Paris Conversations

The Paris Conversations, Pariser Gespräche, or Altdeutsche Gespräche ('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.

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.

Sample text
An example of the text, giving the German, then the Latin, and then a modern English translation, runs as follows: (51.) Gimer min ros. (da mihi meum equum.) ["Give me my horse."] (52.) Gimer min schelt. ["Give me my shield."] (53.) Gimer min spera. ["Give me my spear."] (54.) Gimer min suarda. ["Give me my sword."] (55.) Gimer min ansco. (guantos) ["Give me my gloves (Handschuhe)."] (56.) Gimer min stap. (fustum) ["Give me my staff."] (57.) Gimer min matzer. (cultellum) ["Give me my knife (Messer)."] (58.) Gimer cherize. (candela) ["Give me (a) candle (Kerze)."]

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.