The High German languages, or simply High German – not to be confused with Standard High German which is commonly also called "High German" – comprise the varieties of German spoken south of the Benrath and Uerdingen isoglosses in central and southern Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Luxembourg, and eastern Belgium, as well as in neighbouring portions of France, Italy, the Czech Republic (Bohemia), and Poland. They are also spoken in diasporas in Romania, Russia, Canada, the United States, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Chile, and Namibia.
The Lombards or Longobards were a Germanic people who conquered most of the Italian Peninsula between 568 and 774.
Vandalic was the Germanic language spoken by the Vandals during roughly the 3rd to 6th centuries. It was probably closely related to Gothic, and, as such, is traditionally classified as an East Germanic language. Its attestation is very fragmentary, mainly due to the Vandals' constant migrations and late adoption of writing. All modern sources from the time when Vandalic was spoken are protohistoric.
The West Germanic languages constitute the largest of the three branches of the Germanic family of languages. The West Germanic branch is classically subdivided into three branches: Ingvaeonic, which includes English and the Frisian languages; Istvaeonic, which encompasses Dutch and its close relatives; and Irminonic, which includes German and its close relatives and variants.
Old High German is the earliest stage of the German language, conventionally identified as the period from around 500/750 to 1050. Rather than representing a single supra-regional form of German, Old High German encompasses the numerous West Germanic dialects that had undergone the set of consonantal changes called the Second Sound Shift.
The Lombard language belongs to the Gallo-Italic group within the Romance languages and is characterized by a Celtic linguistic substratum and a Lombardic linguistic superstratum and is a cluster of homogeneous dialects that are spoken by millions of speakers in Northern Italy and southern Switzerland, including most of Lombardy and some areas of the neighbouring regions, notably the far eastern side of Piedmont and the extreme western side of Trentino, and in Switzerland in the cantons of Ticino and Graubünden. The language is also spoken in Santa Catarina in Brazil by Lombard immigrants from the Province of Bergamo, in Italy.
North Sea Germanic, also known as Ingvaeonic, is a postulated grouping of the northern West Germanic languages that consists of Old Frisian, Old English, and Old Saxon, and their descendants.
The Elder Futhark, also known as the Older Futhark, Old Futhark, or Germanic Futhark, is the oldest form of the runic alphabets. It was a writing system used by Germanic peoples for Northwest Germanic dialects in the Migration Period. Inscriptions are found on artifacts including jewelry, amulets, plateware, tools, and weapons, as well as runestones in Scandinavia, from the 2nd to the 10th centuries.
In historical linguistics, the High German consonant shift or second Germanic consonant shift is a phonological development that took place in the southern parts of the West Germanic dialect continuum in several phases. It probably began between the 3rd and 5th centuries and was almost complete before the earliest written records in High German were produced in the 8th century. From Proto-Germanic, the resulting language, Old High German, can be neatly contrasted with the other continental West Germanic languages, which for the most part did not experience the shift, and with Old English, which remained unaffected.
The Edictum Rothari was the first written compilation of Lombard law, codified and promulgated on 22 November 643 by King Rothari in Pavia by a gairethinx, an assembly of the army. According to Paul the Deacon, the 8th century Lombard historian, the custom law of the Lombards had been held in memory before this. The Edict, recorded in Vulgar Latin, comprised primarily the Germanic custom law of the Lombards, with some modifications to limit the power of feudal rulers and strengthen the authority of the king. Although the edict has been drafted in Latin, a few Lombard words were left untranslated, such as "grabworfin, arga, sculdhais, morgingab, metfio, federfio, mahrworfin, launegild, thinx, waregang, gastald, mundius, angargathung, fara, walupaus, gairethinx, aldius, actugild or, wegworin".
The Ring of Pietroassa or Buzău torc is a gold torc-like necklace found in a ring barrow in Pietroassa, Buzău County, southern Romania, in 1837. It formed part of a large gold hoard dated to between 250 and 400 CE. The ring itself is generally assumed to be of Roman-Mediterranean origin, and features a Gothic language inscription in the Elder Futhark runic alphabet.
The Bülach fibula is a silver disk-type fibula with almandine inlay found in Bülach, Canton Zürich in 1927. The Alemannic grave in which it was found dates to the 6th century and contained the remains of an adult woman. The fibula, dated by most recent commentators to the latter half of the 6th or early 7th century, bears an Elder Futhark runic inscription, the only one found in Switzerland to date.
Gisulf I was probably the first duke of Friuli. He was a nephew of Alboin, first king of the Lombards in Italy, who appointed him duke around 569 after the Lombard conquest of the region,
The Kingdom of the Lombards, also known as the Lombard Kingdom and later as the Kingdom of all Italy, was an early medieval state established by the Lombards, a Germanic people, on the Italian Peninsula in the latter part of the 6th century. The king was traditionally elected by the very highest-ranking aristocrats, the dukes, as several attempts to establish a hereditary dynasty failed. The kingdom was subdivided into a varying number of duchies, ruled by semi-autonomous dukes, which were in turn subdivided into gastaldates at the municipal level. The capital of the kingdom and the center of its political life was Pavia in the modern northern Italian region of Lombardy.
Elbe Germanic, also called Irminonic or Erminonic, is a term introduced by the German linguist Friedrich Maurer (1898–1984) in his book, Nordgermanen und Alemanen, to describe the unattested proto-language, or dialectal grouping, ancestral to the later Lombardic, Alemannic, Bavarian and Thuringian dialects. During late antiquity and the Middle Ages, its supposed descendants had a profound influence on the neighboring West Central German dialects and, later, in the form of Standard German, on the German language as a whole.
Rosamund was a Lombard queen. She was the daughter of Cunimund, king of the Gepids, and wife of Alboin, king of the Lombards.
Among the Lombards, the duke or dux was the man who acted as political and military commander of a set of "military families", irrespective of any territorial appropriation.
The Frei-Laubersheim fibula is a silver-gilt bow-style fibula found in Frei-Laubersheim, Bad Kreuznach (Rhineland-Palatinate) in 1872. The grave in which it was found dates to approximately the 6th century, and was that of a presumably Frankish woman. The fibula is one of a pair, and bears a runic inscription in the Elder Futhark.
Gambara is a Germanic wise woman who appears in several sources from the 8th to 12th centuries. The legend is about the origin of the Langobard people, then known as the Winnili, and it takes place either before they emigrated from Scandinavia or after their migration, having settled in modern-day northern Germany. It relates that Assi and Ambri, the leaders of their neighbours the Vandals, demanded that Ibor and Agio, the leaders of the Winnili, pay tribute to them, but their mother Gambara advised them not to. Before the battle, the Vandals called on Odin (Godan) to give them victory, but Gambara invoked Odin's wife Frea instead. Frea advised them to trick her husband, by having the Winnili women spread their hair in front of their faces so as to look bearded and present themselves as warriors. When Odin saw them, he was embarrassed and asked who the "long-beards" (longobarbae) were, and thus naming them he became their godfather and had to grant them victory. The legend has parallels in Norse mythology, where Frigg also deceives her husband in earthly politics.
Germanic names in Italy started to proliferate after the fall of the Roman Empire due to the Barbarian Invasions of 4th-6th centuries.
