we find that in the N. H. G. the accusative euch has completely displaced the dative. Owing to this coalescence of the two cases the illiterate frequently make a curious blunder in the lan- guage of civility : as Sie has no existence in any dialect they are unable to distinguish between the dative and the accusative of the third person. We, accordingly, hear such expressions as, "ich habe Ihnen (Sie) ja gar nicht erkanntj' and " Se (Ihnen} kann dat goa (gar) nicht feh- len." But even the modern sich was originally an accu- sative like mich and dich, the older language using in its stead the regular personal pronoun. I/uther says, "unser keiner lebt ihm selber, unser keiner stirbt ihm setter" where in modern German we should use sich selber or sich selbst for ihm selber. It may be remarked that in general the distinction between the reflexive and the non-reflexive pronoun is not carefully observed. The Germans say gedenke sein, geniesze sein, where the older language pos- sessed a genitive es for the nominatives er and es (M. H. G. ez). Traces of this fact are still found in certain stereotyped formulas like " ich bin es satt, ich bin es su- frieden," for, as is well known, the verb sein can not take an accusative after it. It remains yet to consider a few peculiar isolated forms of the pronpun. Alongside of ihr the N. H. G. exhibits the archaic ihro, which corresponds exactly with the O. H. G. iro. It is used almost exclusively in addressing royal personages and other members of the nobility. That the modern German has two words where the older language had but one is doubtless due to the difference in accentuation in the latter : iro naturally becomes ir and iro remained unchanged. The same remark holds good as to the relation of dero to der. As to the pronouns er, der and wer, we generally find two forms in current usage, dessen and des, deren and der, denen and den. The shorter forms are the only ones existing in the M. H. G. as may A History of the German Language 253 be seen in deshalb, deswegen, " Wes Brod ich ess, des Lied ich sing." The possessive pronoun ihr was originally a variant of the personal pronoun the genitive singular of the feminine, or the genitive plural of all genders. It ac- cordingly forms a doublet with the later ihrer and corre- sponds to the French d'elle, d'eux, d'elles (of her, of them). The younger forms probably developed under the influence of the dissyllabic pronouns like dieser,jener, and similar adjectives may have aided their growth. THE ABJECTIVE. When we come to consider the adjectives we find that some are inflected and some entirely without endings. Of the latter such as gut, ode, and their like, correspond exactly to the nominatives and accusatives of nouns hav- ing vowel stems : compare Tag, Kdse, etc. In both cases the primitive ending dropped off, the German lang having once been precisely equivalent to the Latin ' longus.' The inflected adjectives have, in their turn, a two-fold set of endings one used with the definite article, the other without. The former, der gute, des guten, dent guten, den guten, show consonant stems. The masculine, in this case, is exactly like the substantive declension represented by the type Bote, Boten, above. In the feminine and neuter of the adjective the O. G. types of the consonant declension are preserved, which have been lost in the M H. G. substantive. The modern die gute, der guten, are exactly like M. H. G. die zunge, der zungen ; and das gute, des guten, like M. H. G. das ouge, des ougen. Thus far there is, accordingly, no radical difference between the ad- jective and the substantive. This likewise represents the primitive relation of these two parts of speech to each other in the original Indo-European, as may be seen by an examination of the L/atin and Greek. But the Ger- man adds inflectional terminations when the adjective is not preceded by a word that clearly marks the case, as 254 A History of the German Language guter Wein, gutes Weines, gutem Weine, guten Wein, etc.; but der gute Wein, des guten Weines, dem guten Weme, den guten Wein. The former mode of inflection grew out of the tendency to make it conform to that of pronouns of the third per- son singular. Compare, e. g., the O. H. G. paradigms of the two classes of words': Nom. Sing, der Plur. die Sing, diu Plur. dio(d) Sing, daz Plur. diu Sing, guoter Plur. guote Sing, guotiu Plur. guoto Sing, guotaz Plur. guotiu MASCULINE. Gen. Dat. des dero FEMININE. dera deru dero dem NEUTER. des demu dero dem MASCULINE. guotes guotemu guotan(en) guotero guotem guote Ace. den die (diu} die (did) die (did] daz diu FEMININE. guotera guotero guoteru guotem guota guoto NEUTER. guotes guotemu guotaz guotero guotem guotiu There are but few points of divergence except the weakening of all unaccented vowels to e, and the changes which the pronoun has undergone since the O. H. G. period have been steadily followed by similar changes in the adjective. The nominative of the Fern. Sing, diu guotin^ which would regularly have become den guten in A History of the German Language 255 accordance with German phonetic laws, has been displaced by the Ace. die gute ; and in like manner the Plur. of the neuter diu guotiu has been superseded by the correspond- ing form of the Mas. and Fern, die gute. Jacob Grimm (born 1785), who published the first scientific grammar of the Germanic languages, designated the pronominal declension of the adjective as u strong ;" the other, as also that of the substantive, he called " weak." His reasons were purely fanciful, but the terms have been retained by all subsequent grammarians on ac- count of their brevity and convenience. THE VERB. In German, as in English, verbs are usually divided into two classes distinguished from each other by their mode of forming the preterit (or imperfect) tense. The one class makes the preterit by means of final -te, the other by a change in the vowel or vowels of the radical syllable, in other words by means of vowel-gradation. For example, ich lehre, ich lehrte, corresponding in the main to the Eng- lish ' I learn,' C I learned,' may be compared with ich gebe, ich gab and ' I give,' ' I gave.' The first class which requires external aid in order to express the past has been called " weak," by J. Grimm and the latter, which requires no such aid, he called "strong." It will be readily seen that the weak verbs correspond to the regular verbs of the or- dinary English grammar, and the strong verbs to the irreg- ular. English grammars are however coming more and more to adopt the German terminology. A suffix is also a characteristic of the past participle ; in the weak verbs -/ or -/, in the strong -en. Here again the English furnishes parallel forms in ' learned ' and ' given.' The weak verbs in German as in English comprise much the largest class and their mode of inflection is the simpler of the two. The radical vowel of the present tense undergoes no change in any part of the verb, the apparent exception in frage 256 A History of the German Language fragstfragt, alongside tffrage fragstfragt being due to the influence of the strong verb, and both frug and fragte are correct preterits. There is a slight difference in the preterits of the weak verbs, some having final -ete and others -te only for example lehrte, hebte, fragte, but bil- dete, fiirchtete. In general -ete is attached to all stems that end in a /-sound. The M. H. G. likewise exhibits both forms, but the longer would in obedience to a phonetic law previously explained, be shortened to -te by the sup- pression of the unaccented medial e. In the case of words like bild-te, fiirch-te, that is, where the final sound of the stem is substantially identical with the initial sound of the suffix, it would be difficult to pronounce both without the intervention of another vowel. But the parallel forms, -te and -ete, of the M. H. G. have a different origin. In place of the monotonous uniformity exhibited by the weak verbs a greater variety prevailed. The O. H. G. possessed three classes of weak verbs, distinguished from each other by the final -6, or -^, or -i, of the stem. To illustrate by ex- amples, there were salbon which has become salben, fragen which is now fragen, and legian or lerian that are still in use as legen and lehren. Similarly we have in Latin 1 amare,' tacere ' and ' andire.' The preterits of salbon and fragen were salbota &&&frageta, which in the M. H. G. became salbete andfrage/e. A distinction must be made in the case of the i-stems between those in which this stem was short and in which it was long. In the case of the former the stem-ending in the preterit remains ; the O. H. G. legita became legete in the M. H. G. In case of the long stems, the i of the preterit was suppressed in obedience to a phonetic law that need not be considered here, while in the present tense it remained somewhat longer: lerian, lerta became M. H. G. lerte. In conse- quence of this difference between the i-stems with long syllables, a difference also arose between the present and the preterit tenses, which does not occur in the other A History of the German Language 257 groups of verbs. If the stems of verbs contained an a or an o or an u, these vowels would necessarily take the um- laut in course of time in the present teuse where an i fol- lowed in the next syllable ; but in the preterit they would remain unchanged. For example, brannian, branta be- comes brennen, branta and later brante. Besides this verb the German contains kannte, nannte, rannte, sandte and wandte, that appear to have been modified by umlaut, but which were in fact not so modified, as has been pointed out on a preceding page. In like manner we have gebrannt, gekannt, etc., because substantially the same phonetic changes took place in the preterit participle which the preterit of the verb proper underwent. In the M. H. G. what the German grammarians call Riickumlaut a sort of reversed umlaut affected a much larger number of words than it does at present. Compare decken dacte, smecken smacte, beswaeren beswarte, loesen loste, hoeren horte with the modern preterits deckte, schmeckte, loste, horte, etc. In these and a number of other examples the radical vowel of the preterit has been modified so as to conform to that of the present, and only a few participial adjectives remain as evidence of the former state of affairs : for ex- ample, die gedackten Pfeifen der Or gel simply means die gedeckten, etc ; getrost is an old participle of trosten; wohl- bestallt recalls bestelle, bestalte, bestalt. In the last series we have an example of a new verb formed under the in- fluence of the participle, viz., bes fallen. Similarly erboesen erboste erbost has led to the formation of a new verb sich erbosen (grow angry). A like relation exists between lehren and gelahrt, and durchlaucht, erlaucht and durchleuchten, erleicchten. The singular feature of this change of the principal vowel lies in the fact that the participle, though derived from the verb, afterward brought about a modifi- cation of the latter ; or to use a slightly mixed metaphor, but which answers the purpose very well here, the ances- tral type was conformed to that of the descendant. 258 A History of the German Language We find in the strong verbs a greater variety of vowel changes than in the weak ; here we see exhibited the ef- fects of the three phonetic influences before designated as Umlaut, Brechung (breaking) and Ablaut (vowel-grada- tion). In the weak verbs the stem of the present tense al- ways ended with the same vowel and it could not therefore effect any change in the radical vowel. But in the strong verbs different vowels immediately followed the final con- sonant of the radical syllable, and it was these that char- acterized the various subclasses. For example, the indic- ative present of tragen in the most ancient O. H. G. was thus inflected: Sing. 1. tragu, 2. tragis, 3. tragit, Plur. 1. bagames, 2. traget, 3. tragant. In the natural course of de- velopment of the language the a of the second and third person singular would receive the umlaut, thus becoming a. This is the present state of all similar verbs excepting du haust, erhaut and du kommst, er kommt, though even here we find the variants du kbmmst, er k'ommt. A considerable number of the dialects have however dropped the umlaut under the influence of the verbs that never had it, as trage tragsch, tragt; laufe, laufsch, lauft, etc. The diversity of endings which produced umlaut is likewise the cause of breaking in so far as it applies to the verb. We find a uniform interchange between the vowels e and i ; the latter occuring in those verbs that are capable of taking the umlaut, the former in those which are not. Accordingly, we have wir geben, ihr gebt, sie geben ; e also occurs regurlarly in the subjunctive, the infinitive and the present participle. But the second and third persons of the singular are giebst, giebt, (or gibst and gib) and the imperative is gieb. In the first person sin- gular where the H. G. has tch gebe, the South German dialects exhibit ich gib, ich Us (lese], ich nimm (nehme), and so on. This represents the status of both the O. G. H. and M. H. G. i. e. gibu, lisu, nimu. These forms, however, point to the earlier existence of gebu, nemu, lesu; A History of the German Language 259 but the first person was changed to conform to the second and third. In the N. H. G. the original status has unconsciously been restored : under the influence of the first person Plur. geben, the M. H. G. ich gtbe has become ich gebe, and similarly giebst, giebt was made to conform to the type trage, tragst, tragt. But here again the South and Middle German dialects have gone still farther, so that we find du gebsch, er gebt; du nemsch, er nemmt. The interchange between e and i does not occur in verbs whose stem ends in a double nasal or in a nasal in combination with a mute. In such cases e had been changed to i in prehistoric times even when an a followed. We have, accordingly, ich beginne, wir beginnen ; ich finde, wir finden. Exactly parallel with this interchange between e and i is that between iu and ie in the M. H. G., or iu and io of the O. H. G. which has already been pointed out. The M. H. G. has ich fliuge, du fliugest, er fliuget, but wir fliegen, ir flieget, sie fliegent. The German of Luther's Bible con- serves many remnants of unbroken verbal forms, such as fteucht, kreucht, leugt, zeucht; but in the current literary language the unbroken forms have carried the day every- where, so that we have ich fliege like wir fliegen. The archaic forms are still occasionally used in poetry. The perfect tense of the strong verbs was originally formed in two ways. The first was by means of a reduplicating syllable prefixed to the stem : in other words a syllable was formed by means of the initial consonant or conso- nants together with the vowel e, and placed before the word as a prefix. In the second, vowel-gradation was employed. Reduplication is a familiar phenomenon in Greek and Latin, as may be seen in such examples as Tpe(o, rerpo^a ; pello, pepuli. The examples, however, in which these two processes are plainly evident in the Ger- manic languages are very few. Even in the Gothic traces of reduplication are rare and in the majority of cases vowel- gradation has been obscured or wholly obliterated by the 260 A History of the German Language influence of phonetic laws. We find in letan (let) lelot, both reduplication and vowel-gradation, but haldan, hehald; haitan, hehait; hlaupan, hehlaup. In consequence of con- traction and other transformations these perfects were so changed that they uniformly exhibit the diphthong ie in the M. H. G. and i (or ie) in the N. H. G. no matter what the vowel of the present tense may have been. The pre- terit participle, which in the strong verb is generally subject to vowel-gradation, has the same vowel as the present in most of these reduplicated verbs. Compare, e. g., the Latin pello pulsus, vello vulsus, sero satus. The following types of N. H. G. verbs belong to this class : (1) halten hielt gehalten and fallen fiel gefallen, (2) blasen blies geblasen, (3) rufen rief gerufen, (4) heiszen hiesz geheiszen, (5) laufen lief gelaufen and hauen hieb gehauen. Very few Germanic verbs show reduplication proper even in the oldest forms accessible to modern research ; but, perhaps, owing to this fact vowel-gradation has been the more fully developed, and is, therefore, the more clearly marked. Many verbs exhibit not merely two tones or letters of the vowel scale, but even three, though the latter are greatly in the minority. Or, to illustrate the statement by modern examples, we have about four times as often the gradation bleiben blieb gebleiben as singen sang gesungen. In the latter case we always find in the O. G. a different vowel in the preterit singular from that in the plural of the same tense. This variation is not accidental, and not every vowel can be substituted for any other. An a, e. g., may not occur in the same stem with certain others, ei for instance. Those vowels that regularly suc- ceed each other in the same stem constitute what is known as a gradation series (Ablautsrethe}. This series is in the M. H. G. as follows : A History of the German Language 261 Class I., containing a in the present tense, Pres. Pret. Sing. Pret. Plur. Pret. Part. trage truoc truogen getragen Class II., containing e or i in the present tense, sub- class (a), Pres. Pret. Sing. Pret. Plur. Pret. Part. ich binde bant bunden gebunden wir binden ich wirfe warf ivurfen geworfen wir werfen On the change from e to i, or from u to o, see page 230. This class no longer exists in its purity in the N. H. G., the variation between the different forms of the preterit having been suppressed. In a majority of cases the sin- gular has gained the mastery : compare fand fanden, gelang gelangen, half halfen, sprang sprangen, but which were in M. H. G. fant funden, half hulfen, etc. Alongside of sangen an older form has been preserved in the familiar proverb, Wie die Alien sungen, So zwitschem diejungen, through the influence of the rime demanded by Jungen. In other cases the vowel of the plural remains, though not in its M.'H. G. form as #, but in its M. G. transforma- tion as o. See ante p. 230. Examples are ich glomm wit glommen, schwoll schwollen, schmolz schmolzen, which were M. H. G. glam glummen, swal swullen, smalz smulzen. In a single case only does the modern German exhibit a and u in parallel forms, ich ward and ich wurde wir wurden, M. H. G. wart wurden. The reason of this exception is not clear. Class II., sub-class (b), in which the stem-vowel is fol- lowed either by a liquid or a nasal or the combination of a stopped consonant with a liquid, ich nime nam ndmen genomen wir nemen ich spriche sprach sprdchen gesprochen wir sprechen 262 A History of the German Language To this type a few verbs of the older language conform whose stem contains no liquid, as fichte gefochten following flihte geflohten, sleeken gestochen following brechen gebrochen and sprechen gesprochen. In the N. H. G. the diversity which formerly existed between the singular and the plural has been eliminated, so that the older ich sprach, wir sprechen has become ich sprach, wir sprachen. In a con- siderable number of verbs even the difference between the preterit tense and the preterit participle has disappeared, as may be seen in ich schere schor schoren geschoren M. H. G. ich schire schar scharen geschoren ich pflege pflog pflogen gepflogen M. H. G. ich pflige' pflac pflagen gepflogen In the N. H. G. schworen has conformed to the type scheren and heben to that of pflegen. Both verbs originally belonged to the type tragen. ich swere swuor geswaren ich hebe huop gehaben The anomalous present tense is due to the fact that their historical antecedents were swarm and habiu; there was, therefore, an external correspondence to the present tense of the i-class. See ante p. 256. We still have in the ad- jective erhaben an old participle of the erheben, which was subsequently displaced by the analogical form erhoben. Class II., sub-class (c) in which e (i) is followed by a sin- gle consonant which is neither a liquid nor a nasal, pro- vided no combination of such a consonant with others precedes. Pres. Pret. Sing. Pret. Plur. Pret. Part. ich gibe gap gaben gegeben wir geben The M. H. G. gdp gdben has become gab gaben, but the L,. G. has in many cases conserved the original quantity. The verbs bewegen and weben now follow the type of A History of the German Language 263 pflegen, heben though originally they were inflected like geben. ich bewige bewac bewagen bewegen ich wibe wap waben geweben. Class III., containing long i in the present tense. Pres. Pret. Sing. Pret. Plur. Pret. Part. ich schribe schreip schriben geschriben The diphthong in the preterit singular of the N. H. G. has been dropped entirely and its place taken by the vowel of the preterit plural and the past participle. To this class belong also the modern verb scheiden which was originally inflected like the reduplicating verbs, M. H. G. scheide, schiet, gescheiden. The adjective bescheiden is a remnant of the older inflection, it being a participle of bescheiden. Class IV., interchanging iu with ie in the present tense. Pres. Pret. Sing. Pret. Plur. Pret. Part. ich fliuge flouc flugen geflogen i\& tch bin gegangen, nor ich asz but ich habe gegessen. The be- ginning of this usage is about coeval with that of the his- torical present and must be assigned to the second half of the fifteenth century. So far as the use of the different tense-forms is concerned it makes no difference whether the verb is in the principal or the subordinate clause. But the case is different when we come to consider the moods of the verbs as they are at present employed. It will be remembered that the subordination of one sentence to another is, in a sense, a modern innovation and that in the primitive state of language co-ordination alone pre- vailed. It would accordingly be supposed that the signifi- cation of a mood would be the same in either the princi- pal or the subordinate clause. The facts are, however* against this theory. In the first place, certain usages that prevailed in independent sentences have passed out of currency in dependent sentences ; and in the second, we find that now, as always, a certain mood may be used in a dependent sentence where it was never employed in inde- pendent sentences. It is probably owing to the force of 288 A History of the German Language analogy that the subjunctive was sometimes used as a sign of formal dependence in cases where the intent of the sentence intrinsically required the indicative. Strictly speaking, the German language has but two moods, the indicative and the subjunctive ; for the imperative ought properly to be classed with interjections while the infini- tive and the participle are nouns. (See, for a full treatment of this part of Grammar, Jolly, Gesch. des Infinitivs). The subjunctive corresponds formally to the Greek opta- tive : er grabe is grabai in Gothic, and ypdoi in Greek ; but it embraces in its application both the Greek subjunctive and optative. As, however, the Indo-European optative had two different significations, one of wishing and one of supposition or expectation, the German subjunctive may properly be said to have three. The optative of wishing, however, corresponds very nearly to the hortative subjunc- tive and may be regarded as one with it, more especially as in German a well defined line of separation between the two can not be drawn. Over against this we may place as distinctly marked the optative of supposition. The hortatory subjunctive and the subjunctive of wishing may stand either in dependent or independent sentences : er gehe (let him go), gebe Gott (God grant), kdme er dock (O that he would come). Its most frequent use is with verbs of wishing and commanding, ich befehle, dasz ergehe. Its use in such cases was originally imperative without excep- tion. Now, however, the indicative is frequently used, especially in the present tense, ich iviinsche, dasz er geht; ich wiinschte, dasz et ginge. We see here the influence of analogy as exhibited in such constructions as ich hore, sehe, weisz, dasz er kommt. We have shown how combinations like ich wiinsche, dasz er gehe, where one sentence is sub- ordinated to the other, have been developed from two sen- tences that were originally co-ordinate : i. e., from ich wiinsche das er gehe (I wish that what? he would go). Again, those forms of construction that are without the A History of the German Language 289 conjunction may be traced to the subjunctive of wishing or exhortation. Kdme er, er ware willkommen points to an earlier combination, kdme er (doc/i): er ware willkommen (would he but come, he would be welcome). We have also seen that conditioiiaj sentences are nearly related to concessive as, sei dem auch so, icJi bleibe dabei, an expression that might be divided into, sei dem auch so, ich bleibe dabci (even if that be so, I stick to my statement). A remark- able fact is thrust under our notice in the study of these examples, viz., the slight difference existing between the meaning of the subjunctive present and the subjunctive past. One would naturally expect to find, in the first case, some distinct reference to the present, and in the second, to the past. But it seems probable that neither in the Indo-European, nor in the Germanic was such a distinc- tion of time made, between the present subjunctive (or optative) and the perfect. The presumptive signification of the potential optative is clearly seen in hypothetical sentences. Here we find regularly the subjunctive preterit with distinct reference to present time, not only in the principal, but also in the subordinate sentence, as, ich konnte es thnn; ich weisz, dasz er es thun konnte. Curiously enough we find the hypothetical subjunctive also used oc- casionally in sentences that contain no element of the con- ditional. For example, the German will say, upon arriv- ing at a certain place, "da wdren wir" In such cases the underlying thought seems to be, "da sind wir ; es ware schon, wenn wir schon weiter wdren ;" nevertheless it must be confessed that this explanation is not entirely satisfac- tory. The sentence in its entirety being in the mind of the speaker or writer before he begins to express it, the conditional part presses forward, as we may say, for utter- ance, thus making its impress on the strictly affirmative portion. We may notice a similar phenomenon in such English expressions as " I don't think he will do it ; He is not expected to live," where the thought plainly is, I think he will not do it ; He is expected not to live. 290 A History of the German Language The potential subjunctive in the present tense is now employed only in conditional expressions in dependent affirmative and interrogative sentences. Er glaubt dass es heisz set; er fragt ob es heisz sei may be traced to, er glaubt, es sei wohl heisz ; er fragt ist es vielleicht heisz f In the old- est German er sei might be used in independent sentences with the meaning, er ist wohl (he probably is). We, how- ever, find the subjunctive of the present tense used indis- criminately with that of the preterit without difference of meaning. In the High German, the subjunctive of the present is on the whole to be preferred : though that of the preterit is always to be preferred where the present subjunctive is not plainly to be distinguished from the in- dicative, as is the case in all the forms of the plural. We accordingly find er sagt or sagte, sie hdtten das Fieber, but er habe das Fieber, more rarely er hdtte das Fteber. This variation is not found in the dialects, the Low and Middle German, as well as the Franconian and the Austrian using the preterit subjunctive ; the Alemanian and the Bavarian, the present. Both the variations in High German and the more consistent usage of the dia- lects are to be traced to an older invariable rule, the so- called CONSECUTIO TEMPORUM which we still find in the Latin : when the principal sentence is in the present tense the subordinate sentence should be in the same tense, but if the principal sentence is in the preterit the subordinate sentence should be in the same er waenet, ez si, but, er wante, ez waere (putat sit, putavit esset). In order to fully comprehend this rule one should keep in mind the origin of independent sentences in general. What is called ORATIO OBUQUA has no existence in popu- lar speech. The unlettered rustic relates an occurrence reported to him by another as if it were matter of his own observation. And this is true not only of the German but probably of all languages. When Paris is represented in the Iliad as declaring his willingness to restore all the A History of the German Language 291 treasures which he carried away from Argos, the message which announces this to the Achseans reads : " Priam directs me to announce to you the decision of Paris ; he will restore everything that he has brought with him from Argos.'' If we take a sentence like the following: er bringt Botschaft, der Kaiser set tot, in M. H. G. it would read, er bringet maere, daz der keiser tot si. Translated into more primitive German we should have, er bringt Botschaft; der Kaiser ist tot, putting the whole into past time, er brahte maere, er waere tot (er brachte Botschaft; der Kaiser war tot}. When, then, the content of the message was expressed in suppositional form, the poten- tial optative took the place of the indicative present, which as we have seen might be used in independent sentences. After the pattern er bringet maere, er s~i tot, the subjunc- tive would naturally, in the course of time, assume the notion of past time and er brahte maere, er was tot would become er brahte maere, er waere tot. Such being evi- dently the origin of dependent sentences we. are also fur- nished with an explanation of the somewhat peculiar shifting of the person as exhibited in the pronouns of these sentences. Take, e. g., the statement er wuszte, ich bin krank, which becomes er wuszte, er waere krank and this in turn may be traced to er wuszte es, er war krank. This fact may even be stated, er war krank; er wuszte es. The old German rule for the sequence of tenses was in vogue until the fifteenth century. The irregularity in its use was caused by the historical present which came into currency about the same time. Viewed externally, the present must needs be here employed, but intrinsically the preterit alone was correct. Though originating with the historical present this variation in usage gradually passed over to the ordinary present and from this again to the historical preterit. 292 A History of the German Language PROPER NAMES. From the stand-point of pure theory the subject of proper names has no claim to a separate chapter in the history of a language. Every proper noun was once a common substantive or adjective, and subject to the same laws of formation and change with these. Underlying the roots to which every word in the Indo-European lan- guage can be traced are general concepts of which they are the visible expression. By combination and by means of various relational suffixes these roots have undergone a continual limitation of meaning, and this process is still in operation. While the number of gen- eral ideas which the human mind is capable of conceiving has increased little, if it all, since the earliest period of language the number of words is increasing rapidly. It is evident, therefore, each new word has a more limited and therefore a more definite meaning than any that existed before. It is estimated by competent authorities that the half a million names found on the map of Ger- many have been formed from about 500 roots by combina- tions in various ways. The common noun in its transition to a proper noun simply undergoes a restrictive process like that explained on p. 1 56. But in the practical appli- cation of these principles there are, however, certain peculiarities that are more or less inherent in the nature of proper names and which entitle them to be considered as a special part of our subject. NAMES OF PERSONS. The modern custom of giving each person at least two names, or rather of assigning to him a name in addition to that which he gets by inheritance, is relatively recent. The ancient Germans, as a rule, had but a single name ; and this was somewhat peculiarly constituted in that it was always a compound of two parts. This custom pre- A History of the German Language 293 vailed among the ancient Greeks and may be safely as- sumed to have originated during the Indo-European period. Those qualities that were considered desirable in a man or that graced a woman were given to the child shortly after birth as a sort of amulet which it was to wear through after life. Thus Albert or Albrecht, in its O. H. G. form Adalbrecht, is, he who is conspicuous for nobility ; Gerbert, designates one who is brilliant with the spear ; Eckehart, him who is hard with the edge of the sword, ecke meaning edge or sword. Friedrich means one who is powerful in peace or in making peace ; Gottschalk, God's knight or servant, and Notburga is the citadel, the protection in time of need. We have here an expression of the aspiration of parents and friends similar to that re- corded in the earlier Old Testament names ; as when, for instance, Jacob changed the name of his latest born, called by his dying mother Ben-oni (son of my sorrow), to Benjamin (son of my right hand). The names of Abram, Sarai and Jacob are also exchanged for or transformed into such as were of better omen. For we find the belief widely prevalent in ancient times that the name borne by an individual had more or less influence upon his subse- quent destiny, a belief that the Romans embodied the alliterative phrase " bonum nomen, bonum omen." A certain class of persons profess to experience great delight in discovering the vigor and poetic ring concealed in many of the old German names. Yet it is doubtful whether the Germans themselves were in any consider- able number of instances conscious of the poetry in their names in fact it is well nigh certain that such could not have been the case. Generally the words that became component parts of names had already gone out of use in current speech and could therefore have no significance for the nomenclator. What was the meaning of the first part of Ingeborg or of Ingraban was as much of a mys- tery to the Germans of historic times as it to us ; nor did 294 A History of the German Language they know that the part of such names as Anselm, Ansgar, Oswald concealed the word "god." They were in precisely the same relation that most persons of the present day are to such names as Isra-el, Samu-el, Dani-el, Hanni-bal, in which the name of the deity is never suspected. On the whole it must be said, however, that the ancient Germans were concerned to apply their names with some reference to their sense. The mode of procedure was probably similar to that recorded as employed by the ancient Hebrews, where such proper names as Eve (Chavah), Seth, Moses, and many others, are said to have been given with direct refer- ence to the ordinary significance of these words in the vocabulary of the language. In German names, however, which, unlike the Hebrew, are always compounds, we find one part generally significant ; and the obscure portion is much oftener in the first part of the composite than in the second. The second part of a compound is always the chief bearer of its meaning. It may happen that both the component parts entering into a proper name are words still current in the living language and yet their signification be obscured by assimilation, vowel weaken- ing, or some other change to which the simple words have not been subject. A transformation of this kind may be seen in the O. H. G. names whose first syllable is Liut- or Leo-, as Liutpold {Leopold} and Liuthold (Leui- hold\ in which it would not be readily noticed that they are compounded of two words, meaning respectively volkskuhn and volkswaltend. Such combinations as these may properly be compared with Greek names, of which the first element is Demo-, as Demosthenes, Democritus, and others. It may happen, also, that even when the two parts of a compound are etymologically plain, their fusion will make no sense so far as we can discover. To this list belong, e. g., Wolfram, O. H. G. Wolfraban, the meaning of which would be Wolf-raven, and Htldegunde, A History of the German Language 295 of which the first part signifies Kampf (combat), and the second, the same thing. It is a difficult matter to dis- cover any sense in such words. Here again we find parallel instances in Greek in such names as Lykourgos and Lykomedes. Rutland, that is, Roland, is equivalent to Ruhmesland and Kunigund signifies Geschlectskampf ; and while the compounds do not exactly make nonsense, it is hard to see what applicability they could have to a person. The only plausible explanation rests in the fact already referred to, that the simple elements were no longer clearly understood before they were made parts of the compound. In this way no doubt the notion began to be gradually developed that it was of little importance for a name to be entirely significant, and that it was suffi- cient when a new-formed name contained at least one traditional term. But there was one thing more. No doubt the custom existed in many places of giving the child a name that represented in its component elements both that of the father and the mother. It might happen in this way, that the daughter of a certain Hildebrand, ' sword of battle or combat,' and of a woman whose name was Gundrun or Gudrun, ' sorceress of combat,' would be named Hildegund. Readers of Aristophanes will readily recall the scene from the clouds which may be appropri- ately cited here, in which the mother insisted on calling her first-born son Chanthippos or Charipposor Kallipides, while the father as stoutly held out for Pheidonides, until the controversy is ended by adopting a name made up of a portion of two, viz., Pheidippides. It is also evident from an examination of the recorded names that a certain degree of phonetic congruity was sought after in the formation of compounds, and when this was attained the necessary conditions of composition were supposed to be fulfilled. In a mediaeval story a certain Engeltrut is said to have preferred a suitor whose name was Engelhard to one called Dietrich, for the reason that the name Engel- 296 A History of the German Language hard and Engeltrut harmonized better than Engeltrut and Dietrich. The great majority of old German names were incon- venient for daily use on account of their length. They accordingly experienced the same fate which befell nearly all words containing a considerable number of syllables. In such names as Charlotte, Elise and Johannes or Niko- laus, which in familiar usage have become Lotte, Lise, Hans and Klaus, we see only those portions retained that are made prominent by the accent. These abbreviated forms which we may call pet-names or nick-names, orig- inated in one of two ways : sometimes one of the com- ponent parts, usually the second, was dropped entirely, the remnant, then ending either with the vowel -o or -i. In this way Ingraban became Ingo, Kuonrat Kuno, and Volcwart Folko. When the first member of the name was a derivative noun the nick-name likewise lost the suffix. It is thus that Ebarhard becomes Ebaro, Ebo ; Irminrich appears as Irmino, Irmo ; while Raginbald is abbreviated to Ragano, Rago. The termination -i is still very common where the Alemanian dialect is spoken, Conrad (or Kon- rad}, the Greek pacru/3oiAos, appearing as Kuoni, Rudolf (hruotwolf, Ruhmwolf) as Ruodi, both these names, together with others of similar structure occurring in Schiller's well known drama, Wilhelm Tell ; and Walther ( Waltend- Heer) as Walti. It is not safe, however, to assert with entire confidence that the last name represents Walther, for the evident reason that the same nick-name may be an abbreviation of one of two or three different names. Gero, e. g., is a shortened form of either Gerbert (speer- glanzend], or Gerhard (speer-gewaltig], or Gernot (speer- no(), or Gerwig (speerkampf}, or Gerwin (speer-freund) ; but it is not always possible to discover which. The ori- gin of nick-names formed by the second process is less ambiguous. Here the second part of the compound is represented in the abbreviation. It is thus that Sigbald A History of the German Language 297 and Sigbert become Sibo (from a longer form Stgbo) N. H. G. Seib ; Sig fried appears as Sigfo, then Siffo, and Sigimar or Sigimund is shortened to Simo. Into all these compounds ' victory ' enters as the principal element. On the basis of these abbreviations all sorts of derivatives are formed, most of them probably having a diminutive sig- nification. Those having the suffix -in and -ilo are dis- tributed all over Germany ; those ending in -iko and -izo or -zo are confined chiefly to Lower and Upper German territory respectively. Double derivatives in -ilin, -ltko y -ikin, -ztlo, -ziko, and -zilin, also occur. The word diot meaning 'people,' 'populace,' appears in many compounds of which the most common modern representatives are Diedel, Tilly, Tiedge, Tieck, Deecke, Dietze, Dietz, and others. It will readily occur to the reader that many abbreviated forms of proper names are still in daily use, such as Fritz for Friedrich, Heintz for Heinrich, Kuntz for Konrad, Utz for Ulrich, and many others. The names we have thus far considered are easily trace- able to a purely German source ; but with the introduc- tion of Christianity came a flood of names of diverse ori- gin. The appellations of the saints who appear in the calendar and it needs to be remembered that every week day of the year was sacred to one or another of them undergo abbreviation like all others. Sometimes they appear as diminutives, sometimes as nick-names. It thus happens that a single name becomes the ancestor of a numerous progeny, as, e. ^., Johannes, some of the descend- ants of which are Johann, John, Jan, Hannes, Hans and Hansel; while Jacob (Latin Jacobus) is represented by Jack, Jaggi, Jock, Jockel, Kob, K'obel and Kobi. The two names Johann Jacob which are often borne by the same person, especially in S. Germany, are abbreviated in Basel to Beppi. The custom of having but one name prevailed in Ger- many until the Mediaeval period. The modern practice 20 298 A History of the German Language of giving two or more names is closely connected with the rise of cities, the growth of civil liberty, with the exten- sion of trade and travel and the frequency of contracts between buyer and seller. Double names appear first in the cities, whence they spread into the surrounding coun- try, first of all in the cities along the Rhine and in South Germany. For it will be remembered that the cities of Germany owe their existence primarily to Roman in- fluence, the Germans themselves being naturally adverse to living in close proximity. Accordingly where this influence was but little felt the cities are of much later growth. Within the first named territory we meet with double names as early as the twelfth century, while in Middle and North Germany they do not begin to occur till the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In many localities the serfs seem to have been content with a single name until the sixteenth century. The Frisians, who dwell in the northern Provinces of Holland, and the Jews, were constrained by legal enactments so lately as during the present and the last century, to conform fully to modern usage in the matter of proper names. It is owing to this fact that nearly all the Jews in the United States, who are for the most part immigrants from Ger- many, have German and not Jewish names. When the custom of double names came into vogue the tradi- tional German and foreign appellations were adopted as baptismal names. What we now call family names are of multifarious origin, and stand in some degree in contrast to the other, earlier names. Those are for the most part of native creation and given to the child by its relatives ; these are in the main the creation of strangers. Within the family circle there is even now little need of any other than the baptismal name. The salient characteristic of fam- ily names is the fact that they are inherited from generation to generation. It is probable, however, that in former times this inheritance did not follow so much as a matter A History of the German Language 299 of course as is the custom in our day. Indeed, it is no uncommon thing for people to change their family names. This is of especially frequent occurrence among the Germans who settle in the United States. Sometimes the original name is translated, sometimes it is changed outright by authority of the law-making power to one more agreeable to the possessor, but more frequently it is transformed into one more easily pronounced by those ac- customed only to the use of the English language. Among the causes, which contributed to make names hereditary, that of location was perhaps the most potent. In the Black Forest, for example, the possessor of an estate is sometimes known by the name it bears rather than his own. It may thus happen that two successive occupants are called by the same name, when in fact they are different. Proper names derived from locality are formed in two ways: either a preposition is prefixed to the designation of the place, or the termination -er is added. By the first method we get such names as Amthor (an dem Thor}, Aus* m Worth ( Wert signifying island, peninsula, any low land ), Thorbeke (equivalent to am Bach}, Ambach, Ueberweg, von der Tann, etc. By the second, such names as the following are formed : Steinberger, Bar en- thaler, Sulzbacher, etc. To this class belongs the long list of names ending in -backer, -hauser, -hauser, -hofer, -roder, -renter, and many others. These terminations are all significant in various ways, -r'dder, -reiter or -reuter sig- nifying the dweller at a place where a clearing has been made, and -hofer, one who occupies an estate. Some- times the designation of the locality is simply applied to the dweller in or on it, without prefix or suffix, whence come such names as Steinthal, Berg, Stein, Bach, etc. These have their exact equivalents in our English Hills, Vales, Brooks, Stones and many others of similar origin. If we look at proper names with reference to their source we shall see that there may be as many different 300 A History of the German Language classes as there are designations of localities. One of these is easily misapprehended. It has always been the custom in Germany to mark inns and drug-stores with some sign or device by which each may be known from every other. During the Middle Ages this custom pre- vailed even more widely, and included dwelling-houses, as is still the rule to some extent in Switzerland. These legends were plants or animals, or some similar object. The inventor of printing bore the name Gensfleisch from the device on the house in which he lived or was born. A person having the name Drach (Eng. Drake. See p. ), or Ochs would not be so called because such a designation was suitable to his mental characteristics, but because his house bore the legend of a dragon or an ox, or because he was born in one so marked for it must be remembered that in the cities the dwellings were generally large enough to contain several or more families, and built close to- gether for purposes of defense. Another motive for trans- mitting a name from father to son and grandson arose from the fact that social position and occupation were like- wise a heritage from generation to generation. To this category belong the names of most frequent occurrence. Such as Meyer (Latin major-domo), Mutter, Schmidt, Schneider. We find the same fact in regard to the English names, the most common of which are Smith, Carpenter, Taylor, Miller and the like. Many names still survive that once designated the users of trades now no longer in existence, such as Bogner (Bowman), Falkner (Falconer), Plattner (a maker of laminae for coats of mail,) and Pfeil- sticker (one who made shafts for arrows). But, it may be asked, how came a family to have such a name as Bischoff (Bishop), or Herzog (Duke), or Prince and Pope? To this query we may reply that these names are in part due to the devices before spoken of, and in part to mediaeval dramatic performances and miracle-plays, the chief performers in which would often continue to be A History of the German Language 301 known during the remainder of their lives by the charac- ters they represented. In other cases these epithets were doubtless applied to persons for purely fanciful reasons, and we find the name Rex in use among the early Romans. See also Horace, Sat. I. 7. Viewed in the light of modern usage the son would reg- ularly inherit the name of his father to which his own would be added. But in earlier times the new-born male child received the name of the grandfather much more frequently than that of the father, a custom that likewise prevailed in ancient Greece. In this way accordingly many of our modern baptismal names became family names. Sometimes the name of the father was given to the son, plus a suffix showing such relationship : a scion of Matthias would be Matthtsson, contracted from Mat- thiassohn ; of Hans or Jans, Hansen or Jansen. Or the name of the son might be put in the genitive case Ebers would thus plainly be the son of one Eber, and Wilken the son of Wilko, O. H. G. Wilhko, a nick-name for Wilhelm. A similar procedure is exhibited by the large class of English names ending in -s, such as Williams, Edwards, Matthews, and the like. A large number of family names are, as before indicated, simply baptismal names become hereditary. It is thus that we get such combinations as Robert Franz, Friedrich Frtednch and Hermann Paul. Quite a long list of patronymics is formed by means of the suffix -ing or -ung. Karol-ing-er, the Karolings, are the descendants of Karl, and Wals-ung-er are the family of Walse. At present, however, it is difficult to determine how far this mode of forming derivatives was in vogue when names so constructed first came into use. For ex- ample, we can not tell whether a person bearing the name Hartung or Henning was the son of a father called Harto or Henno; or whether the parent, who may have been sat- isfied with a single name, already had the name Hartung or Henning. Occasionally we meet with an instance in 302 A History of the German Language which the son's name comes from the mother, which may have happened in the case of widows. We find the family name Hilgard which doubtless has such an origin, and Lieske was probably the son of a certain Elisabet. In regard to many names it is clear that inheritance would follow as a matter of course. This "statement will apply to bodily characteristics which are often transmitted and which probably account for such names as Kraushaar (curly-hair), Krnmbein (Cruickshank), Lang, Kurtz, Weiss and Rot(Ji). Generally, however, it is more probable that the rule fixed in other cases gave the final decision here too. It may be said in general that the principle followed in the giving of names was the same that determined the designation of other objects, and nearly all the different kinds 'of metaphors underlie them, often much disguised, that we find concealed or open, in other words. It needs to be kept in mind that in nearly all cases names are not given by those who bear them, but by others, and it was important that such an appellation should be chosen as would point out or fitly characterize the person to whom it was applied. Only in those instances where a person was in position to name himself would this principle be left out of sight, and he would select such a name as pleased his fancy. Such cases are most frequently met with among the Jews, when they were compelled by law to assume a second name. This is the probable source of such names as Blumenthal, Rosenthal, Bernstein, Ru- binstein, Goldmark, Saphir, etc. Not a few of the older names are an uncomplimentary or even vulgar epithet, but having once been affixed to an individual he could not get rid of it, if he wished. Gradually it came to be regarded as a matter of course. The origin of it was forgotten and the appellation acquiesced in without further resistance. It is evident from what has been said that the number of possible roots from which proper names could be formed is very large and very multifarious. But there are some A History of the German Language 303 collateral elements that contribute to increase the variety still more. One of these is dialectic variation in the words themselves, several words meaning precisely the same thing, but differing in form. We have a familiar in- stance of this in the common English names Fox and Tod(d), one being of southern, the other of northern nativity. The man who exercised the potter's craft might be called either Hafner or Potter or T'opfer, according to the part of Germany in which he lived ; while the cooper might be named Binder^ otBottche*, or Biittner, or Passer, or Kiifer or Scheffler. Another is the peculiar relation in which proper names stand to the rest of the sentence in which they occur. We have already called attention to the fact that the hearer does not take cognizance of every sound or even of every word in a spoken sentence. It only concerns him to note so many words or such portions of longer words as will suggest to his mind what the speaker intends to convey. The attentive mind involun- tarily supplies and supplements what the hearing ear has failed to catch. Now, proper names have no such mental support ; they can not be used as integral parts of a sentence, nor have they any etymological relation to ad- jacent words, so that the hearer is unable to infer their probable form from the way in which they are used. As it is almost impossible to correctly apprehend a name by the aid of mental suggestion there is a wide field open for the play of fancy ; the result is likely to be etymological vagaries of all sorts. Every one knows how difficult it is to understand a name correctly unless it be some word with which we have become familiar in other relations. While therefore we might make no mistake with such simple names as Hill or Berg, Stone or Stein, the chances are at least ten to one that we would not be equally fortu- tunate with Taliafero, or Mainwaring, or Bodenstedt, or Willainowitz. We accordingly find here the converse to be true of what has been mentioned before, that names 304 A History of the German Language are more conservative in their development and less sub. ject to change than the other words of a language. It is true we say Bruno, Otto and Hugo, though all other German final 0's have been changed to e ; but these names have been artificially fixed or stereotyped with the aid of Latin documents. In popular speech they have long since been transformed into Braun(e), Hauck and Oti(e). An inten- tional metamorphosis of names is exhibited in the transla- tion of those that were originally pure German into Latin or Greek, or by the affixing of termination that would make them declinable. NOTE. An investigation into the history of a family named Rahmsauer that emigrated from Germany into North Carolina some two hundred and fifty years ago revealed the fact that in about two centuries the name was found in the following forms : Ramsauer, Ramsaur, Ramsour, Ramseur, Ramser, Rarnsir, Sirram, Ram, Sheep, Lamb. The United States offers a fertile field for the study of the transformation and translation of family names. The French names Du Bois, Boisvert, Boncoeur, De 1' hotel, Pibaudiere, Lemieux have become Wood> Greenwood, Bunker, Doolittle. Peabody and Betters, respectively. Loewenstein appears as Livingston, Loeb and Loew have been transformed into Lyon, Koch into Cook, and so on. One in- stance is recorded in which a German bearing the name of Feuerstein, who settled in turn in the French and American quarters of New Orleans, found himself called Pierre-de-feu, then Pierre, then Stone, then Flint, and finally died as Peter Gun. I have found an instance in which the modern name Rollfuss had undergone the following evolutionary process. Its original form was Rudolf, which had been abbreviated into Rolf. This, in tuj*n, had been Latinized into Rolfus, then Germanized into its present form. Some years ago a German whose family name was Pflaumbaum applied to the legislature of his country for authority to change his name to Blei: He claimed that this was the original name of his family, but that it had been trans- lated into the Latin equivalent Plumbum. In the course of time his Low German neighbors came to look upon this as the native word Plumbom, and the next stage in the process was very naturally its transformation into the High German Pflaumbaum, which means the same thing, viz., plum-tree. A good many names, have, like this one, a meaning in themselves, but their applicability to persons can not be discovered, at least in a majority of cases. Of this class A History of the German Language 305 are the following, all of which are of actual occurrence : Jerusalem, Casar, Breyvogel, Siisskind, Kussmaul^ Hopfen- sack, Teufel, Hellwald, Viehoff, Dickhaut, Riibsamen, trans- lated or transformed into Turnipseed or Ripsome, Butter- sack, Rothauge, Kalbfell and Kalbfuss. It is by this method that Sckwarzerd becomes Melanchthon, or Hdmmerlein is transformed into Malleolus, while Kurtz and Heinrichs ap- pear respectively as Curtius and Hennci. By a similar pro- cess Schneider became Sartor and Schmidt, Faber; Fischer and Goldschmidt were turned into Piscator and Aurifaber re- spectively ; Baumann was translated Agricola and Grossman, Megander. Weber appears as Textor, the maiden name of Goethe's mother; Reuchlin as Capnio ; and Krachen- berger as Gracchus Pierius. It will be evident from what has thus far been said that names the most diverse in form frequently sprang from the same root. And it is further probable that in some cases several different roots have produced identical names. Instances are quite numerous where a name seems to be, and probably is, formed from some familiar current adjective or noun, when if the real facts were known it is a descendant of some old nickname or pet-name. The familiar Rot(h) may have started from the color of the hair; but it may also be a survival of Rodo or Hrodo, a nickname of Hrodberl and Hrodget, hrod, meaning 'fame.' Baerand Wo!/ may be Jewish names of re- cent date, or they may be a reminiscence of the old German Berwald and Berwin or Wolfgang, Wolfger, and Wolf hard. There is small probability that such names as Dank, Eisen, and Wald are recent ; it is, however, quite likely that they take us back to O. H. G. Danko, Iso and Waldo, abbrevia- tions of Dankwart, Isenhard and Walther. Plainly, then, the interpretation of family names is uncertain and the ground on which the investigator stands, insecure. When we have no means of knowing the history of a family and have no guide but the name in its modern form, it is gen- erally impossible to reach any even measurably safe con- 306 A History of the German Language elusion as to its origin. To enable one to do this written records are indispensable. NAMES OF PLACES. When we come to the investigation of the names of places we encounter difficulties not met with in the study of the names of persons. In many cases these are to be traced to a time when Kelts inhabited Germany, and our knowledge of the ancient language of this people is still very incomplete and fragmentary. Nor is it probable that it can ever be much increased. For this reason a large measure of uncertainty is likely always to attach to those etymologies that are presumably or possibly Keltic. The Keltic is frequent in the names of plains and running waters, less frequent in those of towns, mountains and rivers. In those countries which lie west and southwest of Germany, Keltic names are very numerous, and it is here first of all the rivers that have preserved these mem- orials of the earliest inhabitants. It is claimed by some writers that almost every river-name in England is of' Keltic origin. Unquestionably Keltic are Rhine, Danube, Main, Isar, and the names of many smaller rivers. The root from which Rhein (Rhine) is derived is related to /Wo> and is also found in Rhone, Reuss, Retnach, Rhadanau, Re- gen, etc. We may also regard as Keltic Breisach (Brisi- acum), Mainz (Moguntiacum), Solothurn (Solodurum) and Worms (Borbetomagus). On the other hand the investi- gation of place-names has an advantage that is lacking when we are dealing with the names of persons. The lat^ ter, like those compounds which we find among the old Germans, are for the most part given to children shortly after birth, and could not therefore be founded on actual, but only on hoped-for qualities. Even when proper names were founded on actual characteristics we are rarely in po- sition to know whether they really represented the pecu- A History of the German Language 307 liarities of the persons who bore them. On the other hand, in the case of place-names we generally have the objects themselves before our eyes and can judge what pe- culiar features gave rise to their designation. These des- ignations may characterize the position of the place as Hochhausen, Hochheim, or Berghausen, Bergheim, or Thalhausen, Thalheim, or Wertheim (see Wert, ante), Neckarhatisen and Rheinheim. Or they may indicate the natural surroundings of the place, as Aschbach, a place where ash trees grow ; Birkenau, a place abounding in birches ; Buchenbach, Has(e)lau, Iben(Eiberi)bach, Seligen- stadt or Salweide (O. H. G. salacha, willow), Auerbach, Habsburg (Habichtsburg), Sfiessartor Spechtswald, Ziegen- hain, etc. Or they may designate the uses to which a place has been put. Many local names arose from mills such as Miihlbach, Molenbeck, Miihlhausen and Miihlheim; or from an older appellation of a mill, as Kernbach, Kehr en- bach, Kirnbach, the O. H. G. quirn meaning mill. The large number of names ending in -reut and -rode (Eug. root) indicate that the place occupied by them had been cleared of forest. In many instances the ancient name is hardly recognizable in its modern form, Detmold e. g. be- ing originally Thietmella, a word that is made up of thiot, people, and mahal, harangue, or place of harangue. These three categories of names those having reference to the configuration of the land, to the physical features of the region, or to the use that was made of the locality are about equally old : while the names themselves may have been formed and applied at different times the principle underlying the nomenclature is in all cases of equal an- tiquity. Much more recent are those names which desig- nate the owners or inhabitants of a place ; and their rise shows us how the bond between the owner and the soil upon which he dwelt becomes closer and closer. Here again we encounter the Old German names en masse, but in somewhat different combinations. Bamberg or Baben- 308 berg, the hill of a certain Babo, is an abbreviation of one of the common names beginning with badu and signifying battle ; in Diedenhofen we have another form of the O. H. G. diot, spoken of above and found also in Detmold; Hers- feld is the property of one Hariulf or Heerwolf, Ruders- heim, of a Rudolf ; while Witgenstein designates the stone of Witiko, or perhaps Wttikind. The owner is sometimes represented by his official title only, as in Bischofsheim, Herzogenhorn, Kaiser sw'orth or Komgstein, Sometimes the name is not a reminiscence of a single possesser or in- habitant but of several, it may be of a whole clan as Sach- senhausen and Groszsachsen. Not unfrequently a real or mythical progenitor is commemorated in a name. This is generally the case in those words ending in -ingen and -ungen. Finally some occupation or trade may give rise to a name, which is found chiefly in street designa- tions. When we come to examine the names on the map of England we are struck with their similarity to those found in Germany, not only in general, but in par- ticular. While it is true that Keltic influence has been less obliterated, the Teutonic stratum is very plainly marked. The second part of many compounds appearing in Germany as -heim, that is, home, dwelling-place, be- comes -ham in England, while -throp or -thorpe, which is almost identical in meaning, is the German -dorf. Again, the suffix -ing, dative plural -ingen, so common in south- western Germany in such names as Reutlingen, Esshngen, Tuebingen, appears in England in almost the same form, sometimes alone and sometimes in combination with -ham, as Basing, Hastings, Billingham, Issington. Town and -ton, meaning an enclosed place, corresponds to the Ger- man Zaun, which is occasionally found as a place name ; its occurrence is rare, however, compared with its English equivalent. In other parts of Europe occupied at various times by Teutonic tribes but more particularly in France both -ing and -ton are of frequent occurrence on the map, A History of the German Language 309 under various disguises. The latter may, however, some- times represent the Keltic 4 dun,' a hill-fortress from which it is not always possible to distinguish it with certainty. The German Burg, used both as a separate word and as part of a place-name, e. g. Hamburg, Magdeburg is the A.-S. burc(g), a fortified place. Its modern English rep- resentative is '-burg,' '-bury,' '-borough,' etc., and is one of the parts entering most frequently into the names of towns. When we undertake to find the historical person- age from whom the patronymics in -ing or -ung take their rise our search usually ends in disappointment. Our ex- perience is similar to that of the historian of Rome who should undertake to trace the Julian, the Hor- atian, or some other noble family to a real ancestor. It is plain enough that Reutlingen or Esslingen is intended to designate the place where the Reuthngs or the Esslings were settled : these names mean ' at the Reutlings 'or 'at the EsshngsJ but it is only in exceptional cases that we are in position to learn anything at all approaching to definiteness about these particular clans. Even in those instances like that of the Karolings and Merowings where a clan rises to distinction their origin remains obscure. It is true in general that all names of places ostensibly derived from persons generally lack a historical back- ground. But even in the case of those names that were originally given with reference to some peculiarity of the place named we are often at a loss to discover their ap- propriateness ; the general physical features of the locality may have undergone a change. A place near a swamp might properly be designated by some compound term ending in -bruch, -moos or -ried; but after the swamp had been drained and the land laid dry the appellation would be unsuitable. Examples are on record of places bearing names derived from the presence of the beech or the oak, but which are now covered with conifers ; evidently here the former were displaced by the latter. Now and then 310 A History of the German Language the name itself may give expression to the contradic- tion and such designations as Birkenacker, Birkenfeld or Eichendcker and Eschfeld, though clearly inappropriate, at least show what kind of forest trees must at one time have covered the ground. Many names have originated at points to which they are no longer applicable. A name at first given with special reference to some particular locality may, in course of time, have been extended to neighboring places, whence have most likely arisen the countless designations of vil- lages compounded with -au, -bach, -feld, and -wald. The deportation might even extend to a considerable distance where new settlers wished to retain the familiar and be- loved name of the place whence they emigrated. Frank- fort-on-the-Oder has a very slender connection with the Prankish tribe. This mode of transfer is exhibited on a large scale in the names found on the map of the New World almost from the North Pole to Cape Horn. Names are often given to places just as they are to per- sons, without regard to fitness or to the relation that ought to exist between the sign and the thing signified. A mere whim or fancy roaming free now and then lights upon an abstract term and applies it to a place ; occasionally the first impulse is given by the motto or the superscription of a single house. There is a long list of names ending in -lust and -ruhe, and such names as Aergernisz, Emtracht, Gelegenheit, Miszgunst and Unverzug are not altogether un- known. A large majority of German place-names are compounds, like the names of persons. But besides this class, single words are not rare and among them are some of the old- est names of places. In many cases, however, we are liable to be deceived by appearances as in nicknames of persons : we seem to have before us a single word, when in fact it represents a compound : just as the son of one Dietrich is frequently spoken of as Dietrichs, so his land or A History of the German Language 311 his residence may also be called Die tricks, the second part of the compound being omitted because easily supplied. Another kind of ellipsis occurs. It is natural to regard the designation of a place as a word in the nominative case ; in fact, however, this is rarely so. Where we can discover the original form of the word, it generally repre- sents the answer to the question where ? and is in the dative case, usually after the preposition zu. A few isolated exam- ples of this procedure remain in such names as Andermatt, i. e. , an der Matt ; Zermatt, i. e., zu der Matt, and in proper names as already cited The Dat. Plur. is evident in such endings as felden, -hausen, hofen, ingen -Ion O H. G. lohun, Dat. Plur. of /J/z, a copse or grove, -stelten, -walden, though without the preposition. The same case is seen in the names of countries, such as Bayern, Franken, Hessen, Sachsen and Schwaben, which are simply the plurals of tribal names ; the full formula was ze den Baiern, ze den Franken, etc. Occasionally the second member of the compound is now a nominative, while the first member is still the dative of an adjective, as Breitenfeld, Hohentwiel, Hamburg for Hohenburg, Stolzenfels, Wittenberg, that is, Weiszenberg, the L. G. for weisz being ////, Eug. ' white.' It stands to reason that the names of places like the names of persons are subject to the same phonetic laws as the remaining words of the language. Particularly frequent are the weakening and abbreviation of full compounds and the assimilation of consonants two kinds of phenomena for which the conditions are much more rarely supplied by the ordinary material of language. In addition to these changes it often occurs that in ordinary compounds those regularly developed are in turn displaced by the in- fluence of indepedent words. For example, an old Ruitis- rode or Ruotboldisrode has become the modern Ruperath; Markberteshusun is now Merkshausen; and Alahmuntinga has been abbreviated to Allmendingen. In cases where the first part of the compound now ends in -ers we have before 312 A History of the German Language us the alternative of two different compounds of names of persons: Herbersdorf is the older Heribrehtesdorf ; Elfers- hausen points to a former Adalf rides husum ; Liggersdorf is an abbreviation of Luitcardisdorf ; Ollersbach is really Adalgerisbach ; Volkersdorf may be traced to Folchardesdorf , Einersheim was formerly Einheresheim ; Drommersheim is a shortened form of Truhtmaresheim ; Ballersheim is the same as Baldrodesheim, Oggersheim the same as Agridesheim; and Frankershausen was originally Frankwardeshuswn. The ending -sen of a large number of place-names is generally a weakened form of -husen, i. e., hausen, but it may also be a remnant of the termination -es-heim. The names ending in -ikon, spoken of before, represent an older -ic-hofen, which in turn is a contraction of -inc-hofen. The first member of the compound contains a patronymic in -ing. Many places are known by two names, an older and a younger, one of which is the official designation, the other that in popular use. The former is generally that handed down in legal documents from remote times ; but occa- sionally it is a mere translation of a popular name and has never had any actual existence. Dialectic differences are much more conspicuous in the names of persons than in those of places, for the reason that the latter were created on the spot and to suit the local conditions where they are used, while persons frequently migrate a long distance from home. Characteristic of the Alemanian territory, are the forms in steten, // and weiler; the ending -wang may be either Alemanian or Bavarian. The river Lech separates the Alemanian termination -ingen from the Bavarian -ing. Names in -lar belong to Middle and North Germany, those in -scheid are Middle Franconian, while -ungen is generally Hessian or Thuringian. Low German territory has al- most a monopoly of names ending in -brink, -biittel, -fleth, -hude, -koog and -kuhl. A careful study of geographical names, based on accu- rate statistics and made with special reference to the A History of the German Language 313 methods according to which they are compounded, would throw much light on the connection between the different Germanic clans. A beginning has been made in this direction by Dr. Isaac Taylor in his " Words and Places," which has yielded interesting and in some cases surpris- ing results. It can readily be seen how the study of place- names may be made subservient to that of history, as in- deed language itself is often a valuable auxiliary to the historian. These are, however, questions that lie outside of the sphere of the present work. APPENDIX. I GIVE below four specimens of Dialect German for the purpose of exhibiting some of the most important variations from the literary language. The original of the four is by Klaus Groth, and is in the dialect of a district in Holstein. Dr. Groth has long been the foremost cham- pion of the claims of the Low German to culture as a lit- erary language. The humor of the poetry is well-nigh inimitable, as is often the case with similar productions ; but this delicate flavor is nearly all lost by translation. To be appreciated, it must be understood in the original. Nor can the pronunciation be represented with any near approach to accuracy. Still, the reader may form some idea of the spoken tongue from what is here given. These specimens will do something toward showing how inade- quate the conception most persons have of what is meant by the " German language." Not only do most foreigners have erroneous views on this subject, but the great mass of the German people themselves have little idea of the astonishing variety their vernacular presents. What is, perhaps, the most interesting dialect to Ameri- can readers, the Pennsylvania German, is not represented here, for the reason that it has received a thoroughly scientific treatment at the hands of Dr. Learned, of the Johns Hopkins University. Specimens are, therefore, easily obtainable. MATTEN HAS'. [In a dialect of West Holstein.] Liitt Matten, de Has', De mak sik en Spasz, He weerbi't Studeern, Dat Danzen to lehrn, Un danz ganz alleen Op de achtersten Been. A History of the German Language 315 Keem Reinke, de Vosz, Un dach: Das en Kost! Un saggt: " Liittje Matten, So flink oppe Padden? Un danzst hier alleen Oppe achtersten Been?" " Kumm, lat uns tosam. Ik kann as de Dam! De Krei de spelt Fitel, Denn geit dat canditel, Denn geit dat mal schon Op de achtersten Been! " Liit Matten gev Pot: De Vosz beet em dot, Un sett sik in Schatten, Verspeis, de liitt Matten; De Krei de kreeg een Vun de achtersten Been. D'R HOS. [ In the dialect of Nuremberg.] An artlier Hos Macht Mandla in'n GrosjJ Will e~* biszla schtudeiren, D's Tanzn probeiren, Un tanzt ganz ella" Af 'n hinterstn Ba~. Kummt pfiffi' der Fuchs, 'r glotzt woi e Luchs Und sagt: " Du bist g'schwind Af n Banen, loibs Kind! Wos tanzst ganz ella~ Af dein hinterst'n Ba~?" 41 Kumm, tanz m'r ze zweit! Ich mach dei" Dam g'scheid; Doi Kraua tout geing'ng, Doi Fidl brav schtreich'ng; Su tanzst ganz ella" Af dei hinterstn Ba"." ^in Hos'n g'fallt der Raut, D'r Fuchs beiszt 'n taud, Tout wer will's 'n wiern? 's Hesla verziern; Doi Kraua kroigt's a.' Su e" hinteres Ba~. DE HAS. [ In the dialect of Zurich, Alemanian.] 's gumpet en Has Uf em griienige Gras, 'r ischt am Schtudire, Wott 'sch Tanze probire Un hiippft ganz elei" Uf 'm hindere Bei". De Fuchs kchunnd dezue Un lad em kei" Rue, Seid: "TusigschSns Hasli, Wie schpringscht uf em Grasli! Un tanzischt elei* Uf em hindere Bei"." " Kchum, gib mer di" Hand, Mer tanzid mitenand. I mache dir 'sch Meidli, D' Kchra giget is weidli, Mer tanzid Drei elei" Uf em hindere Bei"." Er schtreckt em sis Kchapli, De Has gid em 's Tapli, Hed's Tanze vergasse, De Fuchs hed en g'frasse, Und Kchra die fligt hei Mit erne hindere Bei". *The tilde" represents a nasal sound. 316 A History of the German Language 'ES KLASLA, DER HOS. [ In the dialect of Coburg.] 'es Klasla, der Hos, Macht sich lust'g im Gros, 'r schtudirt derbei garn, Mocht's Tanz'n gelarn, Und tanzt ganz ella Auf sei'n hinterst'n Ba. Kiimmts Fuchsia abei Un denkt: Du bist mei! Segt: " Klasla, Herrje! Wie kannsta gegeh! Und danzst doch alia Auf dein hinterst'n Ba?" " Kumm, ge har zu mir ! Ich danz sch5 mit dir; Di Kraa geigt auf, No gehts erst hellauf Des sollst' emol sa Auf dein hinterst'n Ba." , D's Klasla schlegt ei: Mei Fuchs packt'n fei, Tregt 'n hinter e Heck Un leszt sich wohl schmeck;; Die Kraa kriegt a So e hinteres Ba. THE END. UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY A 000 690 556 6