INTRODUCTION

Like Portuguese and its inconsistent writing systems for Portugal and Brazil, German has had a history of orthographic problems, which come out of the conflict between its essentially eight hundred year old writing system and its modern phonology. In other words, the conservative spelling rules for German are simply out of touch with its modern pronunciation, and, as a result, it is almost impossible to determine the spelling of a word solely based on its sound. The earliest evidence of Germanic languages comes from names recorded in the 1st century by Tacitus (especially from his work) ,but the earliest Germanic writing occurs in a single instance in the 2nd century BC on the Negau helmet. For people to live together, they must be able to communicate with one another. Language is the tool of communication. Language was spoken long before people began writing. Words are dropped, new words are developed, some words are adapted from other languages and meanings of words change over time. The origins for the written documents date back to the eighth century, its spoken use is much older. All of written language began with pictures or pictographs.

I.

History of german language

As Germany was divided into many different states, the only force working for unification or standardization of German during a period of several hundred years was when writers would try to write in a way that could be understood in the largest possible area. 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 orthographical rules first appeared in the Duden Handbook. In 1901, this was declared the standard definition of the German language.

a.

History of Germanic writing

German historical writing as founded by Leopold von Ranke (1795 1886) was a response to the challenge of building a nation-state. Since the Reformation, Germany had suffered from political division and economic backwardness; at last, many believed in the early nineteenth century. Nationalism, and nationalist historical writing, existed in many parts of nineteenth-century Europe, and we need to look more closely at the culture of Ranke and his contemporaries . Their tradition of historical writing was the creation of an exclusive elite, the Protestant educated middle class.

b.

Developing written records

Talking to one another was the rst stage in communication, but when people found it necessary to have a more permanent manner to track their activities, they had to develop a system to do so. Drawings were the earliest form of some sort of writing to document events, since it is easier to record events than abstract ideas. The earliest records known are of experiences recorded in cave paintings, which date back several thousands of years. As societies developed, more complex systems were created to express events. Creating symbols with greater degrees of complexity meant ideas could be recorded as well.

Pict. 1 Cave painting from Altamira, Spain

Pict 2 The greek alphabet

pict. 3 Cave painting from India c. Common Characteristics

Strong evidence for the unity of all the modern Germanic languages can be found in the phenomenon known as the first Germanic sound shift or consonant shift (also called Grimm's law), which set the Germanic subfamily apart from the other members of the Indo-European family. Consisting of a regular shifting of consonants in groups, the sound shift had already occurred by the time adequate records of the various Germanic languages began to be made in the 7th to 9th century.

II Importance of orthography German orthography, although largely phonemic, shows many instances of spellings that are historic or analogous to other spellings rather than phonemic. The pronunciation of almost every word can be derived from its spelling, once the spelling rules are known, but the opposite is not generally the same case. The German writing system uses five diacritic or accent marks with its alphabet (the circumflex accent [, , ], acute accent [], grave accent [, , , ], dieresis [, ], and cedilla []) and two ligatures ( and ).

Conclusion

The German language has evolved over many millennia and the inuences developing the language have been countless. Just as in everything, change is the constant factor. Language is not static. People on the move had new experiences, along with political upheaval and conict, weather, social interaction, procuring food were some of the experiences for which words had to be developed. You have read of many of the inuences that formed the German language. As a need arises, words are developed to express the need.

Bibliography

1. Chambers, W. Walker and Wilkie, John R. A Short History of the German Language. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1970. 2. Keller, Rudolf E. The German Language. London: Faber and Faber, 1978.

3. Kamenetsky, Christa. The Brothers Grimm and Their Critics: Folktales and the Quest for Meaning. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1992. 4. Waterman, John T. A History of the German Language. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1966

Some Internet resources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_languages http://german.about.com/od/onlinecourses/a/Five-Peculiarities-Of-The-German-Language.htm