1066. The Danes moved south on the peninsula of Jutland as far as the Schlei, but their invasions of England, prior to the Norman conquest, proved fruitless in the end. The Swedes were similarly unsuccessful in Esthonia and Livonia, but their conquest of Finland led to a lasting establishment of their nationality on the European mainland, which the Russian occupancy of the country since the beginning of the 19th century has not been able to efface. The history of the German empire after Otho I. is a series of contests between the emperors and the dukes of the principal races composing it. The Saxons, the Franconians, and the Swabians were in turn at the head of the empire in the persons of their own leaders. The political significance of special races ceased in the 13th century, but in language and manners there are still five which may be clearly distinguished. The Saxon race is dominant in the northwestern lowlands of Germany, especially in the northern districts of the Elbe, across the Hartz to Cassel, and across the Weser to the mouth of the Rhine. The Frankish race extends from the Fichtelgebirge to Treves, and from Hesse to the Rauhe Alp. The Thuringians inhabit the section between the Thuringian forest and the Hartz, and from the Werra far into Brandenburg. The Swabians live between the central Neckar and the Alps, and from the upper Rhine to Augsburg. The Bavarians reach from Augsburg to Vienna, and from the Fichtelgebirge to the Tyrol.—The boundaries of the modern German language are not coincident with the limits of the present German empire. In the northwest, German is spoken in some portions of the French department of Le Nord, the south and east of Belgium, and the eastern portion of the Netherlands. In the southwest, German is heard as far as the Doubs, the eastern Jura, the lake of Neufchâtel, and Monte Rosa in Italy. In the south, the language reaches from Monte Rosa to Mount St. Gothard, and thence almost directly east as far as the Mur in Styria. In the east, the line may be drawn from Radkersburg on the Mur, through Presburg in Hungary, to Pöhrlitz on the Iglau in Moravia, thence to Krümmau on the Moldau in Bohemia, and thence again to Taus. Further N. E. the territory of the German language reaches to Leitmeritz on the Elbe, and to the sources of the Oder in Austrian Silesia, whence the boundary runs directly N. to Krotoschin in Posen, and thence indefinitely to Interburg in East Prussia and N. W. to the Kurische Haff. The N. boundary follows the Baltic from Polangen to Flensburg in Schleswig, and the North sea from Tondern to Gravelines. It is possible to distinguish about 20 different dialects within this territory. They may be divided into Low German and High German dialects, of which the latter may be subdivided into South German and Middle German. Since the time of Luther these historical peculiarities of speech have however in a great measure disappeared, and are heard only among the lower classes.—Languages. Of all the numerous Teutonic tongues of ancient times, only five languages, German, Dutch, English, Danish, and Swedish, are now in a flourishing condition. Linguists consider the Scandinavian, Gothic, and German forms of speech as descended, in common with the modern idioms of India, Persian, Greek, Latin, Celtic, Slavic, and Lithuanian, from a single parent tongue, Sanskrit. It was, however, deemed necessary to go further, and to derive the whole group of Indo-European tongues from a primitive language, which was also the mother of Sanskrit. This language, of which no monuments exist, has been constructed by the science of comparative grammar, not as the primitive tongue from which all forms of speech are derived, but as one of many primitive languages, and as the parent of Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Gothic, &c., as Latin is the mother of French, Italian, and Spanish. The following table exhibits the probable course of development of the Teutonic tongues:
| W. Scandinavian, Old Norse | Icelandic. | |||||||||
| Scandinavian | Swedish. | |||||||||
| E. Scandinavian | ||||||||||
| Danish. | ||||||||||
| PRIMITIVE GERMANIC OR TEUTONIC. |
Low German | Old Frisian | Frisian. | |||||||
| Anglo-Saxon | English. | |||||||||
| Saxon | Middle Dutch | Dutch. | ||||||||
| Old Saxon | Platt-Deutsch. | |||||||||
| Gothic. | ||||||||||
| High German | Old High German | Middle High German | German. | |||||||
Among the Indo-European languages, Gothic diverges widely from the primitive tongue, and must be considered as a younger sister of Sanskrit. Gothic was not the oldest of the Germanic tongues, though its literary documents date back further than any other. Old High German, old Norse, Anglo-Saxon, and Gothic were probably sister dialects; at least no one of them appears to be derived from any of the others. Old High German comprises a number of dialects which were spoken chiefly in South Germany, as the Thuringian, Frankish, Swabian, Alsatian, Swiss, and Bavarian. They are found in literary records dating
