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The tag has been used for questions relating to periods as late as the 1920s to 1940s.

However, there are several stages in the history of the German language that have more specific names, e.g.:

The tag currently has no description. What periods do we want it to cover?

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    From the questions that use it, it is pretty much a scope catastrophe … – Jan Sep 23 '16 at 23:45
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    @Jan Yes, it makes a linguist shudder. I'm in favour of creating tags for the periods that linguists actually use, and then retagging the existing questions. – IkWeetHetOokNiet Sep 24 '16 at 17:20
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From just seeing the name, I would have understood to mean the following:

languages spoken as part of the German dialect continuum that are no longer proto-Germanic and not yet modern German.

That would put the end date of somewhere between Luther and Goethe or at the end of Early High German. Luther still had a somewhat weird way to express things from our modern point of view, but Goethe seems to have written as we would today with very minor exceptions.

Tagging questions about late 19th century handwriting with that tag is not a good idea, and the 1920’s/1940’s question should get the tag removed (if it weren’t closed). A to-be-written tag wiki should also note that an tag exists and may be much more relevant to a question.

  • You write old-german, but do you actually mean old-high-german? If yes, I would align the definition/periodisation that linguists use. – IkWeetHetOokNiet Sep 26 '16 at 20:33
  • @ChristopheStrobbe I used a non-linguist feeling-definition of what I would assume when I read an old-German tag. I actually feel Takkat’s answer to be the better one ;) – Jan Sep 27 '16 at 8:59
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From it's only 18 times usage on a wide variety of questions I believe that this tag is not really helpful. It is not a fixed term we could easily define for any specific usage or subscriptions.

Instead much better tags we have or may have to create, such as

...

or any other, that fits to the question should be used.

I removed from all questions and replaced it when needed.

  • old-high-german and [middle-high-german] don’t exist as of now; otherwise, I wholeheartedly agree. – Jan Sep 25 '16 at 0:21
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    @Jan: yeah - in case they apply we should create them. – Takkat♦ Sep 25 '16 at 6:42
  • @Jan middle-high-german would apply to the questions about the Carmina Burana, the Middle High German “uñ” and possibly Ursprung der stimmhaften Aussprache von <s>. – IkWeetHetOokNiet Sep 30 '16 at 11:31
  • and made a notice to the tag to guide people to not use it in the future – That’s futile as any unused tag gets deleted after a day. We could theoretically have the tag blacklisted, but I do not think it’s worth the effort as it’s unlikely t obe created again. – Wrzlprmft♦ Oct 7 '16 at 10:04
  • @Wrzlprmft: great! That's a new thing ... it used to be months until any unused tag got finally deleted from the system. – Takkat♦ Oct 7 '16 at 10:15

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