and the relatively conservative (in respect to common West Germanic) ancestors of Low Saxon and Old Dutch. Frankish language The Frankish language, also Old Frankish was the language of the Franks. Classified as a West Germanic language, it was spoken in areas covering modern France, Germany, and the Low Countries in Merovingian times, preceding the 6th/7th century. The Franks first established themselves in the Netherlands and Flanders before they started to fight their way down south and east. The language had a significant impact on Old French. It evolved into Old Low Franconian in the north and it was replaced by French in the south, Old Frankish is reconstructed from loanwords in Old French, and from Diets (Old Dutch). The singular direct attestation from Old Frankish is the Bergakker inscription, that was found in 1996 near the Dutch town of Bergakker, near Tiel. It is a 5th-century Elder Futhark inscription on a metal mount for a sword scabbard. The inscription can be read as ha?VþV??s : ann : kVsjam : : logVns : where V is a non-standard rune, apparently a vowel (variously read as e or u, or as "any vowel"). Several readings have been presented in literature. Quak (2000) for example, reads "Haþuþewas ann kusjam loguns", interpreting it as "Property of Haþuþewaz. I bestow upon the choosers of the swords". Old Dutch Old Dutch is the language ancestral to the Low Franconian languages, including Dutch itself. It was spoken between the 6th and 11th centuries, continuing the earlier Old Frankish language. It did not participate in the High German Consonant Shift. In this period a perfect dialect continuum remained between Franconian and Saxon areas, as well as between Low Franconian and Middle or High Franconian. Old Dutch is considered a separate language mainly because it gave rise to the much later Dutch standard language, for contingent political and economic reasons. The present Dutch standard language is derived from Old Dutch dialects spoken in the Low Countries that were first recorded in the Salic law, a Frankish document written around 510. From this document originated the oldest sentence that has been identified as Dutch: "Maltho thi afrio lito" as sentence used to free a serf. Other old segments of Dutch are "Visc flot aftar themo uuatare" ("A fish was swimming in the water") and "Gelobistu in got alamehtigan fadaer" ("Do you believe in God the almighty father"). The latter