A History of the German Language through Texts by Christopher Young , Thomas Gloning (review)

Abstract

270 Reviews 'cats', 'dogs' (both section 110), and 'doves' (section 171), should surely be recorded; as published, only equine varieties are accorded this privilege. It is also unfortunate that each entry begins with an upper-case letter, thereby eliminating the possibil? ity of an immediately obvious distinction between common and proper nouns; here, 'Casals' is a common noun (defined in n. 95). Finally, while the superscript numbers on each page of the text relate to the correct footnotes, many of the index refer? ences to footnote numbers are incorrect. To locate the intended notes, add one to the note numbers cited in the index forAmalric, Ayyubids, Baldwin I, Benedict, Casals, Chamberlain, Cyprus, Farms, Hattin, Julian, Khwarizmian Turks, La Forbie (last three references), Marguerite, Primitive Rule, Roussillon, Simon Mendes, Squires, Tortosa (Spain), Tripoli, Villel, Visitors, and to those under 'Masters, Grand' relat? ing to Thomas Berard (last two) and William of Sonnac (last one). 'Martin Sanchez' {sie), the 'Commander of Spain' in the index (references to sections 158, '159 n. 89' (here, conversely, subtract one to reach section 158 n. 88)), is in fact described by the Rule (and, at least momentarily, by its editor: pp. 66-67) as the 'Commander of Portugal'. Nor is the bibliography entirely consistent, with publisher but no place of publication given for some works (Hindley, p. 105; Seward, p. 108), while most have place but no publisher; the entryfora 'Catalan dictionary' (p. 105) cites neither editor nor publisher. The number of volumes is not cited for Muntaner (p. 104), nor for Deschamps (p. 106). In short: this historically important text now has an accessible edition, but does not yet have anything like its optimum supporting material. University of Bristol David Hook A History of the German Language through Texts. By Christopher Young and Thomas Gloning. London: Routledge. 2004. ?60. ISBN 0-415-18331-6. Teaching the history of German has become rare in the British Isles, and those col? leagues who wish to offerthis subject as a university degree course face two major problems. First, we must decide whether we want to teach the whole history of the language, from Old High German to the present day (as is done, for example, at Oxford, Cambridge, or Manchester), or only individual, recognized periods such as Middle High German (MHG) or Early New High German (ENHG), as at New? castle or Bristol. In general, MHG fares rather better than other stages since there are still a substantial number of literary scholars of that period who need to teach MHG language in order to enable their students to engage with original texts. The second major problem we historical linguists face is the choice of material, both primary and secondary literature. Given the range of other subjects our students study, the time they can devote to a unit or two on historical linguistics is limited and the decreasing presence of the field in other modern languages means that often students' exposure to the principles of linguistics and in particular historical lin? guistic analysis is rather isolated. Hence in establishing a curriculum for our units we need to strike a fine balance between a general knowledge about the history of German and actual analysis of real texts, unless we are prepared to return to the olden days where sound-changes were taught without any textual examples?and luckily we have moved away from that. However, while there are plenty of histories of German available in German (most recently: Wilhelm Schmidt's ninth edition of his Geschichte der deutschen Sprache (Stuttgart: Hirzel, 2004), and for the firsttime Peter Ernst's Deutsche Sprachgeschichte (Munich: UTB, 2004) and Gudrun Brundin's Kleine deutscheSprachgeschichte (Munich: UTB, 2004)), which all act as sensibly sized alternatives to Peter von Polenz's monumental Deutsche Sprachgeschichte in three vo? lumes (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1994-2000), there are none available in English. Rudi MLR, ioi.i, 2006 271 Keller's The German Language (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1978) and C. J. Wells's German: A Linguistic History to 1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985) are both out of print, and to the reviewer's knowledge there simply is no his? toryof German available in English. In addition, none ofthe aforementioned...