Description
Old Dutch, also referred to as Old Low Franconian, represents the earliest historical stage of the Dutch language. Spoken roughly between the 5th and 12th centuries in the regions that now comprise the Netherlands and parts of Belgium and Germany, it is a West Germanic language that directly precedes Middle Dutch. Surviving evidence of Old Dutch is fragmented, primarily found in place names, personal names, runic inscriptions, and glosses in Latin manuscripts.
Our Old Dutch Translator attempts to convert modern text into an approximation of Old Dutch, drawing upon reconstructed vocabulary and grammatical understanding from historical linguistics. It serves as an educational resource for linguists, historians, students of Germanic languages, and enthusiasts interested in exploring the ancient roots of the modern Dutch and Afrikaans languages and the early medieval history of the Low Countries.