Misplaced Pages

#251748

54-506: Toromono may be extinct . Another possibly extinct Tacanan language is Mabenaro ; Arasa has been classified as Tacanan, but appears to have more in common with Panoan. Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the Kayuvava , Tupi , and Arawak language families due to contact. Below is a full list of Tacanan language varieties listed by Loukotka (1968), including names of unattested varieties. Loukotka (1968) lists

108-518: A dead language is a language that no longer has any first-language speakers, but does have second-language speakers or is used fluently in written form, such as Latin . A dormant language is a dead language that still serves as a symbol of ethnic identity to an ethnic group ; these languages are often undergoing a process of revitalisation . Languages that have first-language speakers are known as modern or living languages to contrast them with dead languages, especially in educational contexts. In

162-434: A vernacular language . The revival of Hebrew has been largely successful due to extraordinarily favourable conditions, notably the creation of a nation state (modern Israel in 1948) in which it became the official language, as well as Eliezer Ben-Yehuda 's extreme dedication to the revival of the language, by creating new words for the modern terms Hebrew lacked. Revival attempts for minor extinct languages with no status as

216-606: A distinction between a pre-literary period and the start of a continuous tradition of written texts around the middle of the 8th century. Differing approaches are taken, too, to the position of Langobardic . Langobardic is an Elbe Germanic and thus Upper German dialect, and it shows early evidence for the Second Sound Shift. For this reason, some scholars treat Langobardic as part of Old High German, but with no surviving texts — just individual words and names in Latin texts — and

270-420: A historical language may remain in use as a literary or liturgical language long after it ceases to be spoken natively. Such languages are sometimes also referred to as "dead languages", but more typically as classical languages . The most prominent Western example of such a language is Latin , and comparable cases are found throughout world history due to the universal tendency to retain a historical stage of

324-407: A language as the liturgical language . In a view that prioritizes written representation over natural language acquisition and evolution, historical languages with living descendants that have undergone significant language change may be considered "extinct", especially in cases where they did not leave a corpus of literature or liturgy that remained in widespread use (see corpus language ), as

378-504: A liturgical language typically have more modest results. The Cornish language revival has proven at least partially successful: after a century of effort there are 3,500 claimed native speakers, enough for UNESCO to change its classification from "extinct" to "critically endangered". A Livonian language revival movement to promote the use of the Livonian language has managed to train a few hundred people to have some knowledge of it. This

432-508: A new generation of native speakers. The optimistic neologism " sleeping beauty languages" has been used to express such a hope, though scholars usually refer to such languages as dormant. In practice, this has only happened on a large scale successfully once: the revival of the Hebrew language . Hebrew had survived for millennia since the Babylonian exile as a liturgical language, but not as

486-416: A substantial trace as a substrate in the language that replaces it. There have, however, also been cases where the language of higher prestige did not displace the native language but left a superstrate influence. The French language for example shows evidence both of a Celtic substrate and a Frankish superstrate. Institutions such as the education system, as well as (often global) forms of media such as

540-486: Is a list of languages reported as having become extinct since 2010. For a more complete list, see Lists of extinct languages . Old High German Old High German ( OHG ; German : Althochdeutsch (Ahdt., Ahd.) ) is the earliest stage of the German language , 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

594-464: Is in Modern German). The following is a sample conjugation of a strong verb, nëman "to take". Any description of OHG syntax faces a fundamental problem: texts translated from or based on a Latin original will be syntactically influenced by their source, while the verse works may show patterns that are determined by the needs of rhyme and metre, or that represent literary archaisms. Nonetheless,

SECTION 10

#1732851102252

648-540: Is the case with Old English or Old High German relative to their contemporary descendants, English and German. Some degree of misunderstanding can result from designating languages such as Old English and Old High German as extinct, or Latin dead, while ignoring their evolution as a language or as many languages. This is expressed in the apparent paradox "Latin is a dead language, but Latin never died." A language such as Etruscan , for example, can be said to be both extinct and dead: inscriptions are ill understood even by

702-560: Is the sole survivor of what must have been a vast oral tradition. Other important works are the Evangelienbuch ( Gospel harmony ) of Otfrid von Weissenburg , the Ludwigslied and the 9th century Georgslied . The boundary to Early Middle High German (from c.  1050 ) is not clear-cut. An example of Early Middle High German literature is the Annolied . The Lord's Prayer

756-640: The Abrogans , a Latin–Old High German glossary variously dated between 750 and 780, probably from Reichenau . The 8th century Merseburg Incantations are the only remnant of pre-Christian German literature. The earliest texts not dependent on Latin originals would seem to be the Hildebrandslied and the Wessobrunn Prayer , both recorded in manuscripts of the early 9th century, though the texts are assumed to derive from earlier copies. The Bavarian Muspilli

810-674: The Carolingian Renaissance in the 9th. The dedication to the preservation of Old High German epic poetry among the scholars of the Carolingian Renaissance was significantly greater than could be suspected from the meagre survivals we have today (less than 200 lines in total between the Hildebrandslied and the Muspilli ). Einhard tells how Charlemagne himself ordered that the epic lays should be collected for posterity. It

864-583: The Latinate literary culture of Christianity . The earliest instances, which date to the latter half of the 8th century, are glosses —notes added to margins or between lines that provide translation of the (Latin) text or other aid to the reader. Old High German is generally dated from around 750 to around 1050. The start of this period sees the beginning of the OHG written tradition, at first with only glosses, but with substantial translations and original compositions by

918-540: The Middle High German forms of words, particularly with respect to the consonants. Old High German had six phonemic short vowels and five phonemic long vowels. Both occurred in stressed and unstressed syllables. In addition, there were six diphthongs. Notes: By the mid 11th century the many different vowels found in unstressed syllables had almost all been reduced to ⟨e⟩ / ə / . Examples: (The New High German forms of these words are broadly

972-608: The Romance language of the native population , so that Langobardic had died out by the end of the OHG period. At the beginning of the period, no Germanic language was spoken east of a line from Kieler Förde to the rivers Elbe and Saale , earlier Germanic speakers in the Northern part of the area having been displaced by the Slavs . This area did not become German-speaking until the German eastward expansion ("Ostkolonisation", "Ostsiedlung") of

1026-478: The modern period , languages have typically become extinct as a result of the process of cultural assimilation leading to language shift , and the gradual abandonment of a native language in favor of a foreign lingua franca , largely those of European countries. As of the 2000s, a total of roughly 7,000 natively spoken languages existed worldwide. Most of these are minor languages in danger of extinction; one estimate published in 2004 expected that some 90% of

1080-407: The synthetic inflectional system inherited from its ancestral Germanic forms. The eventual disruption of these patterns, which led to the more analytic grammar, are generally considered to mark the transition to Middle High German . Surviving Old High German texts were all composed in monastic scriptoria , so the overwhelming majority of them are religious in nature or, when secular, belong to

1134-497: The "kill the Indian, save the man" policy of American Indian boarding schools and other measures was to prevent Native Americans from transmitting their native language to the next generation and to punish children who spoke the language of their culture of origin. The French vergonha policy likewise had the aim of eradicating minority languages. Language revival is the attempt to re-introduce an extinct language in everyday use by

SECTION 20

#1732851102252

1188-458: The 9th century. However, the fact that the defining feature of Old High German, the Second Sound Shift, may have started as early as the 6th century and is complete by 750, means that some take the 6th century to be the start of the period. Alternatively, terms such as Voralthochdeutsch ("pre-OHG") or vorliterarisches Althochdeutsch ("pre-literary OHG") are sometimes used for the period before 750. Regardless of terminology, all recognize

1242-715: The Biblical texts were translated from Greek, not Latin) raise the possibility that it was an independent development. Germanic also had no future tense, but again OHG created periphrastic forms, using an auxiliary verb skulan (Modern German sollen ) and the infinitive, or werden and the present participle: Thu scalt beran einan alawaltenden (Otfrid's Evangelienbuch I, 5,23) "You shall bear an almighty one" Inti nu uuirdist thu suigenti' (Tatian 2,9) "And now you will start to fall silent" Latin: Et ecce eris tacens (Luke 1:20) The present tense continued to be used alongside these new forms to indicate future time (as it still

1296-463: The Internet, television, and print media play a significant role in the process of language loss. For example, when people migrate to a new country, their children attend school in the country, and the schools are likely to teach them in the majority language of the country rather than their parents' native language. Language death can also be the explicit goal of government policy. For example, part of

1350-463: The Late OHG changes that affected Middle High German : Germanic had a simple two-tense system, with forms for a present and preterite . These were inherited by Old High German, but in addition OHG developed three periphrastic tenses : the perfect , pluperfect and future . The periphrastic past tenses were formed by combining the present or preterite of an auxiliary verb ( wësan , habēn ) with

1404-665: The OHG Isidor or Notker show a similar awareness. The charts show the vowel and consonant systems of the East Franconian dialect in the 9th century. This is the dialect of the monastery of Fulda , and specifically of the Old High German Tatian . Dictionaries and grammars of OHG often use the spellings of the Tatian as a substitute for genuine standardised spellings, and these have the advantage of being recognizably close to

1458-424: The almighty father"). By the end of the OHG period, however, use of a subject pronoun has become obligatory, while the definite article has developed from the original demonstrative pronoun ( der, diu, daz ) and the numeral ein ("one") has come into use as an indefinite article. These developments are generally seen as mechanisms to compensate for the loss of morphological distinctions which resulted from

1512-491: The basic word order rules are broadly those of Modern Standard German . Two differences from the modern language are the possibility of omitting a subject pronoun and lack of definite and indefinite articles . Both features are exemplified in the start of the 8th century Alemannic creed from St Gall : kilaubu in got vater almahticun (Modern German, Ich glaube an Gott den allmächtigen Vater ; English "I believe in God

1566-545: The currently spoken languages will have become extinct by 2050. Normally the transition from a spoken to an extinct language occurs when a language undergoes language death by being directly replaced by a different one. For example, many Native American languages were replaced by Dutch , English , French , Portuguese , or Spanish as a result of European colonization of the Americas . In contrast to an extinct language, which no longer has any speakers, or any written use,

1620-491: The dominant lingua francas of world commerce: English, Mandarin Chinese , Spanish, and French. In their study of contact-induced language change, American linguists Sarah Grey Thomason and Terrence Kaufman (1991) stated that in situations of cultural pressure (where populations are forced to speak a dominant language), three linguistic outcomes may occur: first – and most commonly – a subordinate population may shift abruptly to

1674-453: The dominant language, leaving the native language to a sudden linguistic death. Second, the more gradual process of language death may occur over several generations. The third and most rare outcome is for the pressured group to maintain as much of its native language as possible, while borrowing elements of the dominant language's grammar (replacing all, or portions of, the grammar of the original language). A now disappeared language may leave

Tacanan languages - Misplaced Pages Continue

1728-689: The early 12th century, though there was some attempt at conquest and missionary work under the Ottonians . The Alemannic polity was conquered by Clovis I in 496, and in the last twenty years of the 8th century Charlemagne subdued the Saxons, the Frisians, the Bavarians, and the Lombards, bringing all continental Germanic-speaking peoples under Frankish rule. While this led to some degree of Frankish linguistic influence ,

1782-548: The end of the Old High German period, Notker Labeo was among the greatest stylists in the language, and developed a systematic orthography. Old High German marked the culmination of a shift away from runic writing of the pre-OHG period to Latin alphabet . This shift led to considerable variations in spelling conventions, as individual scribes and scriptoria had to develop their own transliteration of sounds not native to Latin script . Otfrid von Weissenburg , in one of

1836-536: The entire system of noun and adjective declensions . There is also a hundred-year "dearth of continuous texts" after the death of Notker Labeo in 1022. The mid-11th century is widely accepted as marking the transition to Middle High German . Old High German encompasses the dialects that had undergone the Second Sound Shift during the 6th century—namely all of the Upper and Central German dialects. The Franks in

1890-548: The following basic vocabulary items for the Tacanan languages. Sample vocabulary of four Tacanan languages, along with Proto-Panoan for comparison, from Nikulin (2019): Tacanan languages, in particular Cavineña and Ese Ejja , have among the richest associated motion systems in the world's languages. Extinct language An extinct language is a language with no living descendants that no longer has any first-language or second-language speakers. In contrast,

1944-548: The language in question must be conceptualized as frozen in time at a particular state of its history. This is accomplished by periodizing English and German as Old; for Latin, an apt clarifying adjective is Classical, which also normally includes designation of high or formal register . Minor languages are endangered mostly due to economic and cultural globalization , cultural assimilation, and development. With increasing economic integration on national and regional scales, people find it easier to communicate and conduct business in

1998-476: The language of both the administration and the Church was Latin, and this unification did not therefore lead to any development of a supra-regional variety of Frankish nor a standardized Old High German; the individual dialects retained their identity. There was no standard or supra-regional variety of Old High German—every text is written in a particular dialect, or in some cases a mixture of dialects. Broadly speaking,

2052-578: The language of the Carolingian court or that it is attested in the Ludwigslied , whose presence in a French manuscript suggests bilingualism , are controversial. Old High German literacy is a product of the monasteries, notably at St. Gallen , Reichenau Island and Fulda . Its origins lie in the establishment of the German church by Saint Boniface in the mid-8th century, and it was further encouraged during

2106-418: The main dialect divisions of Old High German seem to have been similar to those of later periods—they are based on established territorial groupings and the effects of the Second Sound Shift, which have remained influential until the present day. But because the direct evidence for Old High German consists solely of manuscripts produced in a few major ecclesiastical centres, there is no isogloss information of

2160-465: The majority of Old High German texts are religious in nature and show strong influence of ecclesiastical Latin on the vocabulary. In fact, most surviving prose texts are translations of Latin originals. Even secular works such as the Hildebrandslied are often preserved only because they were written on spare sheets in religious codices . The earliest Old High German text is generally taken to be

2214-446: The most knowledgeable scholars, and the language ceased to be used in any form long ago, so that there have been no speakers, native or non-native, for many centuries. In contrast, Old English, Old High German and Latin never ceased evolving as living languages, thus they did not become extinct as Etruscan did. Through time Latin underwent both common and divergent changes in phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon, and continues today as

Tacanan languages - Misplaced Pages Continue

2268-420: The native language of hundreds of millions of people, renamed as different Romance languages and dialects (French, Italian, Spanish, Corsican , Asturian , Ladin , etc.). Similarly, Old English and Old High German never died, but developed into various forms of modern English and German, as well as other related tongues still spoken (e.g. Scots from Old English and Yiddish from Old High German). With regard to

2322-487: The numerous West Germanic dialects that had undergone the set of consonantal changes called the Second Sound Shift . At the start of this period, dialect areas reflected the territories of largely independent tribal kingdoms, but by 788 the conquests of Charlemagne had brought all OHG dialect areas into a single polity . The period also saw the development of a stable linguistic border between German and Gallo-Romance , later French . Old High German largely preserved

2376-498: The past participle. Initially the past participle retained its original function as an adjective and showed case and gender endings - for intransitive verbs the nominative, for transitive verbs the accusative. For example: After thie thö argangana warun ahtu taga ( Tatian , 7,1) "When eight days had passed", literally "After that then gone-by were eight days" Latin: Et postquam consummati sunt dies octo (Luke 2:21) phīgboum habeta sum giflanzotan (Tatian 102,2) "There

2430-420: The prefaces to his Evangelienbuch , offers comments on and examples of some of the issues which arise in adapting the Latin alphabet for German: " ...sic etiam in multis dictis scriptio est propter litterarum aut congeriem aut incognitam sonoritatem difficilis. " ("...so also, in many expressions, spelling is difficult because of the piling up of letters or their unfamiliar sound.") The careful orthographies of

2484-585: The same as in Middle High German.) The main difference between Old High German and the West Germanic dialects from which it developed is that the former underwent the Second Sound Shift . The result of the sound change has been that the consonantal system of German is different from all other West Germanic languages, including English and Low German . This list has the sound changes that transformed Common West Germanic into Old High German but not

2538-455: The sort on which modern dialect maps are based. For this reason the dialects may be termed "monastery dialects" (German Klosterdialekte ). The main dialects, with their bishoprics and monasteries : In addition, there are two poorly attested dialects: The continued existence of a West Frankish dialect in the Western, Romanized part of Francia is uncertain. Claims that this might have been

2592-408: The speakers starting to abandon the language by the 8th century, others exclude Langobardic from discussion of OHG. As Heidermanns observes, this exclusion is based solely on the external circumstances of preservation and not on the internal features of the language. The end of the period is less controversial. The sound changes reflected in spelling during the 11th century led to the remodelling of

2646-478: The weakening of unstressed vowels in the endings of nouns and verbs (see above). The early part of the period saw considerable missionary activity, and by 800 the whole of the Frankish Empire had, in principle, been Christianized. All the manuscripts which contain Old High German texts were written in ecclesiastical scriptoria by scribes whose main task was writing in Latin rather than German. Consequently,

2700-529: The western part of Francia ( Neustria and western Austrasia ) gradually adopted Gallo-Romance by the beginning of the OHG period, with the linguistic boundary later stabilised approximately along the course of the Meuse and Moselle in the east, and the northern boundary probably a little further south than the current boundary between French and Dutch . North of this line, the Franks retained their language, but it

2754-487: The written language, skills in reading or writing Etruscan are all but non-existent, but trained people can understand and write Old English, Old High German, and Latin. Latin differs from the Germanic counterparts in that an approximation of its ancient form is still employed to some extent liturgically. This last observation illustrates that for Latin, Old English, or Old High German to be described accurately as dead or extinct,

SECTION 50

#1732851102252

2808-533: Was a fig tree that some man had planted", literally "Fig-tree had certain ( or someone) planted" Latin: arborem fici habebat quidam plantatam (Luke 13:6) In time, however, these endings fell out of use and the participle came to be seen no longer as an adjective but as part of the verb, as in Modern German. This development is taken to be arising from a need to render Medieval Latin forms, but parallels in other Germanic languages (particularly Gothic, where

2862-664: Was not affected by the Second Sound Shift, which thus separated the Low Franconian or Old Dutch varieties from the more easterly Franconian dialects which formed part of Old High German. In the south, the Lombards , who had settled in Northern Italy , maintained their dialect until their conquest by Charlemagne in 774. After this the Germanic-speaking population, who were by then almost certainly bilingual, gradually switched to

2916-507: Was the neglect or religious zeal of later generations that led to the loss of these records. Thus, it was Charlemagne's weak successor, Louis the Pious , who destroyed his father's collection of epic poetry on account of its pagan content. Rabanus Maurus , a student of Alcuin and later an abbot at Fulda, was an important advocate of the cultivation of German literacy. Among his students were Walafrid Strabo and Otfrid of Weissenburg . Towards

#251748