History of the German Language With Special Reference to the Cultural and Social Forces That... Book

This is a linguistic history written in a lovely style. The treatment of the language can be divided into two parts, the first treating the phonetic changes that serve to distinguish the language in its different historical stages from the Indo-European (Indogermanisch) to the Proto-Germanic, to Old High German (OHG), Middle-High German (MHG), and so forth. Once German emerges upon the New High German (NHG) stage, the history of the language discovers a new landscape, one where the revolutionary phonetic changes have settled into place, and the meandering course of the language now begins to explore stylistic variations, observable in the literature of German writers. These sections on NHG feel more like a survey of writers and literary movements.

Waterman indicates what each voice contributes to the shaping of the language as an instrument of literary expression. Everywhere he offers carefully selected passages of German literature (and word-lists) to illustrate and illuminate the linguistic landscape of German in its growing strength, versatility, and maturity as a language, which he masterfully describes in words.

The literary passages are given without the help of a translation for the reader to work through in quest of a deeper understanding of the history of the language by association of its historical and literary stages with these chosen landmarks from its terrain. A reader with no knowledge of German will not be able to make much use of these passages, which are an important feature of the book.

Some of the most interesting details for me were the use of Gothic examples (as representative of the proto-Germanic forms in the comparative tables; that in OHG and MHG the diphthong ei was pronounced [ei] (as in Old Norse) rather than [ai] (as NHG, Modern Hochdeutsch); that the umlaut of vowels, which today is associated with plural number, in its origin was merely an effect of the phonetic environment, having no semantic meaning yet attached to it. These details helped me to see some important and distinguishing differences between OHG, MHG, and NHG though these are diachronically different stages of the ‘same’ language.

Stunning and notable was the influence of the Latin Humanists and the Latin periodic style on the literary style and consequent established word order of German; what is today one of the most characteristic and beautiful features of German began as an imitation of high Latin style. Notable as well were the excessive Latin and French encroachments upon the language that began to change it to such an extent that later writers found it necessary to protect their German speech by setting up a literary Wacht am Rhein, to expel and hold off the invaders.

I learned many things from reading this book: the differences between (and locations of) the multiple German dialects; the importance of Martin Luther to the forging of a common German standard; and several authors of which I had been ignorant, such as Johann von Tepl, author of Der Ackerman aus Böhmen, written in 1401, and Klopstock, the German Milton, author of Der Messias, 'greatest of Christian epics in the German tongue’. A few beautiful classical selections from Goethe well show why the Germans were considered the ‘Greeks of the modern world’ (in the 18th and 19th centuries).

Of course I have left out too many things of interest; I love this book and plan to read again someday, a fascinating historical account of one of the world's great languages.