Old Allman

Old Allman
ᚨᛚᛗᚨᚿ
Pronunciation	[älˈmän]
Region	Allmany, Pannony and Italy
Era	High-Mid Ages
Language family	Indo-European Germanic West Germanic Elbe Germanic High German Upper German Old Allman
Writing system	Old Futhark
Language codes
ISO 639-3	lng
Linguist List	lng

Old Allman (OSW); is the earliest stage of the Allman languages, conventionally identified as the period from around 500 to 1050 as a southwestern dialect of Old High German. Rather than representing a single supra-regional form of German, Old High German encompasses the numerous West Germanic dialects that had undergone the set of consonantal changes called the Elbe Shift that originated from "Swebian". It is a dialect that replaced /w/ for /g/ before /o/ like Lombardic. Many toponyms in modern Lombardy and Greater Lombardy (Northern Italy) and items of Lombard and broader Gallo-Italic vocabulary derive from Lombardic that is a dialect of Old Allman.

But Lombardic is a Trümmersprache (literally, 'rubble-language'), that is, a language preserved only in fragmentary form: there are no texts in Lombardic but some in Old Allman but anyway, only individual words and personal names cited in Latin law codes, histories and charters. As a result, there are many aspects of the language about which nothing is known.

Phonology

Example of Old High German (Old Allman): Second Merseburg Charm

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 the Middle High German forms of words, particularly with respect to the consonants.

References

This article "Old Allman" is from Simple English Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Old Allman.

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