First Grammatical Treatise. The Earliest Germanic Phonology

Abstract

The Latin alphabet is one of the most conspicuous items of cultural inheritance derived by the West from ancient Rome. It was not necessarily the most ideally suited to the sounds of the various European idioms, but by main force it was adapted to each of them and made to serve. Nowhere do we have a first-hand account by anyone who created such native orthographies in the Middle Ages, so we must draw our conclusions concerning the procedure by observing the results. It is clear that the scribes often did little more than carry over their habits of writing from Latin to the new tongues, without considering too closely the rationale of what they were doing. But there were also innovators and experimenters, such as the German Notker and the English Orm, who deliberately sought to better the quality of the traditional orthography. The only one of this tribe who has left an account of orthographic principles and a persuasive program of reform is the anonymous Icelandic author of the so-called First Grammatical Treatise, written in the middle of the twelfth century. This First Grammarian (here abbreviated FG) intended by his Treatise (here abbreviated FGT) to establish a system of writing that would identify to the reader each significant shade of sound. His accomplishment in this respect is unmatched in medieval Europe and is sufficiently extraordinary to merit the attention of modern students of language, to whom the relation of sound and spelling is again a crucial problem. He stands close to the very threshold of Scandinavian writing in the Latin alphabet, being probably a son of the very generation that first entrusted the Norse tongue to the new letters. In the words of the Icelandic scholar Björn M. Ólsen, the FGT ‘is for its time a notable, indeed, as far as I know, a unique work. It testifies to the author's delicate perception of sound and capacity for observation, his extensive learning and natural perspicacity, but above all to his independence of spirit.‘

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