Old Saxon

Old Saxon is the common name given to the earliest stage of historical development of those German dialects spoken by Germanic tribes belonging to the Saxon federation, and which did not participate in the Second or High German Consonant Shift. The period is demarcated at the beginning by the onset of literacy and historical record in that language around AD 700, and at the end (ca. AD 1100) by its gradual development into Middle Low German, usually marked by the loss of full final vowels in morphological endings.