Old Dutch

In linguistics, Old Dutch or Old Low Franconian is the set of Franconian (or Frankish) dialects
spoken in the Low Countries during the Early Middle Ages, from around the 5th to the 12th
century. Old Dutch is mostly recorded on fragmentary relics, and words have been
reconstructed from Middle Dutch and loan words from Old Low Franconian. [3] It is regarded as
the primary stage in the development of a separate Dutch language. By the end of the 9th
century, the Franconian (or Frankish) dialects spoken by the descendants of the Salian
Franks had developed into what is recognisable today as an early form of Dutch, but that might
also have been the case earlier.[4] Old Dutch in turn evolved into Middle Dutch around the 12th
century.
Old Dutch was spoken by the populace that occupied what is now southern Netherlands,
northern Belgium,
part
of
northern
France,
and
parts
of
the Lower
Rhine and Westphaliaregions of Germany. The inhabitants of northern Dutch provinces,
including Groningen,Friesland and the coast of North Holland, spoke Old Frisian, and some in
the east (Achterhoek,Overijssel and Drenthe) spoke Old Saxon, a language that had much in
common with Old Dutch.

Origins
Before the advent of Old Dutch, North Sea Germanic was spoken in most of the Netherlands
and Belgium. Elements of this language in the Netherlands survived longer through the Old
Frisian language, but in the rest of the country it was mostly replaced as it retreated
to Englandalong with the migrating Angles and Saxons. Instead the more widespread Common
Germanictongue spoken in the area became more popular and evolved into the Low
Franconian languages that included Old Dutch. Linguists typically date this transition to around
the 5th century.[5]
Several words that are known to have developed in the Netherlands before Old Dutch was
spoken have been found, and are sometimes called Oudnederlands in a geographic sense
(where Nederlands means "Netherlandic", not "Dutch"). The oldest known example, wad, was
already mentioned in 108 AD by Tacitus. The word exclusively referred to the region and
ground type that is now known as the Wadden Sea. However, since this word existed long
before Old Dutch did, it cannot be considered part of its vocabulary. Linguists Nicoline van der
Sijs and Tanneke Schoonheim from Genootschap Onze Taal instead attribute the role of oldest
Dutch word to the ancestor of the modern verb gunnen, a word that has no clear English
cognate. Its modern meaning is roughly "to think someone deserves something, to derive
satisfaction from someone else's success". They base their claim on a word found in the
partially translated Bergakker inscription dating from around 400 ("hauuwas ann kusjam
loguns"), where ann is commonly translated as "grant" and would have developed
into gunnenthrough the addition of the prefix ge-.

Characteristics
Relation with other West Germanic languages
Old Dutch (or Old Low Franconian) probably evolved primarily from Istvaeonic dialects in
theWest Germanic branch of Proto-Germanic in the 5th century. However, because Dutch has
Ingvaeonic characteristics, some philologists put the language in that branch.

Old West Low Franconian and Old East Low Franconian (compare Limburgian) are very
closely related, the divergence being that the latter shares more traits with neighboring
historical forms of Middle Franconian such as Ripuarian and Mosel Franconian. While both
forms of Low Franconian were instrumental to the framing of Middle Dutch, Old East Low
Franconian did not contribute much to Standard Dutch, which is based on the consolidated
dialects of South Holland and Brabant.
In the Middle Ages, a dialect continuum subsisted between Old Low Franconian and Old
Saxon; that was only recently interrupted by the simultaneous dissemination of standard
languages within each nation and the dissolution of folk dialects. Despite sharing some
particular features, a number of disparities separate Old Saxon, Old English, and Old Dutch;
one such difference is the Old Dutch utilization of -a as its plural a-stem noun ending, while Old
Saxon and Old English employ -as or -os. Much of the grammatical variation between Old
Dutch and Old Saxon is similar to that between Old Dutch and Old High German.
During the Merovingian period, the Middle Franconian dialects were influenced by Old Low
Franconian, resulting in certain linguistic loans which yielded a slight overlap of vocabulary,
most of which relates to warfare. In addition is the subsumption of the High German consonant
shift, a set of phonological changes beginning around the 5th or 6th century CE.
The other languages did not develop a uniform block discrete from Low Franconian, as they do
now. Today, nearly every continental European West Germanic language has German as a
standard, the only exception being the Dutch-speaking zone and Frisia.

Relation to Middle Dutch

Area in which Old Dutch was spoken.

Old Dutch naturally evolved into Middle Dutch with some distinctions that approximate those
found in most medieval West Germanic languages. The year 1150 CE is often cited as the time
of the discontinuity, but it actually marks a time of profuse Dutch writing whose language is
patently different from Old Dutch.
The most notable difference between Old and Middle Dutch is in a feature of speech known
as vowel reduction. Round vowels in word-final syllables are rather frequent in Old Dutch, in
Middle Dutch, such are leveled to a schwa.
Examples:
Old Dutch Middle Dutch English

vogala

vogele

bird

dago/a

daghe

day

brecan

breken

to break

gescrivona ghescreven

written (past participle)

The following is a translation of Psalm 55:18, taken from the Wachtendonck Psalms; it shows
the evolution of Dutch, from the original Old Dutch, written ca. 900 CE, to modern Dutch, but so
accurately reproduces the Latin word order of the original that there is little information that can
be garnered on Old Dutch syntax. In Modern Dutch, recasting is necessary to form a coherent
sentence.

Old Dutch

Irlsin sal an frithe sla mna fan thn thia gincont 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 (with old Verlossen zal hij in vrede ziel mijn van zij die genaken mij, want onder
menigen hij was met mij.
word order)

Modern Dutch (with new Hij zal mijn ziel verlossen in vrede van hen die mij genaken, want
onder menigen was hij met mij.
word order)

English

He will deliver my soul in peace from those who attack me, for,
amongst many, he was with me.

Phonology
Early sound developments
Phonologically, Old Dutch stands in between Old Saxon and Old High German, sharing some
innovations with the latter, and others with the former. Generally, it is less conservative than
either, rarely preserving older phonological stages not shared by one of the others.That may
also be a result of its late attestation, however.
Characteristics shared with Old Saxon:

The
Old
Germanic
diphthongs ai and au become
the
long
vowels and .
Examples: hm,slt. There are, however, several examples that show that a
diphthong ei remained in some cases, showing that the change was not quite complete as
it was in Old Saxon.

Characteristics shared with Old High German:

The
West
Germanic (/o/)
and (/e/,
from
Proto-Germanic 2)
become
diphthongs uo andie. Old Dutch fluot versus Old Saxon fld, Old Dutch hier versus Old
Saxon hr.
The h-sound in consonant clusters at the beginning of a word disappears around the 9th
century while it is retained in the northern languages. Examples include Old
Dutch ringis("ring", genitive), Old High German ring versus Old Saxon and Old
English hring, or ros("steed") versus Old English hros ("horse").
j is lost when following two consonants, with -jan becoming -en. It is most prominent in jaand j-stem nouns and adjectives, and in verbs of the first weak class.

Uniquely Old Dutch characteristics:

h disappears between vowels. Old Dutch thion, Old English on versus Old High
Germandhan, or Old Dutch (ge)sian, Old English son versus Old High German sehan.
(The h in modern German sehen /ze.n/ became mute only in later stages of German.)
The sound combination hs (chs) becomes a geminated ss. Example: Old Dutch vusso <
West Germanic fuhs (/fuxs/). (A development shared by the Middle Franconian dialects of
High German: compare Luxemburgish Fuuss).

Consonants[edit]
The table below lists the consonantal phonemes of Old Dutch. For descriptions of the sounds
and definitions of the terms, follow the links on the headings.
Old Dutch consonant phonemes

Labial

Dental/
Palatal Velar Glottal
Alveolar

voiceless

voiced

Nasal

Plosive

Fricative sibilant

voiceless

non-sibilant
voiced

Approximant

Rhotic

Notes:

/m, p, b/ were most likely bilabial whereas /f, v/ were most likely labiodental.
/n, t, d, s, l/ could have been either dental [n, t, d, s, l] or alveolar [n, t, d, s, l].
/n/ had a velar allophone [] when it occurred before the velars /k, /.
/l/ had a velarised allophone [] between a back vowel and /t/ or /d/. It might have also
been used in other environments, as it is the case in Modern Dutch.
// was likely dental [], but it could have also been alveolar [], as it is the case in Modern
Icelandic.
/r/ was most likely alveolar, either a trill [r] or a tap [ ].
Most consonants could be geminated. Notably, geminated /v/ gave [bb], and
geminated //probably gave []. Geminated /h/ resulted in [xx].
In the course of the Old Dutch period the voiceless spirants /f, , s/ gained voiced
allophones [v, , z] when positioned at the beginning of a syllable. The change is faithfully
reflected for [v], the other two allophones continuing to be written as before. In the
Wachtendonck Psalms, it is very rare, but much later, it can be seen in the spelling of
Dutch toponyms. Thus, the sound change was taking place during the 10th and 11th
century.
/v/ also occurred word-medially as an independent phoneme, developed from ProtoGermanic [], the fricative allophone of /b/.
After /n/, // was realized as a plosive [].
Postvocalic /h/ was realized as velar [x].

Final-obstruent devoicing[edit]
Old Dutch experienced final-obstruent devoicing much earlier than Old Saxon and Old High
German. In fact, by judging from the find at Bergakker, it would seem that the language already
had inherited this characteristic from Old Frankish whereas Old Saxon and Old High German
are known to have maintained word-final voiced obstruents much later (at least 900).
Examples:

wort ("word", nominative) versus wordes (genitive)

gif ("give!", imperative) versus geuon ("to give", infinitive)
weh [wex] ("way", accusative) versus wege ("way", dative)

Final devoicing has become systematic in modern Dutch. It is reflected in spelling for f/v (leefleven), s/z (kaas-kazen) but not for t/d: woord, "word", is spelled with a /d/ but pronounced with
a [t].

Vowels[edit]
Old Dutch monophthong phonemes

Front

Back

unrounded

rounded rounded

short long short

short long

Close i

Open a

Mid

Notes:

Phonetic realisation of /u/ differed by area. In most areas, it was probably realised
phonetically as central [] or front [y] or a diphthong [ w ~ w] before a vowel, but it was
probably retained as back [u] or [w] in others (at least in Limburg). While there is no
direct evidence for this in Old Dutch, it can be inferred by later developments in Middle
Dutch.
Long vowels were rare in unstressed syllables and occurred mostly because of suffixation
or compounding.
/y/ and // were originally umlaut allophones of /u/ and /o/ before /i/ or /j/ in the following
syllable. They were, however, partly phonemicised when the conditioning sounds were
gradually lost over time. Sometimes, the fronting was reverted later. Regardless of
phonemic distinction, they were still written as u and o.
As in northwestern High German, /u/ was lowered to [o] by the end of the Old Dutch period
and is no longer distinguished from /o/ (likely []) in writing. In western dialects, the two
phonemes eventually merge.
/i/ and /e/ were also similar in articulation, but they did not merge except in some small and
frequently used monosyllables (such as bin > ben, 'I am'). They, however, merged
consistently when they were later lengthened in open syllables.
The backness of /a/ and /a/ is unknown. They may have been front [a, a], central [, ],
back [, ] or mixed (for example, /a/ was back [] whereas /a/ was front [a], as in
modern Dutch).
/a/ probably had a rounded allophone [] before velarised []. It eventually merged
with/o/ in this position, as in Low Saxon, but in Dutch, the velar [] vocalised, creating a
diphthong.

In unstressed syllables, only three vowels seem to have been reliably distinguished: open, front
and back. In the Wachtendonck Psalms, the e and i merged in unstressed syllables, as
did oand u.
That
led
to
variants
like dagi and dage ("day",
dative
singular)
and tungon and tungun("tongue", genitive, dative, accusative singular and nominative, dative,
accusative plural). The forms with e and o are generally found later on, showing the gradual
reduction of the articulatory distinction, eventually merging into a schwa (//). A short phrase
from the gospel book of Munsterbilzen Abbey, written around 1130, still shows several
unstressed vowels distinguished:
Tesi samanunga was edele unde scona
This community was noble and pure
That was a late monument, however, as the merging of all unstressed short vowels
was already well underway by that time. Most likely, the difference was maintained
only in spelling traditions, but it had been mostly lost in speech. With the introduction of
new scribal traditions in the 12th and 13th century, the practices were abandoned, and
unstressed vowels were consistently written as e from that time onward.
Old Dutch diphthongs

Front

Opening

Back

ie (ia io) uo

Height-harmonic iu

Closing

ei

(ou)

Notes:

The closing diphthongs /ei/ and /ou/ occurred systematically only in the
southeastern dialects, having merged with /e/ and /o/ elsewhere. The other
dialects retained only /ei/, in words where earlier /ai/ had been affected by umlaut
(which prevented it from becoming /e/in many Old Dutch dialects, but not in Old
Saxon).
The situation for the front opening diphthongs is somewhat unclear, but it seems
similar to the situation for unstressed short vowels. Words written with io in Old
High German are often found written with ia or even ie in Old Dutch. They had
likely merged with each other already during the Old Dutch period.
Similarly /iu/ eventually merged with the other opening diphthongs in some
dialects. In the others, it merged with /u/ in most cases (after having passed
through an intermediate stage such as [yu]).
There also existed 'long' diphthongs /au/ and /eu/ but were treated as twosyllable sequences of a long vowel followed by a short one, not as proper
diphthongs.

Spelling conventions[edit]
Old Dutch was spelt using the Latin alphabet. However, since early missionaries in
the Low Countries were mostly Old English and Old High German speakers, Old
English and Old High German elements appear even if they were never present in the
spoken language.[citation needed]
The length of a vowel was generally not represented in writing probably because [citation
needed]
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: dag "day" (short vowel), thahton "they thought" (long vowel). Later on, the long
vowels were sometimes marked with a macron to indicate a long vowel: . In some
texts long vowels were indicated by simply doubling the vowel in question, as in the
placename Heembeke and personal name Oodhelmus(both from charters written in
941 and 797 respectively).

c is used for [k] when it is followed by u, o or a: cuning [kunik] 'king'

(modern koning). In front of i or e, 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: kron [keron] 'to turn
around' (mod. keren).
It is not exactly clear how c was pronounced before i or e in Old Dutch. In the Latin
orthography of the time, c before front vowels stood for an affricate [ts]; it is quite
likely that early Dutch spelling followed that pronunciation.
g represented [] or
its
allophone []: brengan [brean] 'to
bring', segghan [sean] 'to say',wege [wee] 'way' (dative).
h represents [h] and its allophone [x]: holto [hoto] 'wood' (mod. hout), naht 'night'
(mod.nacht).
i is used for both the vowels [i] and [i] and the consonant [j]: ik [ik] 'I'
(mod. ik), ir [jar]'year' (mod. jaar).
qu always represents [kw]: qumon [kwamon] 'they came' (mod. kwamen).
s represented the consonant [s] and later also [z].
th is used to indicate []: thhton [axton] 'they thought' (mod. dachten).
Occasionally, dh is used for [].
u represented the vowels [u] and [u] or the consonant [v]: uusso [vusso] 'foxes'
(genitive plural).
uu was normally used to represent [w], as the letter w did not yet exist.
z rarely
appears,
and
when
it
does,
it
is
pronounced [ts]: quezzodos [kwetsodos] 'you hurt' (past tense, now kwetste).

Grammar
Nouns
Old Dutch preserved at least four of the six cases of ProtoGermanic: nominative, accusative, genitive and dative. A fifth case, the instrumental,
may have also existed.

The (a) declension

The -s ending in the masculine plural was preserved in the coastal dialects, as can be
seen in the Hebban Olla Vogalla text where 'nestas' is used instead of 'nesta'. Later
on, the -s ending entered Hollandic dialects and became part of the modern standard
language.

Masculine - dag (day)

Neuter - buok (book)

Singular

Singular

Plural

Plural

Nominative dag

daga / dagas a / -as buok

buok

Accusative

dag

daga / dagas a / -as buok

buok

Genitive

dagis -is dago

buokis -is buoko

Dative

dage

on

buoki

dagon

buokon on

The (o) declension & weak feminine declension

During the Old Dutch period, the distinction between the feminine -stems and nstems began to disappear, when endings of one were transferred to the other
declension and vice versa, as part of a larger process in which the distinction between
the strong and weak inflection was being lost not only in feminine nouns but also in
adjectives. The process is shown in a more advanced stage in Middle Dutch.
Feminine - Ertha (earth)

Singular

Plural

Nominative ertha

ertha / erthon a / -on

Accusative

ertha

ertha / erthon a / -on

Genitive

erthon on erthono

ono

Dative

ertho

on

The (i) declension

erthon

Masculine - bruk (breach) Feminine - gift (gift)

Singular

Plural

Singular Plural

Nominative bruk

bruki

gift

gifti

Accusative

bruk

bruki

gift

gifti / gifte i

Genitive

brukis

-is

bruko

gifti

i gifto

Dative

bruki

-i

brukin

in

gifti

i giftin

in

The weak masculine and neuter declensions

Masculine - balko (beam)

Neuter - herta (heart)

Singular

Singular

Plural

Nominative balko

Plural

balkon

on

herta

herton

-on

Accusative

balkon on balkon

on

herta

herton

-on

Genitive

balkin

in

balkono ono hertin in hertono ono

Dative

balkin

in

balkon

on

hertin in herton

on

Verbs
Old Dutch reflects an intermediate stage between Old Saxon and Old High German.
Like Old High German, it preserved the three different verb endings in the plural (-on, et and -unt) while the more northern languages have the same verb ending in all three
persons. However, like Old Saxon, it had only two classes of weak verb, with only a
few relic verbs of the third weak class, but the third class had still largely been
preserved in Old High German.

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 was written in Old Dutch, as
the Germanic dialects spoken at that time were not standardised and were much more
similar.

The most famous sentence

Main article: Hebban olla vogala
Hebban
olla
vogala
enda thu uuat unbidan uue nu.

nestas

hagunnan

hinase

hic

Arguably, the most famous text containing Old Dutch is translated to "All birds have
started making nests, except me and you, what are we waiting for?", dating around the
year 1100, written by a West Flemish monk in a convent in Rochester, England. For a
long time, the sentence was commonly considered to be the earliest in Dutch.
However, many older texts have since been discovered.[8][9]

Some larger texts

The Wachtendonck Psalms
The Wachtendonck Psalms are a collection of Latin psalms, with a translation in an
eastern variety of Old Low Franconian which contains a number of Old High
German elements; it was probably based on a Middle Franconian original.[10] Very little
remains of them. The psalms were named after a manuscript, which disappeared, but
out of it, scholars believe that 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,
as well as 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). As might be expected from an interlinear translation, the word order of
the Old Franconian text follows that of the Latin original very closely.
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 of Ebersberg (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 letter z is used after the High German tradition where it
represents Germanic tshifted 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.
The Rhinelandic Rhyming Bible
Another important source for Old Dutch is the so-called Rhinelandic Rhyming Bible
(Dutch:Rijnlandse Rijmbijbel and German: Rheinische Reimbibel). This is a verse
translation of biblical histories, attested only in a series of fragments, which was
composed in a mixed dialect containing Low German, Old Dutch and High German
(Rhine-Franconian) elements.[11] It was likely composed in north-west Germany in the
early 12th century, possibly in Werden Abbey, near Essen.
Further sources

Glosses
Place names
Personal names

Older sentences considered to be in either Old Dutch or Frankish[

An earlier sentence of what could be considered Old Dutch comes from the "Lex
salica", written in the early 6th century:[12]
"Maltho thi afrio lito"
('I say, I free you, half-free')
This phrase was used to free a serf. Apart from this, the Lex Salica also
contains a number of single words used when no Latin equivalent existed