The oldest known texts in Alemannic are brief
Elder Futhark inscriptions dating to the sixth century (
Bülach fibula,
Pforzen buckle,
Nordendorf fibula). In the
Old High German period, the first coherent texts are recorded in the
St. Gall Abbey, among them the eighth-century
Paternoster: : : : : : : : : : : Due to the importance of the
Carolingian abbeys of
St. Gall and
Reichenau Island, a considerable part of the Old High German corpus has Alemannic traits. Alemannic
Middle High German is less prominent, in spite of the
Codex Manesse compiled by Johannes Hadlaub of
Zürich. The rise of the
Old Swiss Confederacy from the fourteenth century led to the creation of Alemannic
Swiss chronicles.
Huldrych Zwingli's Bible translation of the 1520s (the 1531
Froschauer Bible) was in an Alemannic variant of
Early Modern High German. From the seventeenth century, written Alemannic was displaced by Standard German, which emerged from sixteenth century Early Modern High German, in particular in the wake of
Martin Luther's Bible translation of the 1520s. The 1665 revision of the Froschauer Bible removed the Alemannic elements, approaching the language used by Luther. For this reason, no binding orthographical standard for writing modern Alemannic emerged, and orthographies in use usually compromise between a precise phonological notation, and proximity to the familiar Standard German orthography (in particular for loanwords).
Johann Peter Hebel published his in 1803. Swiss authors often consciously employ
Helvetisms within Standard German, notably
Jeremias Gotthelf in his novels set in the
Emmental,
Friedrich Glauser in his
crime stories, and more recently
Tim Krohn in his
Quatemberkinder. The poet
Ida Ospelt-Amann wrote published exclusively in the dialect of
Vaduz. == Characteristics ==