Is this site for the living language only or for earlier forms of the language too?

Question

Would a question about Middle High German or other extinct ancestor languages/dialects/stages of development be welcome here, or should this site only concern itself with the living language?

Answer 1

I wouldn’t mind having such questions, if they are separated distinctly from other/normal questions.

Answer 2

As a German learner, I'm only interested in older forms of German for information about a modern word's etymology. Deeper discussions about Middle or Old High German don't quite seem appropriate to me.

But let's see how the community answers & votes. ;)

Answer 3

Welaga nu, waltant got, wewurt skihit.

Trotzdem, warum nicht?

This sentence is the only piece of Old High German I remeber from school. That language is incomprehensibly without special studies.

I dare translate the meaning I remeber.

xxxx, help us God, mischief is going on.

The first part expresses some lamentation.

Answer 4

I'd welcome such questions, as long as they remain the minority.

If the Middle High German crowd threatens to take over the site, it'll become less useful for "normal" people and the topic should be split off to oldgerman.stackexchange.com. Since that's probably not going to happen anytime soon though and I see no other place to ask such questions (good luck getting an oldgerman.stackexchange.com off the ground by itself), I'm fine with them.