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Havolane

Havolane

The Havolane (Slavonic name) or Heveller (German name) were a Slavic tribe who lived around the river Havel in the Brandenburg area in eastern Germany from the 8th century onwards.

Old Church Slavonic

Old Church Slavonic (also called Old Church Slavic, Old Bulgarian, Old Macedonian, and inaccurately Old Slavic) is the first literary Slavic language, developed from the Slavonic dialect of Solun (Thessaloniki) by 9th century Byzantine missionaries, Saints Cyril and Methodius. It was used by them for translation of the Bible and other texts from Greek and for some of their own writings. It played a great role in the history of Slavic languages and evolved into Church Slavonic, which is still used as a liturgical language by some Orthodox and Greek Catholic Churches of the Slavic peoples.

History

The language was standardized for the mission of the two apostles to Great Moravia in 863 (see Glagolitic alphabet for details). For that purpose, Cyril and his brother Methodius first codified Old Church Slavonic from the Southern Slavic dialect spoken in the neighbourhood of their city, Solun (Thessaloniki), in the Byzantine Empire. As part of the preparation for the mission, in 862/863, the Glagolitic alphabet was created and the most important prayers and liturgical books, including the Apraktos Evangeliar (an Evangeliar containing only feast-day and Sunday readings), the Psalter, and Acts of the Apostles, were translated. (The Gospels were also translated early, but it is unclear whether Sts. Cyril or Methodius had a hand in this). The language and the alphabet were taught at the Great Moravian Academy (Veľkomoravské učilište) and were used for government and religious documents and books between 863 and 885. The texts written during this phase contain characteristics of the Slavic vernaculars in Great Moravia. In 885, the use of the Old Church Slavonic in Great Moravia was prohibited by the Pope in favour of Latin. Students of the two apostles, who were expelled from Great Moravia in 886, brought the Glagolitic alphabet and the Old Church Slavonic language to the Bulgarian Empire. It was taught at two Bulgarian academies - in Preslav (capital 893-972) and Ohrid (capital 991/997-1015). The Cyrillic alphabet was developed shortly afterwards in the Preslav Literary School and replaced the Glagolitic one. The texts written during this era contain characteristics of the vernacular of Bulgaria. There are some linguistic differences between texts written in the two academies. Thereupon the language, in its Bulgarian recension, spread to other South-Eastern and Eastern European Slavic territories, most notably to Croatia, Serbia, Bohemia, Lesser Poland, and the Russian principalities. The texts written in each country contain characteristics of the local Slavonic vernacular. Much later, local redactions of Old Church Slavonic were created for ecclesiastical and administrative use, and are collectively known as Church Slavonic (Bulgarian: църковнославянски език, ts'rkovnoslavyanski ezik; Russian: церковнославя́нский язы́к, tserkovnoslavyánskiy yazík), but these terms are often confused. Church Slavonic maintained a prestige status, particularly in Russia, for many centuries — among Slavs in the East it had a status analogous to that of the Latin language in western Europe, but had the advantage of being substantially less divergent from the vernacular tongues of average parishioners. Some Orthodox churches, such as the Russian Orthodox Church, Bulgarian Orthodox Church and Serbian Orthodox Church, as well as several Greek Catholic churches, still use Church Slavonic in their services and chants today.

Script

Initially Old Church Slavonic was written with the Glagolitic alphabet, but later it was replaced by the Cyrillic alphabet. Only in Croatia was the local variant of Glagolitic alphabet preserved.

Basis and local influences

Old Church Slavonic is evidenced by a relatively small body of manuscripts, written for the most part, in the late 10th and the early 11th century. The language has a Southern Slavic basis with an admixture of Western Slavic features inherited during the mission of Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius to Great Moravia (863 - 885). The only well-preserved manuscript of Moravian recension, the Kiev Folia, is characterised by the replacement of some Southern Slavonic phonetical and lexical features with Western Slavic ones. Manuscripts written in the medieval Bulgarian kingdom have, on the other hand, fewer Western Slavic features. Old Church Slavonic is valuable for historical linguists as it preserves archaic features believed to be once common to all Slavonic languages:
- nasal sounds of the vowels o and e
- use of supershort vowels ь and ъ for Proto-Indo-European short i and u
- open articulation of the yat vowel
- [] and [] for the Proto-Slavic [nj], [nl]
- Proto-Slavic declension system based on stem-endings (so-called o-stems, jo-stems, a-stems and ja-stems)
- aorists, the imperfect, Proto-Slavic paradigms for participles etc. were still used The Southern Slavonic nature of the language is evident from the following variations:
- phonetic:
- use of [ra-], [la-] for the Proto-Slavic [or-], [ol-]
- use of [s] for the Proto-Slavic [x] before the Proto-Slavic åi
- use of [cv-], [dzv-] for the Proto-Slavic [kv-], [-]
- morphosyntactic
- use of the dative possessive case in personal pronouns and nouns: ; ; descriptive future tense using the verb ; use of the comparative form мьнии (smaller) to mean younger.
- use of suffixed demonstrative pronouns (тъ, та, то). In Bulgarian and Macedonian these developed into suffixed definite articles. Some of the phonetical features in Old Church Slavonic are furthermore typical only for Bulgarian, as follows:
- very wide articulation of the Yat vowel (); originally still preserved in the Bulgarian dialects of the Rhodope mountains;
- Proto-Slavonic reflexes of
- tj ([t']) and
- dj ([d']):

Eastern and Western Bulgarian (Macedonian) recensions

Several literary centres operated in the Bulgarian Empire, centered around the two main academies in Ohrid and Preslav. This led to the appearance of multiple Bulgarian recensions in the period from the 9th to the 11th centuries. Thus:
- both Glagolitic and Cyrillic alphabets were concurrently used
- in some documents the original supershort vowels [ъ] and [ь] merged and only one of the letters was used to represent both of them
- in West-Bulgarian recensions [ъ] was sometimes substituted with [o]
- in East-Bulgarian recensions the original ascending reflex (rь, lь) of syllabic 'r' and 'l' was sometimes changed to descending ьr, ьl or a combination of both was used
- original [ы] and [ъi] merged to [ы]
- sometimes the use of letter 'Ѕ' (dz) was unified with that of 'З' (z)
- verb forms naricają, naricaješi were substituted or alternated with naričą, naričeši
- lexical - use of words with proto-Bulgar (Turko-Iranian) origin, such as кумиръ, капище, чрьтогъ, блъванъ, etc.

Moravian recension

While in the Prague fragments the only Moravian influence is replacing [št] with [c] and [žd] with [z], the recension evidenced by the Kiev Folia is characterised by the following features:
- confusion between the letters Big yus () and Uk () occurs once in the Kiev Folia, when the expected form is spelled
- use of [c] for the Proto-Slavonic
- tj, use of [dz] for the Proto-Slavonic
- dj, use of šč for the Proto-Slavonic
- skj
- use of the words mьša, cirky, papežь, prěfacija, klepati, piskati etc.
- preservation of the group dl (e.g. modlitvami)
- use of the ending - ъmь instead of –omь in the Instrumentalis sg. mask., use of the pronoun čьso

Later recensions (Church Slavonic)

Later use of the language in a number of medieval Slavic states entailed the adjustment of Old Church Slavonic to the local vernacular, although a number of Southern Slavic, Moravian or Bulgarian features were also preserved. Some of the later significant recensions of Old Church Slavonic (referred to as Church Slavonic) nowadays are: Slovenian, Croatian, Serbian, Russian.

Croatian recension

The Croatian recension of Old Church Slavonic is one of the earliest known today. It used only the Glagolitic alphabet. The nasal sounds [ą]/[ę] had been substituted with [o]/[u] and a variety of reflections of the proto-Slavic
- tj and
- dj emerged.

Russian recension

The Russian recension was developed after the 10th century on the basis of the earlier Bulgarian recensions from which it differed slightly. Its main features are:
- substitution of the nasal sound [ą] with [u]
- merging of letters [ě] and [ja]

Serbian recension

The Serbian recension was written in Glagolitic alphabet at first, but later switched to Cyrillic alphabet. It appeared in the 12th century on the basis of the East-Bulgarian recensions:
- nasal vowels [ą] and [ę] were replaced with [u] and [е]
- use of diacritical signs by the Resava recension
- use of letters [i], [y], [ě] for the sound 'i' by the Bosnian recension

Authors

The history of Old Church Slavonic writing includes a northern tradition begun by the mission to Great Moravia, including a short mission in the Balaton principality, and a Bulgarian tradition begun by some of the missionaries who relocated to Bulgaria after the expulsion from Great Moravia. Old Church Slavonic's first writings, translations of Christian liturgical and Biblical texts, were produced by Byzantine missionaries Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius, mostly during their mission to Great Moravia. The most important authors in Old Church Slavonic after the death of Methodius and the dissolution of the Great Moravian academy were Clement of Ohrid (active also in Great Moravia), Constantine of Preslav, Chernorizetz Hrabar and John Exarch, all of whom worked in medieval Bulgaria at the end of the 9th and the beginning of the 10th century.

Nomenclature

The original name of the language in the Old Church Slavonic texts was simply "Slavonic" (словѣньскъ), therefore the present-day Slavic names of the language are derived from the old or new word for Slavs. The intuitive pronunciation of the old word for Slavs can be given as appr. slovaeneh [ae stands for a very open e] or sloveneh at that time. The language is sometimes called "Old Slavic", but that term is undesirable as it may be confused with the distinct Proto-Slavic language. The designation Old Bulgarian (German Altbulgarisch) was introduced in the 19th century by reputable linguists as August Schleicher, Martin Hattala and Leopold Geitler who noticed that the linguistic features of the first Slavic literary works are the same as those of the Bulgarian language. For similar reasons Russian linguist Aleksandr Vostokov used the term Slav-Bulgarian. The designation is, however, now considered by some as incorrect, as it implies that Old Church Slavonic was the ancestor exclusively of Bulgarian and that all manuscripts have a connection to Bulgarian. The commonly accepted terms in English language Slavonic Studies nowadays are Old Church Slavonic and Old Church Slavic, although Old Bulgarian can still be found in a number of sources and is the only designation used by Bulgarian linguistics.

Modern Slavic nomenclature

Here are some of the names used by speakers of modern Slavonic languages:
- Bulgarian старобългарски (starobəlgarski), literally "Old Bulgarian"
- Czech staroslověnština
- Croatian starocrkveni slavenski
- Macedonian старословенски (staroslovenski)
- Polish staro-cerkiewno-słowiański
- (staroslavyánskiy yazík); древнеболгарский (drevnebolgarskiy)
- Serbian старословенски (staroslovenski)
- Slovak staroslovienčina
- Slovene starocerkvena slovanščina
- (staroslovjans′ka mova)
- (starazhytnaslavjanskaja mova); царкоўнаславянская мова (carkoǔnaslavjanskaja mova)

External links

- [http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/lrc/eieol/ocsol-0-X.html Old Church Slavonic Online], a comprehensive tutorial at the A. Richard Diebold Center for Indo-European Language and Culture, Linguistics Research Center, University of Texas at Austin Category:Slavic languages Slavonic, Old Church Slavonic, Old Church Category:Bulgarian language ja:古代教会スラヴ語

German language

German (German: ), is a member of the western group of Germanic languages and is one of the world's major languages. It is the language with the most native speakers in the European Union. Spoken by more than 130 million people in 38 countries of the world, German is—like English—a pluricentric language with three main centers of usage: Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Geographic distribution

German is spoken primarily in Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, in two-thirds of Switzerland, in two-thirds of the South Tyrol province of Italy (in German, Südtirol), in the small East Cantons of Belgium, and in some border villages of the South Jutland County (in German, Nordschleswig, in Danish, Sønderjylland) of Denmark. In Luxembourg (in German, Luxemburg), as well as in the French régions of Alsace (in German, Elsass) and parts of Lorraine (in German, Lothringen), the native populations speak several German dialects, and some people also master standard German (especially in Luxembourg), although in Alsace and Lorraine French has for the most part replaced the local German dialects in the last 40 years. Some German speaking communities still survive in parts of Romania, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and above all Russia, Kazakhstan and Poland, although massive relocations to Germany in the late 1940s and 1990s have depopulated most of these communities. Outside of Europe and the former Soviet Union, the largest German speaking communities are to be found in the USA and in Brazil where millions of Germans migrated in the last 200 years; but the great majority of their descendants no longer speak German. Additionally, German speaking communities are to be found in the former German colony of Namibia, as well as in the other countries of German emigration such as Canada, Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, Peru, Venezuela (where Alemán Coloneiro developed), Thailand, and Australia. See also Plautdietsch. In the USA, the largest concentration of German speakers are in Pennsylvania (Amish, Hutterites and some Mennonites speak Pennsylvania German and Hutterite German), Texas (Texas German), North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wisconsin and Indiana also speak dialects of German. In Brazil the largest concentrations of German speakers are in Rio Grande do Sul, where Riograndenser Hunsrückisch was developed, Santa Catarina, Paraná, and Espírito Santo). Generally, German immigrant communities in the USA have lost their mother tongue more quickly than those who moved to South America, possibly due to the fact that for Germans English is easier to learn than Portuguese or Spanish. German is the main language of about 100 million people in Europe (as of 2004), or 13.3% of all Europeans, being the most spoken language in Europe excluding Russia, above French (66.5 million speakers in Europe in 2004) and English (64.2 million speakers in Europe in 2004). German is the third most taught foreign language worldwide, also in the USA (after Spanish and French); it is the second most known foreign language in the EU (after English; see [http://europa.eu.int/comm/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_237.en.pdf]) It is one of the official languages of the European Union.

History

As a consequence of the colonisation patterns the Völkerwanderung, the routes for trade and communication (chiefly the rivers), and of physical isolation (high mountains and deep forests) very different regional dialects developed. These dialects, sometimes mutually unintelligible, were used across the Holy Roman Empire. As Germany was divided into many different states, the only force working for a unification or standardisation of German during a period of several hundred years was the general preference of writers trying to write in a way that could be understood in the largest possible area. When Martin Luther translated the Bible (the New Testament in 1521 and the Old Testament in 1534) he based his translation mainly on this already developed language, which was the most widely understood language at this time. This language was based on Eastern Upper and Eastern Central German dialects and preserved much of the grammatical system of Middle High German (unlike the spoken German dialects in Central and Upper Germany that already at that time began to lose the genitive case and the preterit tense). In the beginning, copies of the Bible had a long list for each region, which translated words unknown in the region into the regional dialect. Roman Catholics rejected Luther's translation in the beginning and tried to create their own Catholic standard (Gemeines Deutsch) — which, however, only differed from 'Protestant German' in some minor details. It took until the middle of the 18th century to create a standard that was widely accepted, thus ending the period of Early New High German. German used to be the language of commerce and government in the Habsburg Empire, which encompassed a large area of Central and Eastern Europe. Until the mid-19th century it was essentially the language of townspeople throughout most of the Empire. It indicated that the speaker was a merchant, an urbanite, not their nationality. Some cities, such as Prague (German: Prag) and Budapest (Buda, German: Ofen), were gradually Germanized in the years after their incorporation into the Habsburg domain. Others, such as Bratislava (German: Pressburg), were originally settled during the Habsburg period and were primarily German at that time. A few cities such as Milan (German: Mailand) remained primarily non-German. However, most cities were primarily German during this time, such as Prague, Budapest, Bratislava, Zagreb (German: Agram), and Ljubljana (German: Laibach), though they were surrounded by territory that spoke other languages. Until about 1800, Standard German was almost only a written language. In this time, people in urban northern Germany, who spoke dialects very different from Standard German, learnt it almost like a foreign language and tried to pronounce it as close to the spelling as possible. Prescriptive pronunciation guides used to consider that northern German pronunciation to be the standard. However, the actual pronunciation of standard German varies from region to region. Media and written works are almost all produced in standard German (often called Hochdeutsch in German), which is understood in all areas of German languages (except by pre-school children in areas which speak only dialect, for example Switzerland — but in this age of TV, even they now usually learn to understand Standard German before school age). The first dictionary of the Brothers Grimm, the 16 parts of which were issued between 1852 and 1960, remains the most comprehensive guide to the words of the German language. In 1860, grammatical and orthographic rules first appeared in the Duden Handbook. In 1901, this was declared the standard definition of the German language. Official revisions of some of these rules were not issued until 1998, when the German spelling reform of 1996 was officially promulgated by governmental representatives of all German-speaking countries. Since the reform, German spelling has been in an eight-year transitional period where the reformed spelling is taught in most schools, while traditional and reformed spelling co-exist in the media. See German spelling reform of 1996 for an overview of the heated public debate concerning the reform. During the 1870s, the German language successfully replaced Latin as the dominant language in all major European and North American universities, thanks to the prominence of German universities at the time. Most important research in the sciences for some decades afterward was published in German, and new universities preferred German instead of Greek or Latin mottoes (for example, Stanford University).

Classification and related languages

Stanford University is divided into Upper German (blue) and Central German (green), and the Dutch/Plattdüütsch (yellow). The main isoglosses, the Benrath and Speyer lines are marked in red.]] German is a member of the western branch of the Germanic family of languages, which in turn is part of the Indo-European language family.

Neighboring languages

German forms together with Dutch, its closest relative, a coherent and well-defined language area that is separated from its neighbors by language borders. These neighbors are: in the north Frisian and Danish; in the east Polish, Sorbian, Czech, Slovak, and Hungarian; in the south Slovenian, Italian, Friulian, Ladin, and Romansh; in the west French. Except for Frisian, none of these languages are West Germanic, and so they are clearly distinct from German and Dutch. While Frisian is closely related to German and Dutch, it is generally considered not to be mutually intelligible with them. The situation is more complex with respect to the distinction between German and Dutch. Until recently, there has been a dialect continuum throughout the whole German-Dutch language area, with no language borders. In such a dialect continuum, dialects are always mutually intelligible with their neighbors, but dialects that are further apart from each other are often not. The German-Dutch continuum lent itself to a classification of dialects into Low German and High German based on their participation in the High German consonant shift; Dutch is part of the Low German group. However, because of the political separation between Germany and the Netherlands, Low German dialects in the Netherlands and Low German dialects in Germany have started to diverge during the 20th century. Additionally, both in northern Germany and in the Netherlands, many dialects are close to extinction and are being replaced by the German and Dutch standard languages. In this way, a language border between Dutch and German is currently forming. While German is grammatically similar in many ways to Dutch, it is very different in speech. A speaker of one may require some practice to effectively understand a speaker of the other. Compare, for example: :De kleinste kameleon is volwassen 2 cm groot, de grootste kan wel 80 cm worden. (Dutch) :Das kleinste Chamäleon ist ausgewachsen 2 cm groß, das größte kann gut 80 cm werden. (Standard German) : (English: "The smallest chameleon is fully grown 2 cm long, the longest can easily attain 80 cm.") Dutch speakers are generally able to read German, and German speakers who can speak Low German or English are generally able to read Dutch, but have problems understanding the spoken language, although Germans who speak High German, or, even better, Low German, can cope with Dutch much better than people from Southern Germany, Switzerland and Austria who have grown up with the Alemannic or Bavarian dialects.

Official status

Standard German is the only official language in Germany, Liechtenstein, and Austria; it shares official status in Switzerland (with French, Italian and Romansh), and Luxembourg (with French and Luxembourgish). It is used as a local official language in German-speaking regions of Belgium, Italy, Denmark, and Poland. It is one of the 20 official languages of the European Union. It is also a minority language in Canada, France, Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Poland, Romania, Togo, Cameroon, the USA, Namibia, Brazil, Paraguay, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Ukraine, Croatia, Moldavia, Australia, Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania. German was once the lingua franca of central, eastern and northern Europe. Increasing influence from the English language has affected German recently. However, German remains one of the most popular foreign languages taught world-wide, and is more popular than French as a foreign language in Europe. 8% of citizens of the EU-15 countries say they can converse in German, in addition to the 24% who speak German as a mother tongue.[http://europa.eu.int/comm/education/policies/lang/languages/index_en.html] This is assisted by the availability of German TV by cable or satellite, where series like Star Trek are shown dubbed into German. German is also the second language of the Internet, more than 8% of the websites are in German (English 50%, French 6%, Japanese 5%, Spanish 3% and Portuguese 2%).

Dialects

The term "German" is used for the dialects of Germany, Austria, German-speaking Switzerland (that is, outside the French-, Italian-, and Romansch-speaking areas) and some areas in the surrounding countries, as well as for several colonies and other ethnic concentrations founded by German-speaking people (for example German in the United States). The variation among the German dialects is considerable. Only the neighbouring dialects are mutually understandable. Most dialects are not understandable for someone who knows standard German. However, all German dialects belong to the dialect continuum of the continental West Germanic languages because any pair of neighbouring dialects is perfectly mutually intelligible. The dialect continuum of the continental West Germanic languages is typically divided into Low Germanic languages and High Germanic languages. Low Germanic is defined as the varieties that were not affected by the High German consonant shift. They consist of two subgroups, Low Franconian and Plattdüütsch (Low German). Low Franconian includes Dutch and Afrikaans, spoken primarily in the Netherlands, Belgium and South Africa; Plattdüütsch includes dialects spoken primarily in the German Lowlands and in the eastern Netherlands. The Plattdüütsch varieties are considered dialects of the German language by some, but a separate language by others; the Low Franconian varieties are not considered a part of the German language (see above for a discussion of the distinction between German and Dutch). High Germanic is divided into Central German and Upper German. Central German dialects include Ripuarian, Moselle Franconian, Rhine Franconian, Hessian, Thuringian and Upper Saxon. It is spoken in the southeastern Netherlands, eastern Belgium, Luxembourg, parts of France, and in Germany approximately between the River Main and the southern edge of the Lowlands. Modern Standard German is mostly based on Central German. The Moselle Franconian varieties spoken in Luxembourg have been officially standardized and institutionalized and are therefore usually considered a separate language, Luxembourgish language. Upper German dialects include Alemannic (for instance Swiss German), Swabian, East Franconian, and Austro-Bavarian. They are spoken in parts of the Alsace, southern Germany, Liechtenstein, Austria, and in the German-speaking parts of Switzerland and Italy. The High German varieties spoken by Ashkenazi Jews (mostly in the former Soviet Union) have several unique features, and are usually considered as a separate language, Yiddish. The dialects of German which are or were primarily spoken in colonies founded by German speaking people resemble the dialects of the regions the founders came from (for example Pennsylvania German resembles dialects of the Palatinate, or Hutterite German resembles dialects of Carinthia). In the United States, the teaching of the German language to latter-age students has given rise to a pidgin variant which combines the German language with the grammar and spelling rules of the English language. It is often understandable by either party. The speakers of this language often refer to it as Amerikanisch or Amerikanischdeutsch, although it is known in English as American German.

Standard German

In German linguistics, only the traditional regional varieties are called dialects, not the different varieties of standard German. Standard German has originated not as a traditional dialect of a specific region, but as a written language. However, there are places where the traditional regional dialects have been replaced by standard German (especially in major cities of Germany, and to some extent in Vienna). Standard German differs regionally, especially between German-speaking countries, especially in vocabulary, but also in some instances of pronunciation and even grammar. This variation must not be confused with the variation of local dialects. Even though the regional varieties of standard German are to a certain degree influenced by the local dialects, they are very distinct. German is thus considered a pluricentric language. In most regions, the speakers use a continuum of mixtures from more dialectical varieties to more standard varieties according to situation. In the German-speaking parts of Switzerland, mixtures of dialect and standard are very seldom used, and the use of standard German is almost entirely restricted to the written language. Therefore, this situation has been called a medial diglossia. Standard German is rarely spoken, for instance when speaking with people who do not understand the Swiss German dialects at all, and it is expected to be used in school.

Grammar

Main article: German grammar German is an inflected language.

Noun inflection

German nouns inflect into:
- one of four declension classes
- one of three genders: masculine, feminine, or neuter. Word endings indicate some grammatical genders; others are arbitrary and must be memorised.
- two numbers: singular and plural
- four cases: nominative, genitive, dative, and accusative case. Although German is usually cited as an outstanding example of a highly inflected language, it should be noted that the degree of inflection is considerably less than in Old German, or in Icelandic today. The three genders have collapsed in the plural, which now behaves, grammatically, somewhat as a fourth gender. With four cases and three genders plus plural there are 16 distinct possible combinations of case and gender/number, but presently there are only six forms of the definite article used for the 16 possibilities. Inflection for case on the noun itself is required in the singular for strong masculine and neuter nouns in the genitive and sometimes in the dative. This dative ending is considered somewhat old-fashioned in many contexts and often dropped, but it is still used in sayings and in formal speech or written language. Weak masculine nouns share an common case ending for genitive, dative and accusative in the singular. Feminines are not declined in the singular. The plural does have an inflection for the dative. In total, six inflectional endings (not counting plural markers) exist in German: -s, -es, -n, -en, -ns, -e In the German orthography, unlike any other orthography, nouns and most words with the syntactical function of nouns are capitalised, which makes it quite easy for readers to find out what function a word has within the sentence. On the other hand, things get more difficult for the writer. Like most Germanic languages, German forms left-branching noun compounds, where the first noun modifies the category given by the second, for example: Hundehütte (eng. doghouse). Unlike English, where newer compounds or combinations of longer nouns are often written in open form with separating spaces, German (like the other German languages) always uses the closed form without spaces, for example: Baumhaus (eng. tree house). Like English, German allows arbitrarily long compounds, but these are rare. (See also English compounds.) The longest official German word is Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz. There is even a child's game played in kindergartens and primary schools where a child begins the spelling of a word (which is not told) by naming the first letter. The next one tells the next letter, the third one tells the third and so on. The game is over when the a child can not think of another letter to be added to the word.

Verb Inflection

Standard German verbs inflect into:
- one of two conjugation classes, weak and strong (like English). (note: in fact there is a third class, called "gemischte Verben", which can be either weak ("active meaning") or strong ("passive meaning")) There are about 200 irregular verbs.
- three persons: 1st, 2nd, 3rd.
- two numbers: singular and plural
- three moods: Indicative, Subjunctive, Imperative
- two genera verbi: active and passive; the passive being composed and dividable into static and dynamic.
- 2 non-composed tenses (Present, Preterite) and 4 composed tenses (Perfect, Plusquamperfect, Future I, Future II)
- no distinction between aspects (in English, perfect and progressive; in Polish between completed and incompleted form; in Turkish between first-hand and second-hand information) There are also many ways to expand, an sometimes radically change, the meaning of a base verb through several prefixes. Example: haften=to stick, verhaften=to imprison The word order is much more flexible than in English. The word order can be changed for subtle changes of a sentence's meaning. In normal positive sentences the verb always has position 2, in questions it has position 1. Most German vocabulary is derived from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, although there are significant minorities of words derived from Latin, French, and most recently English.

Writing system

German is written using the Latin alphabet. In addition to the 26 standard letters, German has three vowels with Umlaut, namely ä, ö and ü, as well as a special symbol for "ss", which is used only after long vowels or diphthongs (and not used at all in Switzerland), the Eszett or Scharfes-S (sharp "s") ß. Until the early 20th century, German was mostly printed in blackletter typefaces (mostly in Fraktur, but also in Schwabacher) and written in corresponding handwriting (for example Kurrent and Sütterlin). These variants of the Latin alphabet are very different from the serif or sans serif antiqua typefaces used today, and are difficult for the untrained to read. They were abolished by the Nazis (incorrectly claiming that these letters are Jewish) in 1941 but this has been retained for broader and easier usability.

Alphabet

Main article: German alphabet.

Phonology

Main article: German phonology (pronunciation, historical sound changes).

Cognates with English

There are many German words that are cognate to English words. Most of them are easily identifiable and have almost the same meaning. When these cognates have slightly different consonants, this is often due to the High German consonant shift. There are cognates whose meanings in either language have changed through the centuries. It is sometimes difficult for both English and German speakers to discern the relationship. On the other hand, once the definitions are made clear, then the logical relation becomes obvious. There are many English loanwords in German, and a somewhat smaller number of German loanwords in English. Sometimes these also involve semantic changes, for example German Dogge, 'mastiff', from English dog, or German Handy, 'mobile phone'. German and English also share many borrowings from other languages, especially from Latin, French and Greek, but also from many other languages. Most of these word have the same meaning, while a few have subtle differences in meaning. As many of these words have been borrowed by numerous languages, not only German and English, they are called internationalisms in German linguistics.

Examples of German

Names of the German language in other languages

Because of the turbulent history of both Germany and the German language, the names that other peoples have chosen to use to refer to it varies more than for most other languages. In general, the names for the German language can be arranged in five groups according to their origin: Lao is unique in that both under the influence of English "German" (through Thai "yenman") and French (the colonial language) "Allemand", it chose a name in between: ພາສາເຢຍລະມັນ (phaxa yeylaman), which could be ranked both under category 2 and category 5. Note: The Romanian language used to use in the past the Slavonic term "nemţeşte", but "germană" is now widely used. Hungarian "német" is also a Slavonic loan-word. The Arabic name for Austria, النمسا ("an-namsa"), is derived from the Slavonic term. A possible explanation for the use of "mute" to refer to German (and also to Germans) in Slavic languages is that Germans were the first people Slavic tribes encountered, with whom they could not communicate. The corresponding experience for the Germans was with the Volcae, whose name they subsequently also applied to the Slavs, see etymology of Vlach. Hebrew traditionally (nowadays this is not the case) used the Biblical term Ashkenaz (Genesis 10.3) to refer to Germany, or to certain parts of it, and the Ashkenazi Jews are those who originate from Germany and Eastern Europe and formerly spoke Yiddish as their native language, derived from Middle High German.

External links

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- [http://www.declan-software.com/german German language learning audio software]
- [http://learno.com/german Online Learno german course] Free online German tutorial at Learno.com
- [http://www.washjeff.edu/capl/ Culturally Authentic Pictorial Lexicon] Free online visual lexicon of the German language with authentic photos from German speaking world.
- [http://www.sprachtausch.net Sprachtausch.net] — German website to find someone to teach you, for example german in exchange with your language.
- [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=deu Ethnologue report for German]
- [http://www.travlang.com/languages/german/ihgg/ Internet Handbook of German Grammar]
- [http://www.lsa.umich.edu/german/hmr/ German resources] at the University of Michigan
- [http://german.languages4everyone.com Learn German Online] with this internet German course for beginners
- [http://www.dw-world.de/dw/0,1595,2469,00.html Deutsche Welle's Online German Courses]
- [http://www.applelanguages.com/en/learn/german.php German courses in Germany]
- [http://www.vds-ev.de Verein Deutsche Sprache] (in German)
- A beginning [http://wikibooks.org/wiki/German German Language Textbook] under development at [http://wikibooks.org/ Wikibooks]
- [http://www.diwa.info/ Digital Wenker-Atlas] Project publishing the 19th century Linguistic Atlas of the German Empire
- [http://www.geocities.com/language_directory/languages/german.htm List of online German-related resources]
- [http://eserver.org/langs/the-awful-german-language.txt That awful German language] — A humourous essay by Mark Twain
- [http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/e/languages/german/index.html Why learn German? A German language profile]
- [http://www.vistawide.com/german/why_german.htm Why learn German?] — 12 reasons to learn German
- [http://www.actilingua.com/german_courses/german_language.php Short summary on German language and varieties with a map!]
- [http://www.ielanguages.com/German.html Free German Language Tutorial from ielanguages.com]
- [http://www.passwort-deutsch.de/ Passwort Deutsch] - A German course
- [http://www.deutsch-lernen.com/ Learn German Online] containing free courses
- [http://www.loecsen.com/travel/discover_pop.php?lang=en&to_lang=1&learn-German/ Learn and listen to useful expressions in German] Each expression is presented with an audio recording and an illustration
- [http://www.expatica.com/source/site_content_subchannel.asp?subchannel_id=37&name=Germany+Education Articles on learning German] Also has a service whereby learners of German can send questions to a German teacher

Dictionary and word translations

- [http://dict.leo.org/ The LEO Online Dictionary] German-English-German dictionary at Leo.org
- [http://dict.tu-chemnitz.de/ TU Chemnitz Dictionary] a 185000+ German-English Dictionary with proverbs and pronounciation
- [http://www.dict.cc/ dict.cc: User-editable German-English-German Dictionary] works similar to Wikipedia, more than 840,000 keywords (420,000 translation pairs)
- [http://odge.info/ Odge.info] uses dict.cc's data according to [http://odge.info/License/ license] page
- [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/German-english/ German — English Dictionary]: from [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org Webster's Online Dictionary] — the Rosetta Edition.
- [http://www.canoo.net/index_en.html German Grammar, Online Dictionary for Spelling, Infection and Wordformation for the German Language]
- [http://www.geodic.de GEODic] German-English-Online-Dictionary
- [http://www.woerterbuch.info woerterbuch.info — Free English-German Online Dictionary] with over 600.000 translations
- [http://www.dwds.de The Digital Dictonary Project]in German - Dictionary, Corpus and Statistics
- http://www.dedict.de - English-German Online Dictionary
- http://www.spell-it.net - Free English-German Online Dictionary

Grammar

- [http://www.wm.edu/modlang/gasmit/grammar/grammnu.html Grammar of German]
- [http://www.arts.uwaterloo.ca/~skidmore/grammarpage.htm German Grammar on the Web]
- [http://io.uwinnipeg.ca/~oberle/courses/review.html German Review Grammar]
- [http://www.cas.muohio.edu/~greal/netzgrammatik/grammar.html German Grammar Charts]

Reference

Havel

: For the Biblical Havel, see Abel. : For the former Czechoslovak and Czech president, see Václav Havel The Havel is a river in Brandenburg, Berlin and Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. It is a tributary of the Elbe river and 325 km in length. Extended by the Oder-Havel Canal it connects the Oder with Berlin and the Elbe. The source of the Havel is located close to the town of Fürstenberg on the border between Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Its main tributary is the Spree river, which joins the Havel in the western quarters of Berlin. Between Berlin and the town of Brandenburg the river forms dozens of small lakes. The last section of the river flows through a region called Havelland; only the last few kilometres are located on the territory of Saxony-Anhalt, where the Havel enters the Elbe near Havelberg. In former times a Slavic people called the Havolane lived round the river Havel. Towns on the course of the river include: Zehdenick, Oranienburg, Berlin, Potsdam, Werder, Brandenburg, Premnitz, Rathenow and Havelberg. Category:Brandenburg Category:Rivers of Germany

Akhénaton

Akhénaton est un pharaon de la (Nouvel Empire égyptien). Nouvel Empire Fils d'Aménophis III et de la reine Tiyi, il est connu pour avoir imposé la première religion monothéiste connue de l'histoire, le culte du disque solaire Aton. C'est vers 1375 avant l'ère chrétienne que Aménophis IV, couronné sous le nom de Néferkhéperouré Ouâenrê (c'est le nom qu'il porte à cette époque), alors âgé de seize ans, monte sur le trône d'Égypte. Pour des raisons encore mal connues, il décide, après 6 ans de règne, d'imposer une nouvelle religion. Aton devient la personnification du disque solaire source de toute vie. Aménophis IV prend alors le nom de Akhénaton (celui qui est utile à Aton). Il interdit le culte des anciens dieux, et quitte la capitale (Thèbes) pour fonder une cité vierge de présence divine. Il trouve son emplacement en moyenne-Égypte, et en l'année 9 de son règne, fonde la cité de Akhetaton (« l'horizon d'Aton »), situé sur le site de l'actuelle Tell el-Amarna. Toute la cour et l'administration égyptiennes déménagent dans la nouvelle capitale, dont les temples, dédiés au dieu unique Aton, sont construits à ciel ouvert pour permettre à ses rayons bienfaisants d'y pénétrer. Akhénaton et Néfertiti sont les seuls intermédiaires suprêmes du culte d'Aton. Le règne d'Akhénaton voit l'émergence de l'art amarnien, qui se caractérise d'une part par le développement d'un art naturaliste où abondent les plantes, les fleurs et les oiseaux, et d'autre part par la représentation plutôt réaliste des personnages poussant parfois même jusqu'à la caricature (l'art traditionnel étant plutôt idéaliste). On prête aussi à Akhénaton des talents de poète. Un chercheur a avancé une hypothèse selon laquelle Akhénaton aurait été atteint d'une maladie génétique rare et transmissible à sa descendance : le Syndrome de Marfan. Apparemment Néfertiti, sa femme, et certaines de ses six filles l'auraient eû aussi, car elles sont représentées de la même manière. Loin de ce tableau idyllique (et peut-être exagéré par l'imaginaire collectif), le règne d'Akhénaton est aussi considéré par certains comme une période noire dans l'histoire de l'Égypte antique. En effet la révolution religieuse d'Akhénaton aurait entraîné une forte répression contre le clergé d'Amon (fermeture de temples, persécution, confiscation des biens, dégradation des effigies des anciens dieux). Ce qui lui vaudra d'être surnommé le pharaon hérétique. De plus, comme il avait refusé de venir en aide militaire aux alliés de l'Égypte menacés par les Hittites, il aurait entraîné la perte de plusieurs protectorats égyptiens dans le nord. Il semble aussi que, dû à une centralisation excessive, l'Égypte ait subit à cette époque une régression économique. Hittites Si le culte d'Aton s'éteint avec la mort d'Akhénaton (la 18 année de son règne), l'art égyptien restera, lui, marqué à jamais. Les successeurs d'Akhénaton ayant tout fait pour effacer les traces de ce pharaon hérétique on connait très mal cette période. On ne connaît pas, par exemple, les raisons de la mort d'Akhénaton (maladie? assassinat? suicide?) ni le lien exact de parenté entre lui et son successeur le plus connu (fils? gendre?), le jeune Toutankhamon (qui s'appelait Toutankhaton sous le régne d'Akhénaton). Il existe une hypothèse qui affirme qu'une certaine Kiya serait la mère de Toutankhamon. Une autre femme que Néfertiti est représentée sur une peinture murale dans le palais d'Akhetaton, dans la chambre du pharaon plus précisement. Elle serait peut-être la seconde épouse d'Akhénaton. Cette courte période monothéiste n'aura pas ébranlé les bases de la religion égyptienne, et même si en apparence le peuple s'était tourné vers Aton, il semble qu'il n'ait jamais cessé d'honorer les anciens dieux. Même si on attribue souvent cette révolution culturelle et religieuse à Akhénaton, il semble en fait qu'il n'ait fait qu'imposer une tendance née durant le règne de son père Aménophis III. Certains pensent qu'Akhénaton avait un physique très ingrat, voire un handicap physique. On le représentait avec une tête énorme et très allongée, des lèvres épaisses et un ventre proéminent. Mais il est difficile de savoir ce qui tient de l'auto-caricature (propre au style de l'art amarnien) et ce qui tient de la réalité. On pense aussi qu'il puisse avoir été atteint d'épilepsie, qui aurait provoqué chez lui de longues crises hallucinatoires et douloureuses. Ce qui étoffe la thèse de sa mort suite à une longue maladie. épilepsie

Note(s)

En fait, le dieu Aton existe bien avant le règne d'Akhénaton, mais il a apporté tellement de modifications à son culte, qu'on peut le considérer comme un nouveau dieu. En effet Aton est cité dans les textes des pyramides de la V dynastie.

A lire

- le livre "Akhénaton le renégat" de Naguib Mahfouz (auteur égyptien). Court et écrit comme un roman policier il permet de comprendre quels sont les protagonistes de la période du règne d'Akhénaton. Permet également une meilleure visite du musée de Louxor.
- le livre "Akhénaton et son Dieu : pharaon et faux prophète" de Nicholas Reeves.Ce livre de 250 pages permet de retracer dans son ensemble et de manière conçise l'histoire de la XVIIIème Dynastie depuis la chute des Hyksos jusqu'à son dernier pharaon Horemheb en passant bien sûr par l'avènement d'Amenophis IV- Akhénaton. L'auteur nous fait part sans concessions de ses réflexions sur l'ensemble des causes et conséquences du règne de ce pharaon décidemment hors du commun. Akhenaton Akhenaton Akhenaton ja:アメンホテプ4世

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