page_title: Middle High German
section_title: Periodisation
hierarchical_section_title: Middle High German / Periodisation
caption_attribution_description: English: A map which shows the presence of German people in areas of modern-day Poland and Eastern Europe. Note that "Lettern", meaning Latvian, is used to incorrectly refer to speakers of Baltic languages.
context_page_description: Middle High German is the term for the form of German spoken in the High Middle Ages. It is conventionally dated between 1050 and 1350, developing from Old High German and into Early New High German. High German is defined as those varieties of German which were affected by the Second Sound Shift; the Middle Low German and Middle Dutch languages spoken to the North and North West, which did not participate in this sound change, are not part of MHG.
  While there is no standard MHG, the prestige of the Hohenstaufen court gave rise in the late 12th century to a supra-regional literary language based on Swabian, an Alemannic dialect. This historical interpretation is complicated by the tendency of modern editions of MHG texts to use normalised spellings based on this variety, which make the written language appear more consistent than is actually the case in the manuscripts. Scholars are uncertain as to whether the literary language reflected a supra-regional spoken language of the courts.
  An important development in this period was the Ostsiedlung, the eastward expansion of German settlement beyond the Elbe-Saale line which marked the limit of Old High German.
context_section_description: The Middle High German period is generally dated from 1050 to 1350. An older view puts the boundary with (Early) New High German around 1500. 
  There are several phonological criteria which separate MHG from the preceding Old High German period:
  the weakening of unstressed vowels to ⟨e⟩: OHG taga, MHG tage ("days")
  the full development of Umlaut and its use to mark a number of morphological categories
  the devoicing of final stops: OHG tag > MHG tac ("day")
  Culturally, the two periods are distinguished by the transition from a predominantly clerical written culture, in which the dominant language was Latin, to one centred on the courts of the great nobles, with German gradually expanding its range of use. The rise of the Hohenstaufen dynasty in Swabia makes the South West the dominant region in both political and cultural terms.
  Demographically, the MHG period is characterised by a massive rise in population, terminated by the demographic catastrophe of the Black Death (1348). Along with the rise in population comes a territorial expansion eastwards (Ostsiedlung), which saw German-speaking settlers colonise land previously under Slavic control.
  Linguistically, the transition to Early New High German is marked by four vowel changes which together produce the phonemic system of modern German, though not all dialects participated equally in these changes:
  Diphthongisation of the long high vowels /iː yː uː/ > /aɪ̯ ɔʏ̯ aʊ̯/:  MHG hût > NHG Haut ("skin")
  Monophthongisation of the high centering diphthongs /iə yə uə/ > /iː yː uː/: MHG huot > NHG Hut ("hat")
  lengthening of stressed short vowels in open syllables: MHG sagen /zaɡən/ > NHG sagen /zaːɡən/ ("say")
  The loss of unstressed vowels in many circumstances: MHG vrouwe > NHG Frau ("lady")
  The centres of culture in the ENHG period are no longer the courts but the towns.
caption: German territorial expansion before 1400 from F. W. Putzger
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