Old Dutch

Old Dutch, also known as Old Low Franconian, is the collection of West Germanic dialects that were spoken in the Low Countries during the early Middle Ages, from approximately the 5th to the 12th centuries. It is generally considered to be the ancestor of the various modern Dutch dialects, as well as of Afrikaans and Limburgish.

Because relatively few written texts survive from this period, and those that do exist are often fragmentary or poorly understood, the exact nature of Old Dutch is difficult to reconstruct. Most surviving Old Dutch texts are glosses (words and phrases written into Latin texts to explain their meaning) or short runic inscriptions. The best-known fragment is the "Salic Law Fragment," a single sentence found in a legal text.

Old Dutch developed from Proto-West Germanic and was influenced by Old Saxon and Old High German. The language underwent significant sound changes that distinguished it from its neighboring Germanic languages, including changes in vowel sounds and the development of the "i-mutation" and "umlaut" phenomena.

Around the 12th century, Old Dutch gradually transitioned into Middle Dutch. This transition was marked by increasing standardization of the language and a greater number of surviving texts. The boundary between Old and Middle Dutch is somewhat arbitrary and based on linguistic and cultural developments.

The study of Old Dutch is crucial for understanding the historical development of the Dutch language and its relationship to other Germanic languages. Scholars rely on comparative linguistics, historical texts, and reconstructed forms to piece together our understanding of this early stage in the history of Dutch.