ich

Forms

ich^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German ich, inherited from Old High German ih, inherited from Proto-West Germanic *ik, inherited from Proto-Germanic *ek.^[2][1][3] The same pronoun is Gothic 𐌹𐌺 (ik), Old Norse ek, Old English ic, Old Frisian ik and Old Saxon ik, continued in English I, Dutch ik and Swedish jag.^[2][3][4]

Germanic had a short and a long form, *ek and *ekan.^[2][3] The runic inscriptions still keep them apart, the short one at the start of a sentence and the long one as an enclitic after the verb, and in the later languages they fell together.^[2] The EWA adds that the Old Swedish and Old Danish forms, whose vowel was broken, presuppose the long form, while the West Germanic forms generalised the unstressed pronunciation of the initial vowel.^[3]

The Germanic forms go back to Proto-Indo-European *eǵ and *eǵom “I”, which stand side by side in Slavic and perhaps in Hittite uk.^[2] Only the longer form is found in Sanskrit अहम् (ahám), only the shorter in Lithuanian aš.^[2] A third ending, a long vowel, is seen in Ancient Greek ἐγώ (egṓ) and Latin egō, and probably in the emphatic Old High German form ihha.^[2][4] Wiktionary reconstructs the pronoun as *eǵh₂óm.^[1] The other cases have been formed from a different stem, *me-, since Indo-European times (see mein).^[2][5] Kluge suggests a link with the demonstrative stem *ḱe- (“this here”), though the difference in the initial consonant is unexplained.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German ih is recorded from the 8th century, in the glosses (from 765) and in the literary texts, with about 6,500 occurrences, among them the Tatian, Otfrid and Notker.^[3][6][7] Its spellings vary widely: ich, ihc, ik, ig, i, and an enclitic -h.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The genitive was mein at first and was gradually replaced by the longer meiner;^[5] Luther has only mein, and through the Bible it lived on for a long time in poetry, as in Vergissmeinnicht.^[5] From the 17th century letter-writers often left out an ich placed after the verb, in places into the 20th century, and since Early New High German the pronoun has been dropped in set formulas such as bitte and danke (from ich bitte, ich danke).^[5] Southern German has the regional form i, and Brandenburg ick.^[5]

Middle High German poets already used ich as a noun for the self: Lexer cites mîn ander ich “my other self”.^[8][5] As das Ich it became a term of philosophy with Fichte (Ich and Nicht-Ich) and of psychoanalysis with Freud's Das Ich und das Es (1923), which set the ego between the id and the superego.^[5] The derivative Ichheit dates from the 14th century, and Ichsucht (18th century) was coined as a German word for Egoismus.^[9] Paul attributes Ichsucht and ichsüchtig to Jean Paul.^[5]

Timeline

• 765 – Old High German ih appears in glosses.^[6]
• 1060–1065 – Middle High German ich is used by Williram of Ebersberg.^[10]
• 14th century – First record of Ichheit “selfhood”.^[9]
• 17th century – Letter-writers begin to leave out an ich placed after the verb.^[5]
• 18th century – Ichsucht is formed as a German word for Egoismus.^[9]
• 1923 – Freud's Das Ich und das Es makes das Ich a term of psychoanalysis.^[5]

Meanings

Pronoun

1. I: the speaker or writer referring to themself, the first person singular in the nominative; genitive meiner (dated mein), dative mir, accusative mich: Ich habe heute keine Zeit.^[11][1]

Word family

• Ichsucht
• ichsüchtig

Related words

• mein
• Egoismus
• Old High German ih

Usage notes

Used as a noun, the word is neuter: das Ich (plural Ichs) is the self of which one is aware, and in psychoanalysis the ego.^[11][1][9]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 435
3. ^ a b c d e f Lloyd, Albert L.; Springer, Otto; Lühr, Rosemarie, et al. (1988–), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; online ewa.saw-leipzig.de, p. 5, 29
4. ^ a b Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Paul, Hermann (2002), Deutsches Wörterbuch: Bedeutungsgeschichte und Aufbau unseres Wortschatzes, 10th ed., ed. Helmut Henne, Heidrun Kämper and Georg Objartel, Tübingen: Niemeyer
6. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 6th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
7. ^ Schützeichel, Rudolf (2012), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 7th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 163
8. ^ Lexer, Matthias (1872–1878), Mittelhochdeutsches Handwörterbuch, 3 vols., Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities
9. ^ a b c d Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2014), 5th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin / Mannheim / Zürich: Dudenverlag, p. 399
10. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Mittelhochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
11. ^ a b Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag