Yeah, I know, this is completely spontaneous, but for some reason I'm not sleeping, so I found myself drawing up a quiz. It's not fancy at all, and all the answers are right in the posts, or else easily inferred. I'll put the answers waaay at the bottom of this screen. Oh, and please feel free to post ANY questions you may have, or anything you'd like to hear more about.

True or False??

1. High German is so called because it was used by the higher classes.
2. Chaucer spoke and wrote in Old English.
3. Old Low German was not the same language as Old High German
4. The Germanic language that has changed the least in a thousand years is Dutch.
5. King Alfred is responsible for establishing the standard dialect of Old English.
6. Some Frankish dialects are actually classified as High German.
7. The old Germanic tribes all had wildly differing poetic traditions.
8. Saxon and Franconian are called "low" because they are closer to sea-level.
9. Old English has the largest corpus of literature of any of the old Germanic languages.
10. With two exceptions, all of the languages covered in this Gallery of Germanic Languages are in the West Germanic branch of languages.

1. False - It is called "high" because its speakers lived higher up geographically.
2. False - Chaucer wrote in Middle English. The Old English period is considered to end shortly after 1066. The Middle English period gives way to the modern period around 1500. Chaucer lived c. 1343 - 1400.
3. True
4. False - Icelandic has changed the least--it is basically the same now as when the Vikings settled there in the 9th century!
5. True
6. True
7. False - The old Germanic tribes all shared the same tradition of alliterative half-lines, though there were some variations (mostly Norse).
8. True
9. False - While Old English does have a strong foundation of literature, both poetry and prose, the corpus of Norse literature is much larger.
10. True