19 Facts About Old Dutch

Old Dutch is mostly recorded on fragmentary relics, and words have been reconstructed from Middle Dutch and Old Dutch loanwords in French.

Old Dutch is regarded as the primary stage in the development of a separate Dutch language.

In English linguistic publications, Old Dutch Netherlandic is occasionally used in addition to the aforementioned terms.

Some linguists use the terms Old Low Franconian or West Frankish to specifically refer to the varieties of Old Dutch spoken prior its assimilation of the coastal dialect.

Old Dutch itself is further divided into Old West Dutch and Old East Dutch, with the descendants of Old West Dutch forming the dominant basis of the Middle Dutch literary language and Old East Dutch forming a noticeable substrate within the easternmost Dutch dialects, such as Limburgish.

Related searches

Old Dutch Frisian was one of these dialects, and elements of it survived through the Frisian language, spoken in the province of Friesland in the North of the Netherlands.

Old Dutch is divided into Old West Low Franconian and Old East Low Franconian ; however, these varieties are very closely related, the divergence being that the latter shares more traits with neighboring historical forms of Central Franconian dialects such as Ripuarian and Moselle Franconian.

One such difference is that Old Dutch used -a as its plural a-stem noun ending, while Old Saxon and Old English employed -as or -os.

Old Dutch would have used both to refer to that and to refer to many more people in the "us" group, much like Modern Dutch and English.

Old Dutch naturally evolved into Middle Dutch with some distinctions that approximate those found in most medieval West Germanic languages.

In Modern Old Dutch, recasting is necessary to form a coherent sentence.

Old Dutch texts are extremely rare and much more limited than for related languages like Old English and Old High German.

Several words that are known to have developed in the Netherlands before Old Dutch was spoken have been found, and they are sometimes called in a geographic sense.

However, since the word existed long before Old Dutch did, it cannot be considered part of the vocabulary of Old Dutch but rather of Proto-Germanic.

Utrecht Baptismal Vow, or Old Saxon Baptismal Vow, is a 9th-century baptismal vow that was found in a monastery library in the German city of Mainz but was written in the Dutch city of Utrecht.

Wachtendonck Psalms are a collection of Latin psalms, with a translation in an eastern variety of Old Dutch which contains a number of Old High German elements.

Phonologically, Old Dutch stands in between Old Saxon and Old High German, sharing some innovations with the latter, and others with the former.

Old Dutch spelling reveals final devoicing of other consonants, namely:.

Old Dutch reflects an intermediate stage between Old Saxon and Old High German.