The Leiden Willeram or Egmond Willeram, is the name given to a manuscript (UB Leiden, MS BPL 130) containing an

Old Dutch In linguistics, Old Dutch ( Modern Dutch: ') or Old Low Franconian (Modern Dutch: ') is the set of dialects that evolved from Frankish spoken in the Low Countries during the Early Middle Ages, from around the 6th Page 55: "''Uit de zesde eeu ...

version of the

Old High German Old High German (OHG; ) 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 ...

commentary on

Song of Solomon The Song of Songs (), also called the Canticle of Canticles or the Song of Solomon, is a biblical poem, one of the five ("scrolls") in the ('writings'), the last section of the Tanakh. Unlike other books in the Hebrew Bible, it is erotic poe ...

by the German abbot Williram of Ebersberg. The translation, since 1597 in the

Leiden University Library Leiden University Libraries is the set of libraries of Leiden University, founded in 1575 in Leiden, Netherlands. A later edition entitled ''The bastion of liberty : a history of Leiden University'', was published in 2018. Full-text at archive ...

, was done at the end of the 11th century by a monk of the Abbey of Egmond in the present day Netherlands. The literary text would be seen as the start of

Dutch literature Dutch-language literature () comprises all writings of literary merit written through the ages in the Dutch language, a language which currently has around 23 million native speakers. Dutch-language literature is the product of the Netherlands, ...

, were it not for the fact that the manuscript probably never left the abbey, so it couldn't have influenced later works. Until recently, based on its

orthography An orthography is a set of convention (norm), conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, punctuation, Word#Word boundaries, word boundaries, capitalization, hyphenation, and Emphasis (typography), emphasis. Most national ...

and

phonology Phonology (formerly also phonemics or phonematics: "phonemics ''n.'' 'obsolescent''1. Any procedure for identifying the phonemes of a language from a corpus of data. 2. (formerly also phonematics) A former synonym for phonology, often pre ...

the text of this

manuscript A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand or typewritten, as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced in some indirect or automated way. More recently, the term has ...

was believed by most scholars to be

Middle Franconian Central or Middle Franconian () refers to the following continuum of West Central German dialects: * Ripuarian (spoken in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, in eastern Belgium, and the southeastern tip of Dutch Limburg) * Moselle F ...

, that is Old High German, with some Limburgic or otherwise

Low Franconian In historical linguistics, historical and comparative linguistics, Low Franconian is a linguistic category used to classify a number of historical and contemporary West Germanic languages, West Germanic Variety (linguistics), varieties closely r ...

admixtures. But in 1974, the German philologist Willy Sanders proved in his study ''Der Leidener Willeram'' that the text actually represents an imperfect attempt by a scribe from the northwestern coastal area of the

Low Countries The Low Countries (; ), historically also known as the Netherlands (), is a coastal lowland region in Northwestern Europe forming the lower Drainage basin, basin of the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta and consisting today of the three modern "Bene ...

to translate the

East Franconian East Franconian ( ), usually referred to as Franconian (' ) in German, is a dialect spoken in Franconia, the northern part of the federal state of Bavaria and other areas in Germany around Nuremberg, Bamberg, Coburg, Würzburg, Hof, Bayreuth, ...

original into his local Old Dutch

vernacular Vernacular is the ordinary, informal, spoken language, spoken form of language, particularly when perceptual dialectology, perceived as having lower social status or less Prestige (sociolinguistics), prestige than standard language, which is mor ...

. The text contains many Old Dutch words not known in Old High German, as well as mistranslated words caused by the scribe's unfamiliarity with some Old High German words in the original he translated, and a confused orthography heavily influenced by the Old High German original. For instance, the

grapheme In linguistics, a grapheme is the smallest functional unit of a writing system. The word ''grapheme'' is derived from Ancient Greek ('write'), and the suffix ''-eme'' by analogy with ''phoneme'' and other emic units. The study of graphemes ...

is used after the High German tradition where it represents Germanic t shifted to /ts/. The Leiden Willeram contains 136 words with the oldest date in Dutch. A digital version of the manuscript can be consulted via

Leiden University Libraries Leiden University Libraries is the set of libraries of Leiden University, founded in 1575 in Leiden, Netherlands. A later edition entitled ''The bastion of liberty : a history of Leiden University'', was published in 2018. Full-text at archive ...

’ Digital Collections. {{cite web, url=http://hdl.handle.net/1887.1/item:881139 , title= Composite manuscript, two parts (Latin, Dutch): 1. (ff. 1v-100v) Expositio in Cantica Canticorum / Williram of Ebersberg, and other text(s). - 2. (ff. 101r-214v) Stromata in Cantica Canticorum / Angelomus of Luxeuil, and other text(s), BPL 130 , publisher=

, access-date=2024-04-05

References

Old Dutch Low Franconian languages Dutch literature Dutch-language manuscripts

See also

References