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Reference.org
Old High German
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<p>Old High German is the earliest stage of the <a href="/facts/German_language/oWaQIDA8">German language</a>, conventionally identified as the period from around 500/750 to 1050. Rather than representing a single supra-regional form of German, Old High German encompasses the numerous <a href="/facts/West_Germanic_languages/PbeIH9Jz">West Germanic dialects</a> that had undergone the set of <a href="/facts/Sound_change/NU6EyI1u">consonantal changes</a> called the <a href="/facts/High_German_consonant_shift/B4LuIgoe">Second Sound Shift</a>. </p><p>At the start of this period, dialect areas reflected the territories of largely independent tribal kingdoms, but by 788 the conquests of <a href="/facts/Charlemagne/o0PlxScC">Charlemagne</a> had brought all OHG dialect areas into a single <a href="/facts/Polity/0R8Wr4CL">polity</a>. The period also saw the development of a stable linguistic border between German and <a href="/facts/Gallo-Romance_languages/oQ17luN0">Gallo-Romance</a>, later <a href="/facts/French_language/qe1DnaQh">French</a>. </p><p>Old High German largely preserved the <a href="/facts/Synthetic_language/oVDpKynV">synthetic</a> <a href="/facts/Inflection/mhXSXpmJ">inflectional</a> system inherited from its ancestral Germanic forms. The eventual disruption of these patterns, which led to the more <a href="/facts/Analytic_language/yv6h21yU">analytic</a> grammar, are generally considered to mark the transition to <a href="/facts/Middle_High_German/LI9JRDIu">Middle High German</a>. </p><p>Surviving Old High German texts were all composed in monastic <a href="/facts/Scriptoria/xX1KyjVW">scriptoria</a>, so the overwhelming majority of them are religious in nature or, when secular, belong to the <a href="/facts/Latin/pM3Kge85">Latinate</a> literary culture of <a href="/facts/Christianity/nKyJHlqq">Christianity</a>. The earliest instances, which date to the latter half of the 8th century, are <a href="/facts/Gloss_(annotation)/f7MlXzqo">glosses</a>—notes added to margins or between lines that provide translation of the (Latin) text or other aid to the reader. </p>