Old Saxon

E24409

Old Saxon is an early West Germanic language spoken by the Saxons in what is now northern Germany and parts of the Netherlands, best known from texts like the biblical poem Heliand and as an ancestor of Low German.

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Statements (49)

Predicate Object
instanceOf West Germanic language
historical language
alsoKnownAs Altsächsisch
Alt­sächsisch
Low German
surface form: Old Low German
ancestralLanguageOf Low German
Middle Low German
Old Dutch
attestedFrom 8th century
attestedUntil 12th century
closelyRelatedTo Old Dutch
Old English
Old Frisian
developedInto Middle Dutch
Middle Low German
era early Middle Ages
glottologCode olds1250
hasFeature ablaut in verb morphology
alliterative verse tradition
four-case nominal system
grammatical gender
strong and weak verb distinction
hasText Heliand
Heliand fragments
Heliand
surface form: Old Saxon Genesis

Old Saxon baptismal vow
Old Saxon confessional formula
influenced Middle Low German orthography
Old English studies
ISO639-3Code osx
languageBranch Germanic languages
languageFamily Indo-European language family
surface form: Indo-European languages
languageSubbranch West Germanic languages
notAffectedBy High German consonant shift
primaryGenre biblical poetry
religious prose
region Lower Saxony
Schleswig-Holstein
Westphalia
eastern Netherlands
sharesIsogloss Ingvaeonic languages
sharesSoundChange Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law
spokenBy Saxons
spokenIn Northern Germany
parts of the Netherlands
subclassOf Germanic language
Indo-European language
writingMaterial manuscripts
writingSystem Latin script

Referenced by (15)

Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.

Proto-Germanic ancestorOf Old Saxon
Proto-West Germanic ancestorOf Old Saxon
Old Frankish closelyRelatedTo Old Saxon
Old Frisian closelyRelatedTo Old Saxon
Middle Low German follows Old Saxon
Low German hasAncestor Old Saxon
Middle Low German hasAncestor Old Saxon
Old Dutch hasAncestor Old Saxon
Sallands hasAncestor Old Saxon
Twents hasAncestor Old Saxon