English-German contrastive phonetics and phonology. A study of interviews and speeches

Contents

1. Introduction

2. Theoretical Background
2.1 Historical background of the English and German language
2.2 The development ofEnglish
2.3 The development of German

3 Contrastive Analysis ofEnglish and German phonetics and phonology
3.1 Consonants
3.1.1 English and German consonant inventory
3.1.2 Phonemic articulatory similarities and differences
3.1.3 Allophonic, distributional and phonetic difficulties
3.2 Vowels
3.2.1 Comparison of the German and English vowel inventories
3.2.2 General differences between the German and English vowel inventories
3.3 Phonotactic Constraints
3.3.1 Syllable building in English and German
3.3.2 Comparison of phonotactic rules and restrictions

4. Prominent examples for English mispronunciations in German interviews and speeches
4.1 Examples for consonantal difficulties
4.2 Examples for difficulties with vowels
4.3 Phonotactical examples

5. Conclusion

Bibliography

List of illustrations

List of tables

Appendix

1. Introduction

The importance of English has increased over the past years and is one of the most spoken and important languages. It is needed in business relations, to read manuals, can be used in almost all foreign countries for communication and is generally important for every working citizen in terms of a business language, as former European Commissioner Gunther Oettinger stated in his interview with German broadcast channel SWR in 2005. In 2010 a speech of Oettinger was published, which was held in the Columbia University of Berlin and showed, after his contribution in the broadcast, that his English proficiency was not appropriate when considering the circumstances.

Especially in terms of politics, an individual wants to be taken seriously and act superior in all tasks given to comply with the role of a representative politician. After Oettinger held his speech, it was naturally connected to what was originally said by him, with the obvious connotation that he failed to meet his own expectations in English acquisition by far, although it was of utmost importance. The English language however can be difficult for foreign speakers. Although being of the same Germanic origin as German, many foreign speakers experience a hard time when trying to achieve native-like pronunciation. Words such as squirrel, all words with a 'th-' and minimal pairs (e.g. hat and had) are often difficult to pronounce and distinguish for foreign learners, due to phonetic and phonemic differences, which cannot easily be translated into the German system due to their non-existence.

These linguistic differences are going to be researched and compared, in order to light upon the reasons for mispronunciations and difficulties for German speakers of English. Learning a language or a skill in general, naturally needs practice and commitment to be able to master it. However, this essay is going to leave this aspect aside and will concentrate on differences which emerge from the languages themselves. German and English are two different languages with the same Latin alphabet and different grammar for the naked eye, but beneath the surface are further differences and similarities which can be described in order to understand why German speakers of English seem to produce the same mistakes when no practice for correct pronunciation is given. Both languages are of Germanic origin and must have separated at some point in history, by developing distinctive features. Therefore, the historical development of both languages will be compared under the aspect of linguistic changes. The English and German consonants, vowels and phonotactics will be analysed to show relevant differences. This will be done by comparing phones, phonemes and syllabic rules and showing the reasons for mispronunciations, based on the very foundational aspects of speech. At the end, the results of the foregoing chapters will be reflected on speeches and interviews of German persons in public relations, to see, whether these differences can be heard in speech and used to visualize the underlying mistakes.

2. Theoretical Background

The English language is one of the most widespread and learned languages in the world. It is the official language of about 50 countries and is being spoken or taught for educational purposes, business relations or uses in public transport in at least 25 countries where English is not even considered an official national language or business language (cf. Crystal 2003: 4). However, English is the mother tongue of countries with large numbers of inhabitants like the USA, Canada, UK, South Africa and smaller and lesser populated areas like some Caribbean islands (cf. Ibid.). English is spoken by nearly 20 percent of the world's population, a total of approximately 1.5 billion people (cf. Eberhard/Simons/Fennig 2019: 2). The count of native speakers settles at around 350 million people worldwide which leads to the fact that the non-native speakers have outnumbered the native speaking population by now (cf. Jenkins 2002: 83). Since it is one of the most spoken languages, it is only natural to have several dialects deriving from different demographic groups (cf. Baker 2016: 41). In the United Kingdom alone, are several regionally or socially developed dialects and accents of English which differ intra-linguistically in terms of syntactical, phonological and lexical features (cf. Bauer 2007: 9). Generally, the insular dialects can be split into geographical regions, such as Northern, Midland and Southern English dialect groups, Scottish, Irish and StandardEnglish (cf. Speyer2007: 19).

Received Pronunciation (abbr. RP) is the language or form, which is considered to be Standard English. RP is also known as 'BBC English' or 'Oxford English'. When observed historically, the origin of this pronunciation can be traced back to the South-Eastern parts of the United Kingdom, especially in and around of London, since it used to be the language of higher social classes (cf. Biersack 2002: 47). Specifically, RP has been the official language of British authorities starting from the 16th century. It became a standard in politics, trade, law and court. In the 20th century, 'BBC' began to exclusively use news anchors who spoke Received Pronunciation. This ultimately led to the synonym 'BBC English' (Ibid.: 48). Finally, it can be stated that Received Pronunciation is a variation of English which is rather a dialect of social ascent and not a regional one. The Received Pronunciation will be referred to throughout the essay.

Considering the number of speakers and the worldwide distribution of all the varieties of English it can definitely be said that English is an important global language. In the course of the history, English became the lingua franca for the areas of science, information technology, education, tourism and travelling, entertainment and of course politics. The language spread through colonialism and trading with and to other nations. There were colonies in several regions such as America, Canada, India, Australia and New Zealand, which made English turn into a major international language (cf. Kachru 1992: 5). Under these circumstances, the English language was rendered into a language of international and cross- cultural importance.

Germany integrated English into its educational system, the English classes replaced former Russian classes in East Germany as well as they replaced the status of French as a language which was commonly used in bilingual education (cf. Cornill-Decke 2002: 2). In some German states such as Lower Saxony, English lessons have been taught for roughly 15 years, starting from third grade in primary schools (cf. Niedersächsisches Kultusministerium 2018: 5). Due to the increase of international affairs and a growing multilingual society, learning a foreign language has become one of the major goals for adolescents (cf. Leonore, et al 1998: 248). For some people it may be easier or harder to learn a foreign language, pre­existing linguistic abilities and similarities between the native and foreign language can influence the learning process and therefore give an advantage or disadvantage due to phonetic, syntactical or morphological similarities and differences between the native and foreign language. This cross-linguistic influence is likely to happen if both languages stem from the same language family and especially when the grammar and vocabulary of the learner is less developed, otherwise a systematic transfer is less likely to be experienced (cf. Arabski 2006: 13). Language transfer can either develop positively resulting, for example in a correct production because of similar characteristics between first and target language or it can develop resulting inword order errors, mispronunciations or simple word-by-word translations (cf. Sahingöz 2014: 24). However, when learning a foreign language, it is not only about learning how to write, to spell and to form sentences, it is also about how to pronounce and differentiate words through their pronunciation.

2.1 Historical background of the English and German language

English and German both belong to the Germanic language family. They derived from the same predecessor Indo-European, one of the biggest language families with more than about 440 living languages across all continents (cf. Eberhard et al 2019). Most of the modern languages, which are spoken within Europe nowadays, derived from the Indo-European family. Ten Indo-European languages belong to the 20 largest languages with the most native speakers. Sometimes, the historical relation is obvious because of words with similar features or because of implied homo-phonic or homo-graphic vocabulary. The examples of the English father, the German Vater or the Dutch vader show the close relation; their only differences are at most two distinguishing phones. In this case /f/ and /v/, so either a voiceless or a voiced fricative as well as /d/ and /t/, either a voiced or voiceless plosive or an apical-dental fricative /d/ in the English father. Every Indo-European language has come from its predecessor Proto-Indo-European, which was spoken approximately 12,000 years ago (cf. Speyer 2007: 13). No written remains can be found of this language particularly, however, it was reconstructed through remains and representative aspects of cultural and regional elements from the cultures of Indo-European speakers (cf. Speyer 2007: 14). The Indo­Europeans remained in the areas where their Proto-Indo-European parents had ultimately migrated (cf. Mallory 2006: 442). Towards the end of the first century the Germans had their settlements in the lower regions of what Germany is today, the western parts of Poland and some areas of southern Scandinavia (cf. Speyer 2007: 16). At the times of late antiquity, there have been three classifiable dialects of Germanic languages which can be differentiated from each other: The East-Germanic, the North-Germanic and the West-Germanic.

The East-Germanic language took over the area of the south-eastern Scandinavian islands and spread over to the East coast of Germany and left its marks in eastern Europe (cf. Baugh/Cable 2002: 28). However, every ancient member of the East-Germanic language family is extinct by now. The Eastern group was comprised of the Goths, Burgundians, Vandals and other settlers who migrated south from Scandinavia. Later, the Gothic tribes began to head south and occupied several regions in Western and Eastern Europe, as well as North Africa (Ibid.: 29). Their tribes combined into two Gothic groups and ultimately were absorbed by other cultures. Remains of the Eastern-Germanic language, Gothic, can be found in the translation of the Bible and in loan word relics. These relics are merely names of places, such as Catalonia, which came from 'Gothislandia', or personal names like Rodrigo, which is today known as 'Roderich' in Modern German (cf. Comrie 2009: 51 f).

North-Germanic occupied the area from southern Scandinavia, Faroe Islands, Iceland and Denmark. The earliest preserved evidence for the existence of this language can be traced back to the third century, where Runic inscriptions were found in written or drawn form in Old Norse (cf. Ibid.). Further on, approximately after the eleventh century, the language began to change and the newly developed dialects were becoming noticeable in the forms of Danish and Swedish, which were dominant in the eastern part of Scandinavia, Iceland and Norwegian as the dominant languages on the western part.

West-Germanic was originally located in the North-Western German plains, which is today known as Lower Saxony, and is the parent language of both English and German. Geographically, it made its way down to the South, up until the Roman borders in the Western Alps. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire a period of migration began approximately in the middle of the fourth century and lasted until the first half of the sixth century. Several tribes began to move either into the recently fallen Roman Empire or out of their original territories (cf. Speyer 2007: 18). Due to the syntactical similarities of the West-Germanic dialects they were hardly separable up until the seventh century (cf. Graeme 2006: 154). During the migration period in the seventh century, the West-Germanic tribes and their languages began to move, Angles and Saxons migrated from Schleswig-Holstein to middle and southern parts of Britain, which were formally controlled by the Roman Empire and inhabited by indigenous people.

After the migration period, three major dialects began to develop into independent languages. One language was Old-English (abbr. OE), which developed after the Anglo­Saxons had settled on the British Isles. Second was Old-Saxon, which emerged at the end of the eighth century according to Speyer (cf. 2007: 17). It began to develop after the French conquered the lands above the central Highlands of Europe. The third was represented by the Old-High-German, which reached from the central Highlands down to Switzerland (cf. Ibid: 18).

2.2 The development ofEnglish

After the decline of the Roman Empire, Anglo-Saxons headed out to seek new lands. As soon as the North-Germans arrived on the insular group, the language spread around the isles (cf. Crystal 2003: 30) and set forth the development of what has now developed into Modern English. However, the first documented people to speak a language, who are known to have existed in England, were Celts. Celts probably were the first speakers of an Indo­European language in Britain, with additional settlements in Spain, northern Italy and Greece. Later on, Celtic was split into Gaelic and Brythonic, whereas the Gaelic population began to migrate to Ireland and Scotland, while the Brythonic population stayed in England (cf. Singh 2005: 69).

In the first century, the Romans invaded Britain and took control of it up to the borders of north Caledonian territories. Having conquered a broad part of the island, they stayed for almost 400 years (cf. Quiles 2015: 5). Along with their language, the Romans brought their culture and traditions onto the island. Infrastructure, such as roads and villas, aspects of fashion, such as dresses and entertainment facilities like bathhouses, temples or theatres serve as remnants of past Roman influence on British landscapes (cf. Ibid.). Latin became the official language of public and governmental relations, as well as of the church, due to Christianity, which began to spread in the third century (cf. Singh 2005: 69). Despite having conquered and romanized large fractions of Britain, the Latin language was not able to replace Celtic languages. Latin was merely used by individuals of upper classes or inhabitants of larger cities and towns (cf. Ibid.).

After the Roman troops retreated in the fifth century, German settlers from Denmark and Low Countries, such as Schleswig-Holstein, began conquests by migrating for more than a hundred years, to southern and eastern Britain. Afterwards, the Germans expanded their territories until they reached the Highlands and the West (cf. Baugh/Cable 2002: 47 f). The existence of a prehistoric form of Old English, which developed after the Anglo-Saxons began conquering England, can only be assumed since there are no literary or archaeological remains. The German settlers did not all stay in one place, which led to a regional and dialectal development of dialects all over England (cf. Singh 2005: 75). However, Stumpf states (1970: 6 f.) that there must have been a language which every inhabitant could understand by the end of the sixth century.

Despite having conquered the island, Latin did not leave an impact on Old-English vocabulary. Old-English (abbr. OE) vocabulary mostly contained Germanic words, about 500 words of Latin origin belonged to the vocabulary in the period until the Norman Conquest. Most of the Latin influences came in the period following the Norman conquest. Nonetheless, there are some words which were adapted early on in the fifth century like street, road (Modern English), which came from straet (OE) and ultimately derived from strata (L), wine (ME) - 'win (OE) - vinum (L) or kettle (ME) - cytel (OE) - catillus (L). Here, every adopted loanword represents something which either Roman culture integrated in Brittonic Areas, or something which is an item of daily usage or of particular importance, like a kettle to boil water, or wine (cf. Abu 2012: 6 f.). These vocabularies represent simple and basic everyday things, such as mann(OE), man (ME); cild(OE), child(ME); mete(OE), meat(ME); or weall(OE) and wall(ME) (cf. Baugh/Cable 2002: 49). Most of these everyday terms have derived from the influence of Anglo-Saxon. Latin and French words, however, are often being used in sophisticated contexts or royal relations (cf. Singh 2005: 66). A comparison of some Modern English and Old English examples like stone (ME) - stan(OE), hoty(ME) - halig(OE) shows that their pronunciation differs from each other. However, the words are graphically almost identical. The main difference is the vowel which is likewise in the German translation of holytMK) and halig(OE) - 'heilig (HG)' (cf. Baugh/Cable 2002: 49).

Old-English pronunciation can only be defined through speculations, because remnants of the language only exist as written artefacts. When comparing Old-English and Modern-English, it is noticeable that the spelling differs. Old-English spelling seems to be written as it should be pronounced. In the Old-English vowel inventory there are seven vowels (/a/, /»/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/, /y/), which can either be used as long or short vowels and four diphthongs (eo, e o, ea, e a) (cf. Singh 2005: 76).

In terms of religion, the British population either followed British Paganism or they worshipped their ancestors. The Romans influenced and converted their empire's religious landscape, including Britain, by introducing their religion, Christianity. The spreading of Christianity by the Romans throughout their whole empire led to Latin becoming the language of the church. After the Roman retreat, Anglo-Saxons reintroduced Paganism to the insular population between the fifth and sixth century (cf. Singh 2005: 103).

Old English slowly came to a close towards the end of the eleventh century and began to develop into Middle English as Roman influence was brought back by the Normans during the middle to high Middle Age. Therefore, Anglo-Saxon influences were rid of, to pave the way for what was to become of English and England (cf. Singh 2005: 103). In 1066, on Christmas Day, the conquest of the Normans started another language-shaping event when the Duke of Normandy William the Conqueror defeated Harold, King of the Anglo-Saxons. Right after, he established himself as heir of the English throne and William introduced the Domesday Book a few years later, which served the purpose of documenting and giving a demographic overview of the English population. The Domesday Book was written by a churchman in Latin and never received an Old English translation (cf. Baker 2016: 43).

The Normans had also been converted by the Roman Empire, therefore Latin as well became the language of Britain's churches. Every church service was conveyed in Latin, just like the Bible. Later on, French nobles began to move, or were brought to Britain by King William and received land on English soil. They formed a noble and exclusively French­speaking society (cf. Baker 2016: 45). English dialects were left for citizens to use, while upper classes used French. At first it was only the Normans who spoke French, but as time passed, the ruling classes of the English population learned French, too, due to marriages between both cultures for example (cf. Baugh/Cable 2002: 106). French loanwords slowly began to be introduced into the English vocabulary, since the language gained some interest because it was being spoken by prominent people nonetheless, resulting in a trickle-down effect which led to French gaining popularity in the common population.

The Middle-English (abbr. ME) phone inventories and graphs show that the symbolic writing, which seemed to display the pronunciation, has disappeared. Minor changes in terms of spelling introduced the th, as well as w for double u (“uu”), which Old English writers had been using to “describe” the sound until Normans introduced it. Furthermore, allophones of the former c, |//| and [Æ], were usually represented by [c] in written form. However, the spelling of ch was introduced to diminish ambiguity between |l|'| and [k]. Whenever c was standing next to a front vowel, as in OE cild (/ÿild/) (ME child; /'tfidd/), it was pronounced with [^], but in every other occasion it was pronounced [k] as in the Old English written form of knight (cni3t Zkniht/) (cf. Singh 2006: 114). A major change in pronunciation is the disappearance of the word initial A, which can be found in the word hnappian (OE) 'to sleep', which turned to nappe (ME) or question words like where (OE hwær), with one exception, who (OE hwa. ME ho), since it is still being initially pronounced with [h].

The Old English consonant system used allophones in determined positions only. Voiced sounds like [z] (to lose; OE leosan) and [v] (heaven; OE heojon) were only used medially and are allophones of voiceless [s] and [f]. The latter only appeared word-initially or finally (cf. Singh 2005: 77). This static system, which placed voiceless phonemes initially or finally and voiced allophones medially, was changed and got flexible on account of French and Latin loanwords. Their systems featured initially voiced consonants, which introduced initially voiced consonants into Middle English. Nowadays, this change is still present in loanwords like virtue (It. \irtus; fr. vertu} and zeal (It. 'relus; fr. zèle) (cf Singh 2005: 115). The vowel system received a big change during the Middle English period (1100-1500), new diphthongs were introduced ([au], [ou], [su] and [iu]) and the former short and long Old English diphthongs, which were mentioned before, were changed to monophthongs ([eo] and [e o] > [e] and [e:], [ea] and [e a] > [a] and [a:]). New diphthongs emerged due to French loanwords which introduced the usage of glides ([j] eg. Joie 'joy' ; [w] bowe 'to bow') in combination with vowels and the vocalization of [w] (OE flowan ; ME flowen; 'to flow') (cf. Singh2005: 117).

Middle-English ended in the late 15th century and was followed by the Early Modem English period until the 18th century. There have been several changes in politics, religions and technological developments which influenced the two centuries. One reason was the introduction of the printing press by Caxton at the end of the 15th century. The press made printed texts and books available for more social classes due to its cheap and fast production. A lot of books, translations and information became available for everyone to read, which also resulted in a better literacy rate. In the beginning of the 17th century the king authorized the publication of bibles, which were translated to English, giving English a status like Latin. Due to illiteracy a lot of educational institutions were established for the population later on. Reading and writing gained popularity and literacy became more common. Additionally, printing became more productive and cheaper over time, which resulted in about 25,000 published English books between the late 15th and 17th century (cf. Singh 2005: 143 ff). This was a step towards unification. Scholars published English dictionaries and specialized discourses. Religious contexts were moving away from the use of Latin, and preferred English instead. Because of the distribution and availability of dictionaries, grammar books and spelling guides the population gained confidence in the use of language and began to embrace the English language (cf. Baugh/Cable 2002: 188).

During the Early Modern English period consonantal system changes occurred. Allophones of /h/ appeared in the form of /$/, as in knight and /x/, like in cough. The former, which is used after front vowels, turned into a longer articulated vowel and the /<?/ disappeared. The latter, which occurs after back vowels, either disappeared, too, or was pronounced as /f/ (cough, laugh) (cf. Singh 2005: 153). Word final clusters like /mb/ and /nd/ were reduced and became /m/ and /n/, as in lamb and land. This may also have been the reason for the introduction of the phonemic /p/ and /3/ and the connected loss of the word final /g/, as in wing, which was usually preceded by a /p/ and now made use of for the distinction of minimal pairs like 'win and -wing (cf. Ibid.). The realisation of /3/ was always present, it was first pronounced as /zj/ as in loanwords like leisure. Afterwards, it merged into /3/ and was perceived as foreign before becoming common in the 17th century. Its voiceless counterpart (/s/) turned into the phone /J/, which was the same as in words like discussion or mission. Another consonantal development was the addition and vocalization of the 'dark 1' allophone (/!/) (cf. Singh 2005: 153 if.).

Just like the consonantal system, the vowel system had undergone some major changes in quality. The great vowel shift made the English vowels differ from the vowel systems of 'continental' sounds like in German or Italian. Generally, vowels were produced with a higher raised tongue and a further closing of the mouth. Long English vowels, which were considered 'continental' too, lost their 'continentality' after the shift. The shift basically raised the tongue height of vowels which could be raised (/a:, e:, e:, y., o:/), as in the word boot (/bo:t/ /bu:t/). However, this happened in two phases. The first ended by the beginning of the 16th century and the second during the 17th century. The first made close (/i: u:/) and mid­close (/e: o:/) vowels move up in tongue height, which made the close vowels turn into /ei: ou:/ and the mid-close vowels into /i: u:/. The diphthongization of the former happened because the close vowels /i: u:/ were to become consonants if raised, due to the interrupted air stream and the resulting fricative sound (cf. Baugh/Cable 2002: 222). The latter were able to raise to the position which was occupied by the former close vowels. The second shift made open vowels /a:/ (e.g. mate /ma:t/), and open mid vowels (/e: □:/), as in meat (/me:t/) or boat (/bo:t/), rise as well. The open vowel /a:/ was first raised to open-mid /»:/ (/m^:t/) and then to mid /e:/ (/me:t/). The vowels /e:/ and ly.l were raised to close-mid vowels (/e: o:/ /me:t/ and /bo:t/) (cf. Lass 2008: 81 ff.). In contrast, short vowels have stayed more or less where they were except for a few examples, such as /i/, which was the result of dialectal influences, where /e/ was used instead of /i/ in words like menysters ('ministers') and a lowering of /a/ to /□/, as in god. Additionally, the short /u/ turned into a schwa (cf. Singh 2005: 155 ff.).

The English language expanded after the 17th century, factors like the industrial and scientific revolution, international trade, and British Colonies helped the English language to establish a global status. On one hand, especially the industrialization influenced the development in terms of vocabulary, since inventions required “new words”, such as caffeine, electron, piston or camera. The former two are examples for words created with Latin or Greek roots, the latter have been coined for the new products. Additionally, most of the inventions, which had a global impact during the 18th to 19th century, were of British origin (e.g. steamships, railways, trains) (cf. Mastin 2011). Naturally, these scientific and technological inventions were documented in English and made up about half of the influential publishings, therefore contributing to the globalization (cf. Mastin 2011). On the other hand, British Colonies spread English to many other countries, especially in Asia and Africa, establishing new varieties of English and importing several loans such as pyjamas, shampoo and candy, which were taken from India for example.

The development which started during Early Modem English times was echoing through this period, until the language reached present day English. Word initial /h/ was struggling to stay vocalized, because French influences, where the /h/ was mute, were mingling with the English pronunciation. It came back however, due to Germanic and Romanic influences, which led to different variations in spelling and pronunciation (cf. Bergs/Brinton 2012: 592). Another aspect concerning /h/ was the loss of the allophone vocalization. The consonants /$/ and /x/ began to disappear after the 15th century and vanished over the course of time. They were replaced by a lengthening of the preceding vowel, as in high (/hai/) or right (/rait/). The loss of the rhotic /r/ began in Southern British dialects, especially when the /r/ was succeeding a closed vowel, while other countries like Scotland, USA and Ireland retained the vocalized pronunciation of /r/, ultimately resulting in the the loss or dropping of the /r/ pronunciation if preceded by a vowel, as in hard (/la:d/) or shutter (/fAta/) (cf. Gast/Konig 2018: 44f.).

2.3 The development of German

Just like English, German began its own development towards the end of the early Middle Age and was able to be distinguished from three other language groups which derived from the West Germanic language family at the beginning of the ninth century. Although being named Old-High-German, there still have been a lot of regional differences in dialects, rendering it unable to constitute a universal language at first. The linguistic changes of German cannot be directly assumed since there has been no literal evidence except for runes, names of old settlements or biblical translations written by monks, or bishops (cf. Riecke 2016: 13 ff.).

During the eighth century, the Old-High-German alphabetical system received Latin influences due to the introduction of monasteries, constituted by Irish, Anglo-Saxon or Gothic missionaries, which later led to the establishment of the Latin alphabet in the German languages, replacing the runic graphs (cf. Ibid.). This development began with the Conversion of the Saxons by Charlemagne of Franconia who invaded the Saxon territory. Charlemagne's empire was of big size, with many different cultures and languages and no unity in either language or culture. Christianity was a factor for the growing unity between all these diverse population groups. Latin however, represented the first foreign language for the German population (cf. Riecke 2016: 16 ff).

Since Latin was the language of science, the language of the bible and had a savoured and intellectual status, it was difficult for the simple population to enrich themselves on what was given through Latin, because most of the people were illiterate (cf. Ibid: 17). The first stone for the establishment of written German was set by clergymen who wanted to make the Latin language comprehensible, since it was a hardship for unschooled people to learn or even understand Latin (cf. Ibid.). An additional hardship were further dialectic differences, which are classified as the Franconian dialects (cf. Ibid: 19). They began writing German translations, in forms of comments between Latin texts to render them more understandable for 'foreign language learners' (cf. Ibid.). Practically, these scribes-men created, by constructing a German word with consideration of the Latin language system. Some words did not exist in Germanic languages either which represented a problem for the scribes, in these cases loanwords were introduced. An example for a word created with this technique is 'Gurgel'. It can be found in Old-High-German forms of the word atemdrozze, kela, gurgula and querca (cf. Ibid.: 30). Because it was of most urgency to become affine in biblical Latin, these translations, or comments, were mostly used for educational reasons especially in monastery schools, where pupils learnt to spell, read and talk in Latin (cf. Ibid.). These schools conveyed the 'septem artes liberales' which were deemed to be the 'educational standard' of Middle Age schooling during the Old-High-German period in the eighth century. In the end, there had been several scribes-men from each dialect region who rather tried to constitute a written standard for their own region instead of creating a written system for the whole unity. Latin ultimately remained the language for communication in over-regional contexts during the 10th century (cf. Ibid.: 28 ff.). The German written system was not only constituted because of biblical texts, but as time progressed, new semantic groups emerged, in medicine and law for example, which demanded new definitions and had to be integrated into the German language system (cf. Ibid.: 36).

Beneath cultural influences, there have been two unconditioned influences on the development of the German language, which were Grimm's law and Verner's law. The former is the first documented sound shift. Its beginning cannot be defined with certainty, but it happened approximately until the second half of the first century and initiated the change from Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic. Therefore, the English language was effected by Grimm's law too. This sound chain-shift affected voiced and voiceless plosives. Voiceless consonants (/p, t, k/) shifted to voiceless fricatives (/f, £h/), voiced consonants (/b, d, g/) switched to voiceless consonants. Aspirated voiceless plosive clusters (/bh, dg, gh/) were changed to voiced plosives (/b, d, g/) (cf. Speyer 2007: 31ff.).

Next to the Old-English language there have been Old-Saxon and Old-High-German. Old-High-German turned into modern German and Old-Saxon developed into Dutch, Afrikaans (of Dutch origin) and Low German, which is barely being spoken any more. Over time, Low German became more of a passive language and therefore lost its status of a native language, except in Schleswig-Holstein, which decayed over time, until the 21th century (cf. Ibid.: 22).

What finally separated both languages was the second sound shift which took place from the fifth to the eighth century (cf. Ibid.). This shift only affected Old-High-German and not the development of Old-Saxon. This consonantal shift made obstruents move away from their former position and it introduced fricatives into the language. The voiceless obstruents (/p, t, k/) turned into fricatives (/f, s, x/). So, while 'sleeping' and 'street' were transferred to slafan and strazza¹ in Old-High-German, slapan and strata remained unchanged in Old-Saxon languages. Later on, the same obstruents underwent changes again. If an obstruent was in an onset, came after sonorant consonants or was doubled, they were shifted to affricates (cf. Ibid. 62 ff.). So, /p, t, k/ were changed to /pf, ts, kx/, as in seen in Old-High-German aphul and Old- Saxon appul, for example.

The 11th century marked the beginning of Middle-High-German (abbr. MHG). Riecke (2016:43) stated that Middle-High-German started approximately in 1050 and ended in the 15th century. One of the major changes was the shift of grammatical and semantic information from the end of syllables to prefixes (cf. Ibid.). Usually, the end syllablle contained semantic information to be able to distinguish different word forms, as in Old-High-German wahhon (being awake) and wahhen (waking up). Due to the fact that the end syllables lost their informational relevance, words were fused together and received pre- or suffixes to convey the information provided. The first word merged into wachen, and the latter word was now written er-wachen (cf. Riecke 2016: 43). Furthermore, needed syntactical features such as pronouns, definite articles and adjectives were introduced, due to the information transfer in syllables (cf. Ibid.). Cases were developed into a stage which are still unchanged in present day, as well as the consolidation of a unified word order system known as 'subject-verb-object' (cf. Ibid.).

During Old-High-German times there was a broad palette of different German dialects, Franconian, Alemannic and Bavarian which were additionally sub-categorized in regional dialects. However, they were not perceived as a language unit by the speakers. Dialects of areas can rather be defined through monasteries which used regionally specific dialects (cf. Riecke 2016: 45 f.). While there was no comprehensive correlation between phones and graphs in written language either during the Old-high-German period, the Middle-High- German period was able to constitute a balance between both elements in the written language. This development was favoured by the further contribution of books and texts, promoting the distribution. Furthermore, thanks to the growing amount of texts, it was possible to specifically define written dialects, like Rhine-Franconian or Swabian. In the 12th century, this development led to the recognition of the term “German” as it was mentioned in a famous Middle-High-German song, written by a monk in a monastery near Bonn (cf. Ibid.). The “Annolied” was a song composed for King Anno of Cologne, and features words like diutschin sprecchin, diutschi man and diutschi lande, which were later used in the Chronicles of the Emperor and distributed across the German area. This ultimately set the birth for the recognition of “German” as a nationality and its language “Deutsch” (diutsch) among the population (cf. Ibid.: 61 ff.).

The language further developed in the next few centuries, especially due to a broader availability of education through the introduction of city schools and the establishment of literature, primarily by poets (cf. Ibid.). Especially these literary texts were distributed broadly in the German areas and the authors tried to convey a language without regional influences, which further contributed to the constitution of a unified language, (cf. Ibid: 71 ff.) There had been less influences which changed the phonetic system of the German language, than there had been in the English language. The last centuries were mostly under the effect of religious, scientific, administrative or philosophic subjects which resulted in the creation of different types of texts and the introduction of many specific terminologies to cover several kinds of semantic areas. The courtly population steadily changed to an urban civilization, while the spoken language developed too and made it possible to distinguish Middle-High-German from Early-New-High-German amidstthe 14th century, (cf. Ibid: 95)

The sound pattern changes during the Middle-High-German period primarily affected diphthongs and monophthongs. Firstly, the Middle-High-German diphthongs (/ie, uo, ue/) were changed into the monophthongs /i:, u:, u:/. Middle-High-German words like guote or brueder were turned into gute and Bruder in Early-New-High-German (cf. Ibid.: 95).

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¹ In Old-High-German the letter <z> was pronounced like a voiceless spirans.