Old High German

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Progeniture-celicole
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Old High German

Postby Progeniture-celicole » 2013-06-29, 2:04

Hi!

I lately thought of learning Old High German, along with Old Norse. I already found a few online books. I saw there was up to now no topic about OHG, so I thought it could be fun to at least talk about ways to learn it.

I already try to learn only four eastern slavic tongues (Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian and Ruthenian) and two baltic tongues (Lithuanian and Latvian), but I also want to deepen my knowledge of the germanic ones and it feel myself drawn towards the study of ON and OHG. Already knowing rather well Icelandic and Faroese, I wanted to go deeper and study Old Norse, two years ago or so, and knowing also English and German I lately thought of learning Old High German. I spent the last six years self-studying germanic tongues, getting good knowledge of Frisian and Dutch as well without however speaking them as brightly as my other germanic tongues. Although I am a Russian Studies major (and Linguistics major) here at the University of Ottawa, and that I am going towards Slavic Studies for my master's degree, I feel bond to germanic tongues and I cannot make out why. Anyway!

I hope a few of you wish to also learn OHG, so that we can talk about it a little!

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Re: Old High German

Postby linguoboy » 2013-06-29, 2:44

Progeniture-celicole wrote:I hope a few of you wish to also learn OHG, so that we can talk about it a little!

The problem with OHG is that we don't have much in the way of texts, and they're mostly translations. Most of the pagan stuff was lost. Also, it wasn't very well standardised (especially in comparison to, say, Old English). It all makes studying it a little frustrating.
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Re: Old High German

Postby księżycowy » 2013-06-29, 2:49

I've had a thing for Old High German (and other languages of the European Middle Ages) for a while. I've been looking to get a print copy of Wright's grammar.

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Re: Old High German

Postby johnklepac » 2013-06-29, 4:21

linguoboy wrote:The problem with OHG is that we don't have much in the way of texts, and they're mostly translations.

Aren't translations linguistic gold, assuming you can locate the originals?

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Re: Old High German

Postby linguoboy » 2013-06-29, 17:44

johnklepac wrote:
linguoboy wrote:The problem with OHG is that we don't have much in the way of texts, and they're mostly translations.

Aren't translations linguistic gold, assuming you can locate the originals?

Only for decipherment. If you're interested in the features of the language in question, they're terrible, since it can be hard to separate the native from the imitation. There are several questions about Gothic syntax we'll never be able to answer with certainty because Ulfilas' Bible translation follows the Greek version so slavishly.
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Re: Old High German

Postby Progeniture-celicole » 2013-06-29, 23:20

I must say that the learning tools I found were mostly in German. In the english tongue, there is not so much, thus I do not know if Linguoboy is talking about english tools or not. But I found, among others, an online OHG grammar book all in German, and there are German-OHG wordbooks available. One can lightly find the learning tools for the declensions and the conjugations. Yet, I have not started to study it, but I will learn what I can, without having as a goal to "master" it. It is sheerly out of some taste for germanic tongues that I want to do so.

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Re: Old High German

Postby sa wulfs » 2013-07-02, 11:34

There's one or two OHG dialects I like, but generally speaking OHG is the only Germanic language I find ugly.
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Re: Old High German

Postby Viridzen » 2014-01-30, 20:22

It's a shame that there is next to nothing for this language...I'm using Wright's "A Primer of Old High German" (or something like that), and it's small, it doesn't explain things well, and the only exercises it gives are reading, with plenty of words you aren't taught yet. I'm trying to find a place where I can learn verbs, mostly. I think I have nouns down (more or less), and I'm starting with adjectives. I, too, would like help (and resources!)
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Re: Old High German

Postby linguoboy » 2014-01-30, 20:28

Viridzen wrote:it's small, it doesn't explain things well, and the only exercises it gives are reading, with plenty of words you aren't taught yet.

That's par for the course when you study a dead language like this. The number of people learning OHG in order to write and speak it is beyond negligible.
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons

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Re: Old High German

Postby księżycowy » 2014-01-30, 21:07

And part of the reason hardly anything is explained is because you're expected to know some Latin and/or Greek already and to make the connect to the Latin or Greek. That's the way a lot of the old "textbooks" for these languages work. Which is not necessarily a bad thing.

I've actually spent some time in Wrights grammar, and found it was quite suited to my needs.

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Re: Old High German

Postby Viridzen » 2014-01-30, 21:56

księżycowy wrote:And part of the reason hardly anything is explained is because you're expected to know some Latin and/or Greek already and to make the connect to the Latin or Greek. That's the way a lot of the old "textbooks" for these languages work. Which is not necessarily a bad thing.

Please explain?
Please, correct my errors. S'il vous plaît, corrigez mes erreurs.
C2: [flag=]en[/flag] B1: Focusing on: [flag=]fr[/flag] (A2), [flag=]got[/flag]

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Re: Old High German

Postby księżycowy » 2014-01-31, 0:35

I was basically saying the the grammar sections are minimal because Wright expects you to know, in this case, Latin grammar and to be able to make the comparisons between the way Latin works and OHG works. That's not to say the two are considered to be exactly the same in grammatical form and function by the author. It's just the way a lot of older grammars/textbooks work.

After all, Latin and Greek are the ruler with which to judge all other languages. Or so it was thought.

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Re: Old High German

Postby Viridzen » 2014-02-16, 17:36

(Please excuse me; I believe an ice-giant ate my account for two weeks, sorry for the late reply.)

What can I use to learn it?
Please, correct my errors. S'il vous plaît, corrigez mes erreurs.
C2: [flag=]en[/flag] B1: Focusing on: [flag=]fr[/flag] (A2), [flag=]got[/flag]

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Re: Old High German

Postby księżycowy » 2014-02-16, 17:48

To learn Old High German? There aren't too many choices. Wright's grammar is about the only thing I can think of in English. There are also some German resources if you know any German.

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Re: Old High German

Postby Viridzen » 2014-02-16, 18:10

księżycowy wrote:To learn Old High German? There aren't too many choices. Wright's grammar is about the only thing I can think of in English. There are also some German resources if you know any German.

Hmm... I'll see the German ones, if even for future reference. I can always look up the German words or just learn German first. It will help with my Yiddish and Old High German, so I can always do that.
Please, correct my errors. S'il vous plaît, corrigez mes erreurs.
C2: [flag=]en[/flag] B1: Focusing on: [flag=]fr[/flag] (A2), [flag=]got[/flag]

księżycowy

Re: Old High German

Postby księżycowy » 2014-02-16, 18:26

As my German is very rusty at the moment, I can't really direct you to anything aside from:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Althochdeu ... lnachweise
Perhaps someone else with more ability in German can help.

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Re: Old High German

Postby Viridzen » 2014-02-16, 18:52

Well, I found this: http://www.koeblergerhard.de/ahdwbhin.html but it doesn't look very good. It's slow and has too many problems, but if it's all we have...
https://archive.org/details/Abgrogans-V ... is-et-Alia -Um, if you can make out anything, and get around the holes. (This must be the oldest book I've seen)
https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/W%C3%B6r ... ochdeutsch -This has almost nothing: it's either hard to read, OHG-to-Latin/German/etc., nothing but entries leading to other spellings, or all those things in one.
https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Sammlung ... n_Urkunden -This might be the best one. Use Ctrl+F (or whatever you have) to look for <i>ahd</i> or a German or Latin word whose translation you want to see, and you can find it's translation. But, be warned: you may also get Middle HG (this one has both in one with what appears to be only years telling which period it's from, so you'll have to figure out which perios the time is in.)
http://wold.livingsources.org/vocabulary/11 -this seems okay, but it looks a lot like http://lingweb.eva.mpg.de/cgi-bin/ids/i ... &lg_id=192 .
Well, I can't find much else. For verbs, all I have is this: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix ... rman_verbs it doesn't make much sense. For everything else, Wright's Primer is all we have, I think.
Please, correct my errors. S'il vous plaît, corrigez mes erreurs.
C2: [flag=]en[/flag] B1: Focusing on: [flag=]fr[/flag] (A2), [flag=]got[/flag]

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Re: Old High German

Postby Lauren » 2015-08-18, 4:16

I'm really sad that the online Old High German corpus, Enhig, is non-functional. But apparently there aren't many texts in OHG in existence so it looks like it is another case of an awesome language I'll never get to learn. :(
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