old dutch? old frisian?

After a question from a friend about the origin of german names I investigated old german only to find there are no real sources before the 13th century that can be identified as german but I did find many dialects. And I found the first ever sentence in the dutch language from the 9th century: Hebban olla uogala nestas hagunnan hinase hi nda thu uuat unbidan uue nu Note that its almost latin. It's old westlowerfranconian which makes it closer to west flemish or english than to german. Some historians even suggested that it should be considered as Flemish and not as Dutch. That, however, is a modern day question and no such distinctions existed in the 9th century.

I've also found an old saxon sentence from the 11th century: Gelobistu in got alamehtigan fadaer - Believe the in God the almighty father - which is very much like Frisian or current Dutch and German.

One might thus conclude that the northern netherlands and dutch have come from saxon and southern german and languages in the southern netherlands have come form a mix of Franconian, Celtic and Latin influences as the regional history might expect. It also explains the huge differences in dialect along the rhine. Mainz is on the Roman side of the rhine and has been a border town on the limes for over a thousand years and Wiesbaden was on the Germanic side. Mainz Kastel is an old roman settlement (Castellum) and a major fort of the limes. Even nowadays the dialect in Mainz Kastel is different form that in Wiesbaden though they're next to each other and both on the other side of the rhine.

The earliest forms of German I've found are also Saxon and closely related to Old English and Old Frisian. Again as one might expect since both occupied Northern Germany and the Northern Netherlands.

The first German text found is also in saxon and like the Dutch text from the 9th century:

The Heliand is an epic poem in Old Saxon written about 825. The title means Savior in Old Saxon (compare to modern day Dutch and German Heiland meaning "savior"), and it recounts the life of Jesus in the alliterative verse style of a Germanic saga. The Heliand is the largest known work of written Old Saxon. The original manuscript would have been approximately 6000 lines, of which four incomplete fragments have been found that span most of the original.

an sô huilike gardos, sô gi ina gangan gisehat, ia gi than themu hêrron, the thie hoƀos êgi, selƀon seggiad, that ik iu sende tharod te gigaruuuenne mîna gôma. Than tôgid he iu ên gôdlîc hûs, hôhan soleri, the is bihangen al fagarun fratahun. Thar gi frummien sculun uuerdscepi mînan. Thar bium ik uuiskumo selƀo mid mînun gesîđun." Thô uurđun sân aftar thiu thar te Hierusalem iungaron Kristes forđuuard an ferdi, fundun all sô he sprak uuordtêcan uuâr: ni uuas thes giuuand ênig.

Compare that to the Old Frisian sentence: op hæmu jibada æmluþ : iwi ok up duna (a)le wimœd æh þusa

Also Old Dutch, Saxon and Old Frisian were written Westeremden yew-sticks, a set of sticks with inscription quite similar to Nordic Rhunes.

Old Franconian used the Latin script.

The oldest text in Old Dutch I've found is from the 6th century: Maltho thi afrio lito" ('I say, I free you, half-free'). It comes from the "Lex Salica" (Salic Laws) ordered by Clovis I, king of the Salian Franks. Funnily enough parts of that law still survive in Belgian Law. In 1967 a part of the Salic Laws were scrapped from the Belgian constitution allowing Princess Astrid to take her place in the senate and allowing Princes Filip and Laurent to succeed their Father King Albert II brother of the former King Boudewijn I. Albert II was able to succeed Boudewijn I after the latter died with no heir. According to Salic Laws the line should be continued with the eldest son of the eldest son so after Albert II his son son Filip will succeed him and after him Gabriel.

Old Dutch naturally evolved into Middle Dutch, with a number of noticeable differences that are comparable to those found in most medieval West Germanic languages. 1150 is often cited as a cut-off point, but this date really marks the beginning of a period of profuse writing in Dutch, where the vernacular dialects are markedly different from Old Dutch.

The biggest difference between Old and Middle Dutch is a feature called vowel reduction. While round vowels occurring in word-final syllables are rather frequent in Old Dutch, in Middle Dutch they spread and levelled into a schwa.

Examples:

[Old Dutch] vogala --> [Middle Dutch] vogele (bird)

[Old Dutch] dago/a --> [Middle Dutch] daghe (day)

[Old Dutch] brecan --> [Middle Dutch] breken (break)

[Old Dutch] gescrivona --> [Middle Dutch] gheschreven (written, past tense)

Differences with Old Frisian

A notable difference between Old Dutch and Old Frisian is the Germanic au. In Old Dutch the Germanic au became an ō (/o:/); in Frisian, however, it became an ā (/a:/). Example:

The present Dutch village of Akersloot was spelled Ekerslat in Old Frisian texts.

Differences with Old High German

The main difference between the Western Old High German dialects, which were influenced by Frankish, the direct ancestor of Old Dutch, and Old Dutch is the latter’s lack of participation in the High German consonant shift. Because of this Old Dutch was closer to the original Frankish and its area can be seen as a remnant from which High Franconian has split off.

Differences with Old Saxon

At the time there was also a dialect continuum between Low Franconian and Old Saxon, which only was broken by the much later influence of standard languages. Despite a number of similarities there are also a lot of differences between Old Saxon and Old Dutch.

Examples:

• The Germanic sound hl (chl) at the beginning of a word was preserved in Old Saxon but changed to l in Old Dutch.
• Old Saxon verbs have the same verb ending in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd person plural while Old Dutch has three different verb endings, namely: -on, -et and -unt.
• The Germanic ō (/o:/) became a diphthong in Old Dutch while Old Saxon kept the Germanic ō, this resulted in Old Dutch fluot versus Old Saxon flōd.
• In Old Saxon plural noun endings are often -as or -os whereas Old Dutch mostly uses -a.
• Old Dutch experienced "final obstruent devoicing" much earlier than Old Saxon. For example: Old Dutch fluot versus Old Saxon flōd.