Old Low Franconian, derives from the linguistic category first devised by the German linguist Wilhelm Braune (1850–1926), who used the term Franconian as a wastebasket taxon for the early West Germanic texts that he could not readily classify as belonging to either Saxon, Alemannic or Bavarian and assumed to derive from the language of the Franks.

[8] He subsequently further divided this new grouping into Low, Middle and High Franconian based on the absence or presence of the Second Germanic consonant shift.

[9] With the exception of Dutch, modern linguistic research has challenged the direct diachronical connection to Old Frankish for most of the varieties grouped under the broader "Franconian" category.

Some linguists use the terms Old Low Franconian or West Frankish to specifically refer to the (very sparsely attested) varieties of Old Dutch spoken prior its assimilation of the coastal dialect.

In the rest of the coastal region, these dialects were mostly displaced following the withdrawal to England of the migrating Angles, Saxons and Jutes, who gave rise to Old English.

Old English, Old Frisian and (to a lesser degree) Old Saxon share the application of the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law.

Despite sharing some particular features, a number of disparities separate Old Saxon, Old Frisian, Old English and Old Dutch.

It is also found that Old Dutch had lost the dual number for its pronouns, unlike Old English, which used wit to refer to "the two of us".

Also, it is hard to determine whether a text actually was written in Old Dutch, as the Germanic languages spoken at that time were not standardised and were much more similar to one another.

The oldest known example, wad 'mudflat', is already mentioned c. 107–108 AD in Tacitus' Histories (Book 5), in Latinised form as vadam (acc.

The word ann, found in the partially-translated inscription is coined as the oldest Dutch by linguists Nicoline van der Sijs and Tanneke Schoonheim from Genootschap Onze Taal.

They attribute that word to the ancestor of the modern Dutch verb root gun, through the addition of the prefix ge-.

Its modern meaning is roughly "to think someone deserves something, to derive satisfaction from someone else's success", and it is commonly translated as "grant" or "bestow".

Maltho thi afrio litoGlosses to the Salic law code (the Malberg glosses) contain several Old Dutch words and this full sentence written in the early 6th century, which is likely the earliest in the language.

It mentions three Germanic pagan gods of the early Saxons which the reader is to forsake: Uuôden ("Woden"), Thunaer and Saxnōt.

Scholar Rudolf Simek comments that the vow is of particular interest because it is the sole instance of the god Saxnōt mentioned in a religious context.

Irlôsin sol an frithe sêla mîna fan thên thia ginâcont mi, wanda under managon he was mit miThe Wachtendonck Psalms are a collection of Latin psalms, with a translation in an eastern variety of Old Dutch (Old East Low Franconian) which contains a number of Old High German elements.

The surviving fragments are handwritten copies made by the Renaissance scholar Justus Lipsius in the sixteenth century.

However, since the book never left the abbey, it cannot be regarded as the start of a Dutch literature and did not influence later works.

Hebban olla vogala nestas hagunnan hinase hic enda thu, uuat unbidan uue nu.Arguably the most famous text containing Old Dutch, the fragment is translated as "All birds have started making nests, except me and you, what are we waiting for?"

However, the -n of the third-person plural hebban, which is absent in both Old English and Frisian, identifies the language as Old Dutch (Old High German habent uses a different stem).

Hagunnan and hi(c) have a prothetic h, which points also to West Flemish in which the h was frequently dropped or, in the written language, added before vowels (compare abent in the Latin version).

[29] nu saget mir einen kuning other greven, the an uren got wille gelouven, that se sagent, that ist gelogen, thes ist thaz arme volc bedrogen.Translated as "Mention one king or earl who wants to believe in their god, what they say is a lie, that's how the people are being deceived", this fragment comes from an important source for Old Dutch: the Rhinelandic Rhyming Bible (Dutch: Rijnlandse Rijmbijbel; German: Rheinische Reimbibel).

Notes: Final-obstruent devoicing of Proto-Germanic [β] to [f] occurred across the West Germanic languages, and thus also in Old Dutch.

In fact, by judging from the find at Bergakker, it would seem that the language already had inherited this characteristic from Old Frankish[citation needed] whereas Old Saxon and Old High German are known to have maintained word-final voiced obstruents much later (at least 900).

The forms with e and o are generally found later on, showing the gradual reduction of the articulatory distinction, eventually merging into a schwa (/ə/).