Origin
The text is usually considered West Flemish; the arguments in favour of this view were advanced by Schönfeld (1933). According to his interpretation, *agunnan, hinase and (as he read it) anda are Ingvaeonic forms whose presence might be expected in any of the coastal dialects of Old Frisian, Old Saxon or Old Frankish. However, the -n of third person plural hebban, which is absent in both Anglo-Saxon and Frisian, identifies the language as Old Dutch. (Old High German habent uses a different stem.) nestas is the plural of a masculine nest that is attested in Middle Dutch and is still present in West Flemish. vogala has an epenthetic vocal of a type also found in certain Old Ghentish words, whereas Anglo-Saxon has fuglas. olla is the result of a vowel shift a > o before ll that is thought to have occurred in West Flemish at a very early date, possibly before 900. Finally, hagunnan and hi(c) have a prothetic h; according to Schönfeld, this also points to West Flemish, in which the h is frequently dropped or (in written language) added before vowels (cf. abent in the Latin version).
Read more about this topic: Hebban Olla Vogala
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