Old Dutch (Also Old West Low Franconian) is a branch of Old Low Franconian spoken and written during the early middle ages (c. 500 - 1150) in the present day Low Countries and areas of France near the North Sea coast. It is a direct descendant of the Old Franconian language. The Low Countries, the historical region of de Nederlanden, are the countries (see Country) on low-lying land around the delta of the Rhine, Scheldt, and Meuse (Maas) rivers. ... An extinct language (also called a dead language) is a language which no longer has any native speakers. ... Linguistically speaking, Middle Dutch is no more than a collective name for closely related languages or dialects which were spoken and written between about 1150 and 1500 in the present-day Dutch-speaking region. ... Current distribution of Human Language Families A language family is a group of related languages said to have descended from a common proto-language. ... The Indo-European languages comprise a family of several hundred related languages and dialects [1], including most of the major languages of Europe, as well as many spoken in the Indian subcontinent (South Asia), the Iranian plateau (Southwest Asia), and Central Asia. ... The Germanic languages in Europe are divided into North (blue) and West Germanic (green and orange) Languages  Low Saxon-Low Franconian (Dutch)  High German (standard German, Schwyzerdütsch)  Insular Anglo-Frisian (English, Scots)  Continental Anglo-Frisian (Frisian)  East North Germanic (Danish, BokmÃ¥l Norwegian, Swedish)  West North Germanic (Nynorsk Norwegian... Low Franconian is any of several West Germanic languages spoken in The Netherlands, northern Belgium, and South Africa. ... Writing systems of the world today. ... The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ... ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ... ISO 639-2 is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages. ... ISO 639-3 is an international standard for language codes. ... Articles with similar titles include the NATO phonetic alphabet, which has also informally been called the “International Phonetic Alphabet”. For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words, see IPA chart for English. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone meaning sound, voice) is the study of the sounds of human speech. ... Unicode is an industry standard designed to allow text and symbols from all of the writing systems of the world to be consistently represented and manipulated by computers. ... Old Low Franconian is the language ancestral to the Low Franconian languages, including Dutch. ... The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times, beginning with the Renaissance. ... The Low Countries, the historical region of de Nederlanden, are the countries (see Country) on low-lying land around the delta of the Rhine, Scheldt, and Meuse (Maas) rivers. ... The North Sea is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean, located between the coasts of Norway and Denmark in the east, the coast of the British Isles in the west, and the German, Dutch, Belgian and French coasts in the south. ... Old Low Franconian is the language ancestral to the Low Franconian languages, including Dutch. ...

Language area

The area where Old Dutch was spoken doesn't coincide with the area in which standard Dutch is spoken now. In the present provinces of Groningen, Friesland and along the coast of North Holland, Frisian was spoken and in the East of the present day Netherlands (Achterhoek, Overijssel and Drenthe) Old Saxon was spoken. However in the South and South East the area in which Old Dutch was spoken was more extensive than the range of the modern standard. Old Dutch was spoken in the area which is now known as French Flanders, part of Wallonia and a large portion of the Lower Rhine and Westphalia. The flag of Groningen Groningen is the northeast province of the Netherlands with a typical dialect (Gronings) with regional nuances. ... Capital Leeuwarden Queens Commissioner drs. ... Capital Haarlem Queens Commissioner Mr. ... Frisian is a Germanic group of closely related languages, spoken by about half a million members of Frisian ethnic groups living on the southern fringes of the North Sea in the Netherlands and Germany. ... The Achterhoek is a region in the eastern part of the Netherlands. ... Flag of Overijssel Overijssel is a province of the Netherlands, located in the central eastern part of the country. ... For the Dutch footballer, see Royston Drenthe. ... Old Saxon, also known as Old Low German, is a Germanic language. ... Extent of Flemish in the Arrondissement of Dunkirk, 1874 and 1972 Nord (French: North) is a département in the north of France. ... Wallonia (French: Wallonie, German: Wallonien, Walloon: Walonreye, Dutch: Wallonië) or the Walloon Region (French: Région Wallonne, Dutch: Waals Gewest) is the predominantly French-speaking region that constitutes one of the three federal regions of Belgium, with its capital at Namur. ... Westphalia (German: Westfalen) is a region in Germany, centred on the cities of Bielefeld, Dortmund, Gelsenkirchen, Münster, and Osnabrück and included in the states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony. ...

Linguistic boundaries

Relation with Old Low East Franconian

The differences between Old Dutch and Old East Low Franconian are thought to have been minute. It has been known to occasionally show some Central German features but was most certainly mutually intelligible with Old Dutch. The difference in classification rests solely in the fact that when both dialects evolved into Middle Dutch, the dialects that descended from Old Low East Franconian did not contribute much to the creation of standard Dutch, whereas Old West Low Franconian (thus Old Dutch) did. Central German (in German: Mitteldeutsch) is a group of German dialects spread from the Rhineland to Thuringia, south of Low German and north of Upper German. ... A pair of languages is said to be mutually intelligible if speakers of one language can readily understand the other language. ... Linguistically speaking, Middle Dutch is no more than a collective name for closely related languages or dialects which were spoken and written between about 1150 and 1500 in the present-day Dutch-speaking region. ... Dutch (  ) is a West Germanic language spoken by around 23 million people, mainly in the Netherlands, Belgium and Suriname, but also by smaller groups of speakers in parts of France, Germany and several former Dutch colonies. ...

Relation with Middle Dutch

Area in which Old Dutch was spoken.

Although there were major changes, Old Dutch gradually transformed into Middle Dutch. Generally 1150 is given as the point at which Middle Dutch appears, mainly because at that time the amount of surviving written sources increases greatly, but the real boundary between Old and Middle Dutch is almost impossible to give. The criterion for conceptual separation is therefore mainly methodological and doesn't reflect a change acceleration. Around 1200 the peculiarities used to typify Old Dutch disappear in the sources. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ...

The biggest difference between Old and Middle Dutch is a feature called vocal reduction. While round vocals positioned at a word's last syllable are rather prominent in Old Dutch, in Middle Dutch they evolved into schwa. In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean: An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in any language, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel. ...

Examples:

• [Old Dutch] vogala --> [Middle Dutch] vogele (bird)
• [Old Dutch] dago/a --> [Middle Dutch] daghe (day)
• [Old Dutch] brecan --> [Middle Dutch] breken (break)
• [Old Dutch] gescrivona --> [Middle Dutch] gheschreven (written, past tense)

Differences with Old Frisian

A notable difference between Old Dutch and Old Frisian is the Germanic au. In Old Dutch the Germanic au became an ō (/o:/), in Frisian however it became an ā (/a:/). Example: Old Frisian was the West Germanic language spoken between the 8th and 16th centuries by the people who, from their ancient homes in North Germany and Denmark, had settled in the area between the Rhine and Elbe on the European North Sea coast in the 4th and 5th centuries. ...

The present Dutch village of Akersloot was spelled Ekerslat in Old Frisian texts.

Differences with Old High German

The main difference between the Western Old High German dialects, which were influenced by Frankish, the direct ancestor of Old Dutch, and Old Dutch is the latter’s lack of participation in the High German consonant shift. Because of this Old Dutch was closer to the original Frankish and its area can be seen as a remnant from which High Franconian has split off. There was still a dialect continuum though. The term Old High German (OHG, German: Althochdeutsch) refers to the earliest stage of the German language and it conventionally covers the period from around 500 to 1050. ... High German subdivides into Upper German (green) and Central German (blue), and is distinguished from Low German (yellow). ... A dialect continuum is a range of dialects spoken across a large geographical area, differing only slightly between areas that are geographically close, and gradually decreasing in mutual intelligibility as the distances become greater. ...

Differences with Old Low Saxon

At the time there was also a dialect continuum between Low Franconian and Low Saxon, which only was broken by the much later influence of standard languages. Despite a number of similarities there are also a lot of differences between Old Low Saxon and Old Dutch.

Examples:

• The Germanic sound hl (chl) at the beginning of a word was preserved in Old Low Saxon but changed to l in Old Dutch.
• Old Low Saxon verbs have the same verb ending in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd person plural while Old Dutch has three different verb endings, namely: -on, -et and -unt.
• The Germanic ō (/o:/) became a diphthong in Old Dutch while Old Low Saxon kept the Germanic ō, this resulted in Old Dutch fluot versus Old Low Saxon flōd.
• In Old Low Saxon plural noun endings are often -as or -os whereas Old Dutch mostly uses -a.
• Old Dutch experienced "final obstruent devoicing" much earlier than Old Low Saxon. For example: Old Dutch fluot versus Old Low Saxon flōd.

Final obstruent devoicing or terminal devoicing is a systematic phonological process occurring in languages such as German, Dutch, Polish, and Russian, among others. ...

Position of Old Dutch within West Germanic

Old Dutch had a clear separate identity from the other West Germanic languages or dialect groups. It should be emphasized however that the other groups did not form a unity against this Low Franconian; the present situation where the continental West Germanic dialects all use German as their standard with the only true exception being the area using standard Dutch, cannot be correctly projected into the past, a past having no standards and in which it was still unclear which would develop and what their range would be. The Germanic languages in Europe are divided into North (blue) and West Germanic (green and orange) Languages  Low Saxon-Low Franconian (Dutch)  High German (standard German, Schwyzerdütsch)  Insular Anglo-Frisian (English, Scots)  Continental Anglo-Frisian (Frisian)  East North Germanic (Danish, BokmÃ¥l Norwegian, Swedish)  West North Germanic (Nynorsk Norwegian... Dutch ( (help· info)), sometimes referred to as Netherlandic in English, is a Low Germanic language spoken by around 22 million people, mainly in the Netherlands and Belgium (2005 [1]). Dutch spoken in Flanders (Vlaanderen), the northern part of Belgium, is sometimes referred to as Flemish (Vlaams). ...

Surviving texts

Old Dutch texts are extremely rare, and much more limited when compared to related languages like Old English and Old High German. Most of the earliest texts written in the Netherlands were written in Latin rather than Old Dutch. Some of these Latin texts however contained Old Dutch words interspersed with the Latin text. Also, it is extremely hard to determine whether a text actually is written in Old Dutch as the Germanic dialects spoken at that time were much more closely related. Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon[1], Old English: ) is an early form of the English language that was spoken in parts of what is now England and southern Scotland between the mid-fifth century and the mid-twelfth century. ... The term Old High German (OHG, German: Althochdeutsch) refers to the earliest stage of the German language and it conventionally covers the period from around 500 to 1050. ... Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in Latium, the region immediately surrounding Rome. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ...

Some larger texts

The Wachtendonck Psalms

The Wachtendonck Psalms are a number of psalms written in Latin and an eastern variety of Old Franconian. It is unclear whether the dialect is Old Limburgish or a variety of Rhine Franconian. Very little remains of them. The psalms were named after a manuscript which has not come down to us, but out of which scholars believe the surviving fragments must have been copied. This manuscript was once owned by Canon Arnold Wachtendonck. The surviving fragments are handwritten copies made by the Renaissance scholar Justus Lipsius in the sixteenth century. Lipsius made a number of separate copies of apparently the same material and these versions do not always agree. In addition, scholars conclude that the numerous errors and inconsistencies in the fragments point not only to some carelessness or inattentiveness by the Renaissance scholars but also to errors in the now lost manuscript out of which the material was copied. The language of the Psalms suggests that they were originally written in the 10th century. A number of editions exist, among others by the 19th-century Dutch philologist Willem Lodewijk van Helten and, more recently, the diplomatic edition by the American historical linguist Robert L. Kyes (1969) and the critical edition by the Dutch philologist Arend Quak (1981). Psalms (Tehilim תהילים, in Hebrew) is a book of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, and of the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. ... Limburgish, or Limburgian or Limburgic (Dutch: Limburgs, German: Limburgisch, French: Limbourgeois) is a group of Franconian varieties, spoken in the Limburg and Rhineland regions, near the common Dutch / Belgian / German border. ... Rhenish Franconian (in German: Rheinfränkisch) is a dialect family of West Central German. ... Canons, Bruges A Canon of the Seminary, Sint Niklaas, Flanders. ... Justus Lipsius, Joost Lips or Josse Lips (October 18, 1547 — March 23, 1606), was a Flemish philologian and humanist. ...

The Leiden Willeram

The Leiden Willeram is the name given to a manuscript containing a Low Franconian version of the Old High German commentary on Song of Solomon by the German abbot Williram (ultimately by Isidore of Seville). Until recently, based on its orthography and phonology the text of this manuscript was believed by most scholars to be Middle Franconian, that is Old High German, with some Limburgic or otherwise Franconian admixtures. But in 1974, the German philologist Willy Sanders proved in his study Der Leidener Willeram that the text actually represents an imperfect attempt by a scribe from the northwestern coastal area of the Low Countries to translate the East Franconian original into his local vernacular. The text contains many Old Dutch words not known in Old High German, as well as mistranslated words caused by the scribe's unfamiliarity with some Old High German words in the original he translated, and a confused orthography heavily influenced by the Old High German original. For instance, the graphme <z> is used after the High German tradition where it represents Germanic t shifted to /ts/. Sanders also proved that the manuscript, now in the University Library of Leiden University, was written at the end of the 11th century in the Abbey of Egmond in modern North Holland, whence the manuscript's other name Egmond Willeram. For other uses, see Song of Solomon (disambiguation). ... Williram (d. ... Saint Isidore of Seville (Spanish: or ) (c. ... East Franconian (Mainfränkisch) is a dialect which is spoken in Bavaria and other areas in Germany around Bamberg, Würzburg and Bayreuth. ... Leiden University, located in the city of Leiden, is the oldest university in the Netherlands[1]. It is a member of the Coimbra Group, the Europaeum and the League of European Research Universities. ... Egmond is a former municipality in the in the north-western Netherlands, in the province of North Holland. ...

Further sources

• Glosses
• Place names
• Personal names

A gloss is a note made in the margins or between the lines of a book, in which the meaning of the text in its original language is explained in another language. ...

The most famous sentence

Main article: Hebban olla vogala

Hebban olla vogala nestas hagunnan hinase hic
enda thu uuat unbidan uue nu. Hebban olla vogala are the first 3 words of the oldest fragment of Dutch that has been found to date. ...

Arguably, the most famous text containing "Old Dutch" is: Hebban olla vogala nestas hagunnan, hinase hic enda tu, wat unbidan we nu ("All birds have started making nests, except me and you, what are we waiting for"), dating around the year 1100, written by a Flemish monk in a convent in Rochester, England. For a long time this sentence was considered to be the earliest in Dutch. However according to professor Luc de Grauwe the text could equally well be Old English, more specifically Old Kentish, which would make more sense considering it was written in England. However, there doesn't seem to be a general consensus on this matter. It should also be noted that Old (West) Dutch and Old English were very similar. ^[1] August 5 - Henry I becomes King of England. ... St. ... This article is about an abbey as a religious building. ... Rochester is a small town in Kent, at the lowest bridging point of the River Medway about 30 miles (50 km) from London. ... Motto (French) God and my right Anthem No official anthem - the United Kingdom anthem God Save the Queen is commonly used England() – on the European continent() – in the United Kingdom() Capital (and largest city) London (de facto) Official languages English (de facto) Unified  -  by Athelstan 927 AD  Area  -  Total 130... Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon[1], Old English: ) is an early form of the English language that was spoken in parts of what is now England and southern Scotland between the mid-fifth century and the mid-twelfth century. ...

Spelling

Old Dutch was spelled using the Latin alphabet. Because the missionaries in the region now known as the Low Countries were mostly from the Old English and Old High German speaking areas one can spot some Old English and Old High German elements, which were never present in the spoken language of the native speakers.

• th is used to indicate the Germanic þ-sound.

Example: thāhton ("dachten").

• dh is used for the ð-sound.

• c is often used for a k-sound if the beginning of a word contains a velar (back) vowel.

Example: cuning (Modern Dutch "koning", meaning "king"). In front of palatal (front) vowels the earlier texts (especially names in Latin deeds and charters) used ch. By the later tenth century, the newer letter k (which was rarely used in Latin) was starting to replace this spelling. Example: kēron (Modern Dutch "keren", meaning "to turn"). It is not exactly clear how c was pronounced in Old Dutch. In Latin orthography c in front of front vowels stood for an assibilated sound ts; it is quite likely that early Dutch had a similar pronunciation. The spellings ch and k both stood for the regular velar plosive. In later texts the consistent distinction between c and ch/k starts to break down. A stop or plosive or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. ...

• u represented the vowel u and consonant v.

Example: uusso ("foxes", genitive plural). In this example the first u represents the consonant v and the second one the vowel u. The w-sound was normally represented as uu as the letter w didn't exist yet.

• g was most likely a fricative /ɣ/, much like in modern Dutch.

This is based on the change between weh (Modern Dutch "weg", meaning "way" accusative) and wege ("way", dative). Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ...

• h represents an h-sound (close to h) and a ch-sound (close to χ or ç).

Examples: holto (Modern Dutch "hout" - wood-), naht (Modern Dutch "nacht" -night-).

• i is used for both the vowel i and the consonant j.

Examples: witton (Modern Dutch "weten" - to know-), iār (Modern Dutch "jaar" - year-).

• qu always represents a kw-sound.

Example: quāmon vs. modern Dutch kwamen ("they came").

• z rarely appears and when it does, it's pronounced ts.

Example: quezzodos vs. modern Dutch kwetsen ("to hurt") (infinitive).

The length of a vowel was not represented in writing, probably because the monks, who were the ones capable of writing and teaching how to write, tended to base the written language on Latin which also does not make a distinction in writing. Examples: Example: dag ("day", short vowel), thahton ("they thought", long vowel).

Later on, the long vowels were sometimes marked with a horizontal line (macron) to indicate a long vowel: ā. In some texts long vowels were indicated by simply doubling the vowel in question: Examples: Heembeke, and the given name Oodhelmus (both from deeds, written in 941 and 797 respectively). A macron, from Greek (makros) meaning large, is a diacritic ¯ placed over a vowel originally to indicate that the vowel is long. ...

Translation of Old Dutch sentence in Middle and Contemporary Dutch

The following sentence of Old Dutch offers an evolutionary view of the Dutch language starting with an Old Dutch sentence written around 900 till the modern Dutch language.

Old Dutch

"Irlôsin sol an frithe sêla mîna fan thên thia ginâcont mi, wanda under managon he was mit mi."

Middle Dutch

"Erlosen sal hi in vrede siele mine van dien die genaken mi, want onder menegen hi was met mi"

Modern Dutch

Due to the loss of most of the inflection of both Old and Middle Dutch, contempory Dutch uses a different word order.

(Using same word order)

"Verlossen zal hij in vrede ziel mijn van zij die genaken mij, want onder menigen hij was met mij"

(Using correct contemporary Dutch word order)

"Hij zal mijn ziel verlossen in vrede van hen die mij genaken, want onder menigen was hij met mij"

Characteristics

An important feature of Old Dutch is the use of full vowels in final position. Examples: vogala ("bird/fowl"), hebban ("to have"), gevon ("to give"), herro ("lord"), gesterkon ("reinforce"), gewisso ("certainty"), fardiligon ("exterminate"): compare to present Dutch: vogel, hebben, geven, heer, gesterken, gewis and verdelgen.

Another clear characteristic is the survival of the Germanic four-case system, which by Middle Dutch had started to become less distinct as a result of the collapse of full vowels in final position.

dag "day" singular:

dag (nominative)

dages (genitive)

dage (dative)

dag (accusative)

plural:

daga (nominative)

dago (genitive)

dagon (dative)

daga (accusative)

Sound developments

Monophthong changes

The Old Germanic diphthong ai and au became the long monotones ''ē and ō in Old Dutch. Examples: hēm, slōt.

A similar development can be found in the Anglo-Frisian languages Old Frisian and Old English.

In Old English the Western Germanic ai, ā and au became an ēa-sound. Examples: Western Germanic *hām (versus Early Modern English home), slēat.

h disappears at the beginning of a word

In Old Dutch the h-sound at the beginning of a word disappears around the 9th century. Examples include Old Dutch ringis ("ring", genitive) versus Old Low German and Old English hring. As a means of recording the passage of time the 9th century was that century that lasted from 801 to 900. ...

Reductions of vowels

In the Wachtendonckse Psalmen with unstressed syllables the e and i merge together, as with o and u. This led to variants like dagi and dage ("day", dative singular) and tungon and tungun ("tongue", genitive, dative, accusative singular and nominative, dative, accusative plural). From the 11th century onwards, unvoiced vowels were reduced to schwa (ə). This sound wasn't only spelled as e but also as a (like "Egmondse Williram"). As a means of recording the passage of time, the 11th century was that century which lasted from 1001 to 1100. ... In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean: An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in any language, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel. ...

Final obstruent devoicing

Old Dutch already underwent "Final obstruent devoicing". This means that voiced consonants become voiceless at the end of a word. Final obstruent devoicing or terminal devoicing is a systematic phonological process occurring in languages such as German, Dutch, Polish, and Russian, among others. ...

Examples:

• wort ("word", nominative) versus wordes (genitive)
• gif ("give!", imperative) versus geuon ("to give", infinitive)
• weh wɛç ("way", accusative) versus wege ("way", dative)

This still occurs in modern Dutch, but this is no longer always reflected in spelling: woord (word) is spelled with d but this is pronounced as t.

hs becomes s

The sound combination hs, as in ch+s, became a voiceless s. Example: Old Dutch vusso versus common West Germanic fuhs (fuχ).

In German and English the hs sound became ks: German Fuchs, English fox

h disappears between vowels

In Old Dutch, the h-sound disappears when it is positioned between vowels.

Examples:

• Old Dutch thion versus Old High German dîhan
• Old Dutch (ge)sian versus Old High German sehan

In New High German the h when position between vowels is written, but not voiced. In Old High German however, it was voiced.

Voicing of f and s

In the course of the Old Dutch period the voiceless spirants f and s became voiced, (v and z) when positioned at the beginning of the word. In the Wachtendonckse Psalmen this feature is very rare while much later it can be seen in the spelling of Dutch toponyms which indicated the sound change was taking place during the 10th and 11th century.

Sources

1. ^ 'Olla vogala' is Engels
   'Olla Vogala' nog even in woordenboek
   Hebban olla uogala

• A. Quak en J.M. van der Horst, Inleiding Oudnederlands. Leuven: Universitaire Pers Leuven, 2002).
• Maurits Gysseling m.m.v Willy Pijnenburg, Corpus van Middelnederlandse teksten (tot en met het jaar 1300) reeks II (literaire handschriften), deel 1: Fragmenten. 's-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1980.
• M. Gysseling, "Prae-Nederlands, Oudnederlands, Vroegmiddelnederlands", in: Vierde Colloquium van hoogleraren en lectoren in de neerlandistiek aan buitenlandse universiteiten. Gent, 1970, pp. 78-89.
• M.C. van den Toorn, W.J.J. Pijnenburg, J.A. van Leuvensteijn, e.a., Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse taal. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1997.
• Willy Sanders, Der Leidener Willeram. Untersuchungen zu Handschrift, Text und Sprachform. München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1974.

See also

• Middle Dutch
• Dutch
• Low Franconian languages