GERMAN

See also:

• LANGUAGE (adapted from the Fr. langage, from langue, tongue, Lat. lingua)

LANGUAGE  . Together with English and Frisian, the German language forms part of the West Germanic group of languages . To this group belongs also Langobardian, a dialect which died out in the 9th or loth century, while Burgundian, traces of which are not met with later than the 5th century, is usually classed with the East Germanic group . Both these tongues were at an early stage crushed out by Romance dialects, a fate which also overtook the idiom of the Western Franks, who, in the so-called Strassburg Oaths 1 of 842, use the Romance tongue, and are addressed in that tongue by Louis the German . Leaving English and Frisian aside, we understand by Deutsche 1 K . Miillenhoff and W . Scherer, Denkm[ler deutscher Poesie and Prosa, 3rd ed., by E . Steinmeyer, 1892, No. lxvii .