Paris Conversations

The Paris Conversations, , or ('Old German conversations') are an eleventh-century phrasebook for Romance-speakers (perhaps specifically Old French speakers) needing to communicate in spoken German. The text takes its name from the modern location of the sole surviving manuscript: according to Herbert Penzl, the text survives in the margins of a tenth-century manuscript of unrelated texts, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS. Lat. 7641 (with one leaf in Vatican Library MS. 566). The language is a colloquial north-western dialect of German, providing valuable evidence for everyday spoken German.Herbert Penzl, '"Gimer min ros": How German Was Taught in the Ninth and Eleventh Centuries', The German Quarterly, 57 (1984), 392-401, .

While in some ways a practical text useful to a cleric or aristocrat traveling in the German-speaking world, the text is also humorous, containing insults and envisaging scenarios like skipping church services to have sex.Catalin Taranu, Vernacular Verse Histories in Early Medieval England and Francia: The Bard and the Rag-Picker (New York: Routledge, 2021), pp. 138-39.

Sample text An example of the text, giving the German, then the Latin, and then a modern English translation, runs as follows: (51.) () ["Give me my horse."] (52.) ["Give me my shield."] (53.) ["Give me my spear."] (54.) ["Give me my sword."] (55.) () ["Give me my gloves ()."] (56.) () ["Give me my staff."] (57.) () ["Give me my knife ()."] (58.) () ["Give me (a) candle ()."]

Editions Wilhelm Grimm, Kleinere Schriften (Berlin: Giitersloh, 1883), III, 473-513. E. Steinmeyer and E. Sievers, Die althochdeutschen Glossen, V, 517-24 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1879 ff.). W. Braune-E.A. Ebbinghaus, Althochdeutsches Lesebuch (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1969), pp. 8-11. BNF catalogue record

Studies

W. Haubrichs, " Zur Herkunft der 'Altdeutschen (Pariser) Gespräche'," Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur, 101.1 (1st Quarter, 1972), pp. 86-103. F. Jolles, "The Hazards of Travel in Medieval Germany," German Life and Letters, 21 (1968), 309-19. R. Schützeichel, "Das westfränkische Problem," in Deutsche Wortforschung in europäischen Bezügen (Giessen: W. Schmitz, 1963), pp. 469-523 Kershaw, Paul, "Laughter After Babel’s Fall: Misunderstanding and Miscommunication in the Ninth-century West," in Humour, History and Politics in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. by Guy Halsall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 179–202.

See also Kassel conversations

References