Talk:Early New High German

ENHG does appear to be used more frequently, I stand corrected. dab (ᛏ) 14:40, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Dates

Sorry, but I don't agree that more recent definitions shift the beginning of ENHG to 1500 and its ending to 1750. Scherer's dates are still the standard, though of course there is still discussion. 2 of the modern sources quoted on the page give this dating (Wells recognizes 2 overlapping periods ), so in view of the fact that you haven't got sources for this I'm afraid I'm going to revert. While there are lots of alternatives in the literature, I will be quite surprised if you can find a consensus for 1500-1750 to match that for 1350-1650. And the periodisation of literature is another matter anyway, and not a relevant to the language. --Pfold 15:29, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Of course, it makes sense to allow scope for the discussion of alternative dates, but outside the opening para, which should be concise and states the consensus. So I've recast the periodisation section to create an obvious place for discussion of alternatives. --Pfold 15:57, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

There is a problem, however, in that the changes traditional taken as defining New High German already took place in the Middle High German period, at least in Central German and mostly also in Bavarian. The Upper German (especially Swabian) dialectal foundation and bias of Middle High German (especially the normalised version, but to a large extent also the genuine texts) obscures the fact that those sound changes took place so early, but occasional spelling variants (unintentional slips?) indicate that quite clearly.

Also, in Southern Germany (especially Austria, and also Switzerland to an extent) Upper German features and conventions continued to be in use in writing into the 18th century (though with decreasing intensity, admittedly). Leopold Mozart and his famous son are particularly well-known as late users of Upper German spellings. Though some of their private letters are even more colloquial and clearly coloured by the local Bavarian dialect, they consciously use southern features in "standard language" texts, as well, especially Leopold. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 16:50, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

But the article clearly states that such dates are conventional, which should be sufficient warning to anyone who thinks sound changes happen overnight. The job of the para you have a problem with is to state the communis opinio in the literature and the rationale for it. Which is not to say it wouldn't be good to have more detail later on in the article where there would be scope for being more subtle about the chronology and the geography of the changes. --Pfold (talk) 17:44, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

modern german version

Are we sure that the last word is supposed to be "ergriffen"? That means "grasped," but as far as I know in a strictly literal sense. That doesn't seem to make sense compared to the other translations. I am pretty sure it should either be "begriffen" or "erfasst", both of which can mean "comprehended."--75.80.43.80 (talk) 11:21, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

"Ergriffen" is well attested in this passage (as can be established in 5 seconds with Google). Which is not to say there aren't other translations. --Pfold (talk) 11:42, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

OK, I have now sourced the version used here. --Pfold (talk) 10:09, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

OK, that is why I asked because I didn't see any(although I didn't really look into extensively at all). It just seemed strange that the word changed between translations even though there was no reason for it to. I thought that since the idea was to show changes in the language it makes it seem like the word begriffen itself has been altered, which is not the case. Just seems odd and slightly defeating the purpose of a comparison. I don't really care either way though to be honest, so do what you like.--75.80.43.80 (talk) 13:55, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Not at all: the fact that someone thought it was worth replacing the established word is itself significant. It could be argued that translations of this sort tend to be conservative, leaving established wording because it's familiar, even if there's a mnore accurate alternative. In any case without going back to the original Greek, I don't see how it's possible to make any judgment on the accuracy of word-choice. --Pfold (talk) 10:07, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Interesting that someone beat me to it with opening a thread about this word. :) There are indeed two translations and Google finds both versions and myriads of each variation even on, lo and behold, scientific sources. FWIW, the adjective/verb connection "ergriffen (sein)" can also mean as much as emotionally affected or touched. -andy 77.191.212.67 (talk) 15:20, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

"erfasst" is the standard Catholic translation. "Ergriffen" means "grasped", and both in literal and in figurative; while "begriffen" has now only retained the figurative meaning, so what Luther wrote means to the modern reader: "And darkness just didn't get it; and darkness just didn't have a clue of it". Which, for all my personal tendencies as a Catholic, is actually a rather fine humorous reading (as is the psalm translation about "thou layest more joy into mine heart than others have with wheat and wine in plenty", where not only "wine", but colloquially also wheat is an alcoholic beverage), but possibly not what we would expect from a translation... except if that was what the Greek was intended to mean (which is after all also one of the meanings of "comprehend" - I wonder how the French translate it - and of "erfassen").

Note: while "ergriffen" does happen to also be an adjective meaning "touched" (to be more precise, a passive participle meaning "being grasped by [scil. emotion, etc.]"), this would need to be constructed with "sein" and not "haben" and thus cannot possibly be read here.--131.159.76.231 (talk) 17:24, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

/y:/ diphthongisation

'Diphthongisation of the long high vowels î, û and iu ([yː])' - Can anyone tell me what the long vowel [yː] became in NHG?--86.139.142.19 (talk) 12:53, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

It became the vowel now spelled "eu" or "äu". CodeCat (talk) 13:25, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks very much! Were there any intermediate stages?--86.139.142.19 (talk) 13:32, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

Phonetically, there might well have been an intermediate stage, but nothing that is reflected in the spelling, and therefore no intermediate phonological stage, as far as I am aware. --Pfold (talk) 16:28, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

Final vowel syncope

Shouldn't the syncope of final 'e' be mentioned here somewhere? It's very evident, for instance, in the Fortunatus text and also a key different between Early Modern and Modern German, which has restored most of the syncopated e's, e.g. in the standard plural forms of words like Fuß, Stadt (ENHG Füß, Städt vs. NHG Füße, Städte). I don't see any examples in the Luther text, but I know from experience that it's very common in his German as well. At the moment the article doesn't really explain what difference there is between Modern and Early Modern German. All of the changes describes essentially serparate NHG from MHG, but not ENHG from NHG. Information on that would be helpful to readers.--Ermenrich (talk) 17:10, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

I think the reason that ENHG>NHG is difficult is that NHG has essentially selected from among the features of ENHG rather than actually transforming them, so overall it's a statistical difference. But I agree that the article would be improved if we could describe tthe main areas of change succinctly. On the other hand, it could be argued that that really belongs in the New High German article with the work of the grammarians and lexicographers. More detail here on the influence of the two chanceries — on each other, in particular — might start to address it here. --Pfold (talk) 19:18, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

You must consider that there were many words in Middle High German and Early New High German which had an endless plural in nominative and accusative case. (Genitive with "-e" and dative with "-en") Those words took "-e" or "-er" as endings in New High German. 2A0A:A541:1C58:0:8052:B6E2:5747:34F0 (talk) 01:57, 16 February 2024 (UTC)