Gothic is an
extinct
Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...
East Germanic language
The East Germanic languages, also called the Oder–Vistula Germanic languages, are a group of extinct Germanic languages that were spoken by East Germanic peoples. East Germanic is one of the primary branches of Germanic languages, along with N ...
that was spoken by the
Goths
The Goths ( got, 𐌲𐌿𐍄𐌸𐌹𐌿𐌳𐌰, translit=''Gutþiuda''; la, Gothi, grc-gre, Γότθοι, Gótthoi) were a Germanic people who played a major role in the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the emergence of medieval Europe ...
. It is known primarily from the ''
Codex Argenteus
The Codex Argenteus (Latin for "Silver Book/Codex") is a 6th-century illuminated manuscript, originally containing part of the 4th-century translation of the Christian Bible into the Gothic language. Traditionally ascribed to the Arian bi ...
'', a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only
East Germanic language
The East Germanic languages, also called the Oder–Vistula Germanic languages, are a group of extinct Germanic languages that were spoken by East Germanic peoples. East Germanic is one of the primary branches of Germanic languages, along with N ...
with a sizeable
text corpus
In linguistics, a corpus (plural ''corpora'') or text corpus is a language resource consisting of a large and structured set of texts (nowadays usually electronically stored and processed). In corpus linguistics, they are used to do statistical ...
. All others, including
Burgundian and
Vandalic
Vandalic was the Germanic language spoken by the Vandals during roughly the 3rd to 6th centuries. It was probably closely related to Gothic, and, as such, is traditionally classified as an East Germanic language. Its attestation is very fragm ...
, are known, if at all, only from proper names that survived in historical accounts, and from
loanword
A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because th ...
s in other languages such as
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
,
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
, and
French.
As a Germanic language, Gothic is a part of the
Indo-European language family. It is the earliest Germanic language that is attested in any sizable texts, but it lacks any modern descendants. The oldest documents in Gothic date back to the fourth century. The language was in decline by the mid-sixth century, partly because of the military defeat of the Goths at the hands of the
Franks
The Franks ( la, Franci or ) were a group of Germanic peoples whose name was first mentioned in 3rd-century Roman sources, and associated with tribes between the Lower Rhine and the Ems River, on the edge of the Roman Empire.H. Schutz: Tools, ...
, the elimination of the Goths in Italy, and geographic isolation (in Spain, the Gothic language lost its last and probably already declining function as a church language when the
Visigoths
The Visigoths (; la, Visigothi, Wisigothi, Vesi, Visi, Wesi, Wisi) were an early Germanic people who, along with the Ostrogoths, constituted the two major political entities of the Goths within the Roman Empire in late antiquity, or what is ...
converted from
Arianism to
Nicene Christianity
The original Nicene Creed (; grc-gre, Σύμβολον τῆς Νικαίας; la, Symbolum Nicaenum) was first adopted at the First Council of Nicaea in 325. In 381, it was amended at the First Council of Constantinople. The amended form is ...
in 589).
The language survived as a domestic language in the
Iberian peninsula
The Iberian Peninsula (),
**
* Aragonese and Occitan: ''Peninsula Iberica''
**
**
* french: Péninsule Ibérique
* mwl, Península Eibérica
* eu, Iberiar penintsula also known as Iberia, is a peninsula in southwestern Europe, defi ...
(modern-day Spain and Portugal) as late as the eighth century. Gothic-seeming terms are found in manuscripts subsequent to this date, but these may or may not belong to the same language. In particular, a language known as
Crimean Gothic
Crimean Gothic was an East Germanic language spoken by the Crimean Goths in some isolated locations in Crimea until the late 18th century.
Attestation
The existence of a Germanic dialect in Crimea is noted in a number of sources from the 9th ce ...
survived in the lower
Danube
The Danube ( ; ) is a river that was once a long-standing frontier of the Roman Empire and today connects 10 European countries, running through their territories or being a border. Originating in Germany, the Danube flows southeast for , p ...
area and in isolated mountain regions in
Crimea
Crimea, crh, Къырым, Qırım, grc, Κιμμερία / Ταυρική, translit=Kimmería / Taurikḗ ( ) is a peninsula in Ukraine, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, that has been occupied by Russia since 2014. It has a pop ...
as late as the second half of the 18th century. Lacking certain sound changes characteristic of Gothic, however, Crimean Gothic cannot be a lineal descendant of Bible Gothic.
The existence of such early attested texts makes it a language of considerable interest in
comparative linguistics.
History and evidence
![Ambrosianus](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Ambrosianus.jpg)
Only a few documents in Gothic have survived - not enough for a complete reconstruction of the language. Most Gothic-language sources are translations or glosses of other languages (namely,
Greek), so foreign linguistic elements most certainly influenced the texts. These are the primary sources:
* The largest body of surviving documentation consists of various
codices
The codex (plural codices ) was the historical ancestor of the modern book. Instead of being composed of sheets of paper, it used sheets of vellum, papyrus, or other materials. The term ''codex'' is often used for ancient manuscript books, with ...
, mostly from the sixth century, copying the
Bible translation
The Bible has been translated into many languages from the biblical languages of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. all of the Bible has been translated into 724 languages, the New Testament has been translated into an additional 1,617 languages, and ...
that was commissioned by the
Arian bishop
Ulfilas
Ulfilas (–383), also spelled Ulphilas and Orphila, all Latinisation of names, Latinized forms of the unattested Gothic language, Gothic form *𐍅𐌿𐌻𐍆𐌹𐌻𐌰 Wulfila, literally "Little Wolf", was a Goths, Goth of Cappadocian Ancie ...
(Wulfila, 311–382), leader of a community of
Visigothic Christian
Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι ...
s in the
Roman
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a letter ...
province of
Moesia (modern-day
Serbia
Serbia (, ; Serbian language, Serbian: , , ), officially the Republic of Serbia (Serbian language, Serbian: , , ), is a landlocked country in Southeast Europe, Southeastern and Central Europe, situated at the crossroads of the Pannonian Bas ...
,
Bulgaria
Bulgaria (; bg, България, Bǎlgariya), officially the Republic of Bulgaria,, ) is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern flank of the Balkans, and is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and North Macedo ...
/
Romania
Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern, and Southeast Europe, Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, S ...
). He commissioned a translation into the Gothic language of the
Greek Bible, of which translation roughly three-quarters of the
New Testament
The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Christ ...
and some fragments of the
Old Testament have survived. The extant translated texts, produced by several scholars, are collected in the following codices:
:*''
Codex Argenteus
The Codex Argenteus (Latin for "Silver Book/Codex") is a 6th-century illuminated manuscript, originally containing part of the 4th-century translation of the Christian Bible into the Gothic language. Traditionally ascribed to the Arian bi ...
'' (
Uppsala
Uppsala (, or all ending in , ; archaically spelled ''Upsala'') is the county seat of Uppsala County and the fourth-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. It had 177,074 inhabitants in 2019.
Located north of the c ...
), including the Speyer fragment: 188 leaves
::The best-preserved Gothic manuscript, dating from the sixth century, it was preserved and transmitted by northern
Ostrogoths
The Ostrogoths ( la, Ostrogothi, Austrogothi) were a Roman-era Germanic peoples, Germanic people. In the 5th century, they followed the Visigoths in creating one of the two great Goths, Gothic kingdoms within the Roman Empire, based upon the larg ...
in modern-day Italy. It contains a large portion of the four synoptic
gospel
Gospel originally meant the Christian message ("the gospel"), but in the 2nd century it came to be used also for the books in which the message was set out. In this sense a gospel can be defined as a loose-knit, episodic narrative of the words an ...
s. Since it is a translation from Greek, the language of the ''Codex Argenteus'' is replete with borrowed Greek words and Greek usages. The syntax in particular is often copied directly from the Greek.
:*
''Codex Ambrosianus'' (
Milan
Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...
) and the ''
Codex Taurinensis'' (
Turin
Turin ( , Piedmontese language, Piedmontese: ; it, Torino ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in Northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital ...
): Five parts, totaling 193 leaves
::It contains scattered passages from the New Testament (including parts of the gospels and the
Epistles), from the
Old Testament (
Nehemiah), and some commentaries known as ''
Skeireins''. The text likely had been somewhat modified by copyists.
:*''
Codex Gissensis
The Codex Gissensis (University of Giessen, Universitätsbibliothek Giessen, Handschrift 651/20) was a fragmentary parchment manuscript, a Gothic language, Gothic–Latin diglot containing texts of the Christian Bible, Bible in Gothic on the left a ...
'' (
Gießen
Giessen, spelled Gießen in German (), is a town in the German state (''Bundesland'') of Hesse, capital of both the district of Giessen and the administrative region of Giessen. The population is approximately 90,000, with roughly 37,000 univers ...
): One leaf with fragments of
Luke
People
*Luke (given name), a masculine given name (including a list of people and characters with the name)
*Luke (surname) (including a list of people and characters with the name)
*Luke the Evangelist, author of the Gospel of Luke. Also known as ...
23–24 (apparently a Gothic-Latin
diglot
A polyglot is a book that contains side-by-side versions of the same text in several different languages. Some editions of the Bible or its parts are polyglots, in which the Hebrew and Greek originals are exhibited along with historical translat ...
) was found in an excavation in
Arsinoë in Egypt in 1907 and was destroyed by water damage in 1945, after copies had already been made by researchers.
:*''
Codex Carolinus
Codex Carolinus is an uncial manuscript of the New Testament on parchment, dated to the 6th or 7th century. It is a palimpsest containing a Latin text written over a Gothic one. The Gothic text is designated by siglum ''Car'', the Latin text is d ...
'' (
Wolfenbüttel
Wolfenbüttel (; nds, Wulfenbüddel) is a town in Lower Saxony, Germany, the administrative capital of Wolfenbüttel District. It is best known as the location of the internationally renowned Herzog August Library and for having the largest ...
): Four leaves, fragments of
Romans
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
* Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...
11–15 (a Gothic-Latin
diglot
A polyglot is a book that contains side-by-side versions of the same text in several different languages. Some editions of the Bible or its parts are polyglots, in which the Hebrew and Greek originals are exhibited along with historical translat ...
).
:* ''Codex Vaticanus Latinus'' 5750 (
Vatican City
Vatican City (), officially the Vatican City State ( it, Stato della Città del Vaticano; la, Status Civitatis Vaticanae),—'
* german: Vatikanstadt, cf. '—' (in Austria: ')
* pl, Miasto Watykańskie, cf. '—'
* pt, Cidade do Vati ...
): Three leaves, pages 57–58, 59–60, and 61–62 of the ''Skeireins''. This is a fragment of
''Codex Ambrosianus E''.
:*''Gothica Bononiensia'' (also known as the ''Codex Bononiensis''), a
palimpsest
In textual studies, a palimpsest () is a manuscript page, either from a scroll or a book, from which the text has been scraped or washed off so that the page can be reused for another document. Parchment was made of lamb, calf, or kid skin an ...
fragment, discovered in 2009, of two folios with what appears to be a sermon, containing besides non-biblical text a number of direct Bible quotes and allusions, both from previously attested parts of the Gothic Bible (the text is clearly taken from Ulfilas' translation) and from previously unattested ones (e.g.,
Psalms
The Book of Psalms ( or ; he, תְּהִלִּים, , lit. "praises"), also known as the Psalms, or the Psalter, is the first book of the ("Writings"), the third section of the Tanakh, and a book of the Old Testament. The title is derived ...
,
Genesis
Genesis may refer to:
Bible
* Book of Genesis, the first book of the biblical scriptures of both Judaism and Christianity, describing the creation of the Earth and of mankind
* Genesis creation narrative, the first several chapters of the Book of ...
).
:* ''Fragmenta Pannonica'' (also known as the ''Hács-Béndekpuszta fragments'' or ''Tabella Hungarica''), which consist of fragments of a 1 mm thick lead plate with remnants of verses from the Gospels.
* A scattering of old documents: two deeds (the ''
Naples
Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adminis ...
'' and ''
Arezzo'' deeds, on papyri), alphabets (in the ''Gothica Vindobonensia'' and the ''Gothica Parisina''), a calendar (in the ''Codex Ambrosianus A''), glosses found in a number of manuscripts and a few
runic inscriptions
A runic inscription is an inscription made in one of the various runic alphabets. They generally contained practical information or memorials instead of magic or mythic stories. The body of runic inscriptions falls into the three categories of E ...
(between three and 13) that are known or suspected to be Gothic: some scholars believe that these inscriptions are not at all Gothic.
Krause thought that several names in an Indian inscription were possibly Gothic. Furthermore, late ninth-century Christian inscriptions using the
Gothic alphabet, not runes, and copying or mimicking biblical Gothic
orthography
An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation.
Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and mos ...
, have been found at
Mangup
, settlement_type = Historic settlement
, image_skyline = Mangup Fortress2.jpg
, imagesize = 250px
, image_caption = Ruins of the Gate of the Citadel at Mangup
, pushpin_map = Crimea
, pushpin_re ...
in
Crimea
Crimea, crh, Къырым, Qırım, grc, Κιμμερία / Ταυρική, translit=Kimmería / Taurikḗ ( ) is a peninsula in Ukraine, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, that has been occupied by Russia since 2014. It has a pop ...
.
[Korobov, M. and A. Vinogradov, 'Gotische Graffito-Inschriften aus der Bergkrim', ''Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und Literatur'' 145.2 (2016) pp. 141-157, esp. p. 153.]
* A small dictionary of more than 80 words and an untranslated song, compiled by the Fleming
Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq
Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq (1522 in Comines – 29 October 1592 in Saint-Germain-sous-Cailly; la, Augerius Gislenius Busbequius), sometimes Augier Ghislain de Busbecq, was a 16th-century Flemish writer, herbalist and diplomat in the employ ...
, the
Habsburg ambassador to the court of the
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University) ...
in
Constantinople
la, Constantinopolis ota, قسطنطينيه
, alternate_name = Byzantion (earlier Greek name), Nova Roma ("New Rome"), Miklagard/Miklagarth (Old Norse), Tsargrad ( Slavic), Qustantiniya (Arabic), Basileuousa ("Queen of Cities"), Megalopolis (" ...
from 1555 to 1562. Busbecq was curious to find out about the language ,and by arrangement met two speakers of
Crimean Gothic
Crimean Gothic was an East Germanic language spoken by the Crimean Goths in some isolated locations in Crimea until the late 18th century.
Attestation
The existence of a Germanic dialect in Crimea is noted in a number of sources from the 9th ce ...
and listed the terms in his compilation ''Turkish Letters'': dating from nearly a millennium after Ulfilas, these terms are not representative of Ulfilas' language. Busbecq's material contains many puzzles and enigmas and is difficult to interpret in the light of comparative Germanic linguistics.
Reports of the discovery of other parts of Ulfilas' Bible have not been substantiated.
Heinrich May Heinrich may refer to:
People
* Heinrich (given name), a given name (including a list of people with the name)
* Heinrich (surname), a surname (including a list of people with the name)
*Hetty (given name), a given name (including a list of peo ...
in 1968 claimed to have found in England twelve leaves of a palimpsest containing parts of the
Gospel of Matthew
The Gospel of Matthew), or simply Matthew. It is most commonly abbreviated as "Matt." is the first book of the New Testament of the Bible and one of the three synoptic Gospels. It tells how Israel's Messiah, Jesus, comes to his people and for ...
.
Only fragments of the Gothic translation of the Bible have been preserved. The translation was apparently done in the Balkans region by people in close contact with Greek Christian culture. The Gothic Bible apparently was used by the
Visigoths
The Visigoths (; la, Visigothi, Wisigothi, Vesi, Visi, Wesi, Wisi) were an early Germanic people who, along with the Ostrogoths, constituted the two major political entities of the Goths within the Roman Empire in late antiquity, or what is ...
in southern France until the
loss of Visigothic France at the start of the 6th century, in Visigothic
Iberia
The Iberian Peninsula (),
**
* Aragonese and Occitan: ''Peninsula Iberica''
**
**
* french: Péninsule Ibérique
* mwl, Península Eibérica
* eu, Iberiar penintsula also known as Iberia, is a peninsula in southwestern Europe, defi ...
until about 700, and perhaps for a time in Italy, the Balkans, and Ukraine. In the latter country at Mangup, ninth-century inscriptions have been found of a prayer in the Gothic alphabet using biblical Gothic orthography.
During the extermination of
Arianism, Trinitarian Christians probably overwrote many texts in Gothic as palimpsests, or alternatively collected and burned Gothic documents. Apart from biblical texts, the only substantial Gothic document that still exists - and the only lengthy text known to have been composed originally in the Gothic language - is the ''Skeireins'', a few pages of commentary on the
Gospel of John
The Gospel of John ( grc, Εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Ἰωάννην, translit=Euangélion katà Iōánnēn) is the fourth of the four canonical gospels. It contains a highly schematic account of the ministry of Jesus, with seven "sig ...
.
Very few medieval secondary sources make reference to the Gothic language after about 800. In ''De incrementis ecclesiae Christianae'' (840–842),
Walafrid Strabo
Walafrid, alternatively spelt Walahfrid, nicknamed Strabo (or Strabus, i.e. " squint-eyed") (c. 80818 August 849), was an Alemannic Benedictine monk and theological writer who lived on Reichenau Island in southern Germany.
Life
Walafrid Strabo ...
, a Frankish monk who lived in
Swabia, writes of a group of monks who reported that even then certain peoples in
Scythia
Scythia (Scythian: ; Old Persian: ; Ancient Greek: ; Latin: ) or Scythica (Ancient Greek: ; Latin: ), also known as Pontic Scythia, was a kingdom created by the Scythians during the 6th to 3rd centuries BC in the Pontic–Caspian steppe.
Hi ...
(
Dobruja
Dobruja or Dobrudja (; bg, Добруджа, Dobrudzha or ''Dobrudža''; ro, Dobrogea, or ; tr, Dobruca) is a historical region in the Balkans that has been divided since the 19th century between the territories of Bulgaria and Romania. I ...
), especially around
Tomis, spoke a ''sermo Theotiscus'' ('Germanic language'), the language of the Gothic translation of the Bible, and that they used such a liturgy.
Many writers of the medieval texts that mention the
Goths
The Goths ( got, 𐌲𐌿𐍄𐌸𐌹𐌿𐌳𐌰, translit=''Gutþiuda''; la, Gothi, grc-gre, Γότθοι, Gótthoi) were a Germanic people who played a major role in the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the emergence of medieval Europe ...
used the word ''Goths'' to mean any Germanic people in eastern Europe (such as the
Varangians
The Varangians (; non, Væringjar; gkm, Βάραγγοι, ''Várangoi'';[Varangian]
" Online Etymo ...
), many of whom certainly did not use the Gothic language as known from the Gothic Bible. Some writers even referred to
Slavic-speaking people as "Goths". However, it is clear from Ulfilas' translation that - despite some puzzles - the Gothic language belongs with the Germanic language-group, not with Slavic.
The relationship between the language of the Crimean Goths and Ulfilas' Gothic is less clear. The few fragments of Crimean Gothic from the 16th century show significant differences from the language of the Gothic Bible, although some of the glosses, such as ''ada'' for "egg", could indicate a common heritage, and Gothic ''mēna'' ("moon"), compared to Crimean Gothic ''mine'', suggests an East Germanic connection.
Generally, the term "Gothic language" refers to the language of
Ulfilas
Ulfilas (–383), also spelled Ulphilas and Orphila, all Latinisation of names, Latinized forms of the unattested Gothic language, Gothic form *𐍅𐌿𐌻𐍆𐌹𐌻𐌰 Wulfila, literally "Little Wolf", was a Goths, Goth of Cappadocian Ancie ...
, but the attestations themselves date largely from the 6th century, long after Ulfilas had died.
Alphabet and transliteration
A few
Gothic runic inscriptions were found across Europe, but due to early Christianization of the Goths, the Runic writing was quickly replaced by the newly invented Gothic alphabet.
Ulfilas's Gothic, as well as that of the ''Skeireins'' and various other manuscripts, was written using an alphabet that was most likely invented by Ulfilas himself for his translation. Some scholars (such as Braune) claim that it was derived from the
Greek alphabet
The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BCE. It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the earliest known alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as we ...
only while others maintain that there are some Gothic letters of
Runic
Runes are the letters in a set of related alphabets known as runic alphabets native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were used to write various Germanic languages (with some exceptions) before they adopted the Latin alphabet, and for specialised ...
or
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
origin.
A standardized system is used for transliterating Gothic words into the
Latin script
The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern Italy ...
. The system mirrors the conventions of the native alphabet, such as writing long as ''ei''. The Goths used their equivalents of ''e'' and ''o'' alone only for long higher vowels, using the digraphs ''ai'' and ''au'' (much as in
French) for the corresponding short or lower vowels. There are two variant spelling systems: a "raw" one that directly transliterates the original Gothic script and a "normalized" one that adds
diacritic
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
s (
macrons and
acute accent
The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed ch ...
s) to certain vowels to clarify the pronunciation or, in certain cases, to indicate the
Proto-Germanic
Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages.
Proto-Germanic eventually developed from pre-Proto-Germanic into three Germanic bran ...
origin of the vowel in question. The latter system is usually used in the academic literature.
The following table shows the correspondence between spelling and sound for vowels:
Notes:
* This "normalised transliteration" system devised by
Jacob Grimm is used in some modern editions of Gothic texts and in studies of
Common Germanic
Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages.
Proto-Germanic eventually developed from pre-Proto-Germanic into three Germanic branc ...
. It signals distinctions not made by Ulfilas in his alphabet. Rather, they reflect various origins in Proto-Germanic. Thus,
**
''aí'' is used for the sound derived from the Proto-Germanic short vowels ''e'' and ''i'' before and .
**
''ái'' is used for the sound derived from the Proto-Germanic
diphthong
A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...
''ai''. Some scholars have considered this sound to have remained as a diphthong in Gothic. However, Ulfilas was highly consistent in other spelling inventions, which makes it unlikely that he assigned two different sounds to the same digraph. Furthermore, he consistently used the digraph to represent Greek , which was then certainly a
monophthong
A monophthong ( ; , ) is a pure vowel sound, one whose articulation at both beginning and end is relatively fixed, and which does not glide up or down towards a new position of articulation. The monophthongs can be contrasted with diphthongs, wh ...
. A monophthongal value is accepted by
Eduard Prokosch in his influential ''A Common Germanic Grammar''.
[Prokosch p. 105] It had earlier been accepted by
Joseph Wright Joseph Wright may refer to:
*Joseph Wright of Derby (1734–1797), English painter
*Joseph Wright (American painter) (1756–1793), American portraitist
*Joseph Wright (fl. 1837/1845), whose company, Messrs. Joseph Wright and Sons, became the Metro ...
but only in an appendix to his ''Grammar of the Gothic Language''.
[Wright (1910 edition) p. 362]
**
''ai'' is used for the sound derived from the Common Germanic long vowel ''ē'' before a vowel.
**
''áu'' is used for the sound derived from Common Germanic diphthong ''au''. It cannot be related to a Greek digraph, since then represented a sequence of a vowel and a spirant (
fricative
A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in t ...
) consonant, which Ulfilas transcribed as ''aw'' in representing Greek words. Nevertheless, the argument based on simplicity is accepted by some influential scholars.
*The "normal environment of occurrence" refers to native words. In foreign words, these environments are often greatly disturbed. For example, the short sounds and alternate in native words in a nearly
allophonic
In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor '' phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in '' ...
way, with occurring in native words only before the consonants , , while occurs everywhere else (nevertheless, there are a few exceptions such as before in ''hiri'', consistently in the
reduplicating syllable of certain past-tense verbs regardless of the following consonant, which indicate that these sounds had become phonemicized). In foreign borrowings, however, and occur freely in all environments, reflecting the corresponding vowel quality in the source language.
*Paradigmatic alterations can occur either intra-paradigm (between two different forms within a specific
paradigm) or cross-paradigm (between the same form in two different paradigms of the same class). Examples of intra-paradigm alternation are "district ()" vs. "district ()"; "maiden ()" vs. "maiden ()"; "maiden ()" vs. "maiden ()"; "deed ()" vs. "deed ()"; "corpse ()" vs. "corpses ()"; ?? "tree ()" vs. "tree ()"; "to do" vs. "I/he did"; "to judge" vs. "I/he judged". Examples of cross-paradigm alternation are Class IV verbs "to come" vs. "to carry, to bear", "(having) come" vs. "(having) carried"; Class VIIb verbs "to let" vs. "to sow" (note similar preterites "I/he let", "I/he sowed"). A combination of intra- and cross-paradigm alternation occurs in Class V "to hasten" vs. "I/he hastened" (expected *''snaw'', compare "to come", "I/he came").
*The carefully maintained alternations between ''iu'' and ''iw'' suggest that ''iu'' may have been something other than . Various possibilities have been suggested (for example, high central or high back unrounded vowels, such as ); under these theories, the spelling of ''iu'' is derived from the fact that the sound alternates with ''iw'' before a vowel, based on the similar alternations ''au'' and ''aw''. The most common theory, however, simply posits as the pronunciation of ''iu''.
*Macrons represent long ''ā'' and ''ū'' (however, long i appears as ''ei'', following the representation used in the native alphabet). Macrons are often also used in the case of ''ē'' and ''ō''; however, they are sometimes omitted since these vowels are always long. Long ''ā'' occurs only before the consonants , and represents
Proto-Germanic
Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages.
Proto-Germanic eventually developed from pre-Proto-Germanic into three Germanic bran ...
nasalized < earlier ; non-nasal did not occur in Proto-Germanic. It is possible that the Gothic vowel still preserved the nasalization, or else that the nasalization was lost but the length distinction kept, as has happened with
Lithuanian . Non-nasal and occurred in Proto-Germanic, however, and so long ''ei'' and ''ū'' occur in all contexts. Before and , long ''ei'' and ''ū'' could stem from either non-nasal or nasal long vowels in Proto-Germanic; it is possible that the nasalization was still preserved in Gothic but not written.
The following table shows the correspondence between spelling and sound for consonants:
*, which is written with a single character in the native alphabet, is transliterated using the symbol ''
ƕ'', which is used only in transliterating Gothic.
* is similarly written with a single character in the native alphabet and is transliterated ''q'' (with no following ''u'').
*, however, is written with two letters in the native alphabet and hence (''gw''). The lack of a single letter to represent this sound may result from its restricted distribution (only after ) and its rarity.
* is written ''þ'', similarly to other Germanic languages.
*Although is the
allophone
In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor ''phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in ''s ...
of occurring before and , it is written ''g'', following the native alphabet convention (which, in turn, follows Greek usage), which leads to occasional ambiguities, e.g. "song" but "faithful" (compare English "true").
Phonology
It is possible to determine more or less exactly how the Gothic of Ulfilas was pronounced, primarily through comparative phonetic reconstruction. Furthermore, because Ulfilas tried to follow the original Greek text as much as possible in his translation, it is known that he used the same writing conventions as those of contemporary Greek. Since the Greek of that period is well documented, it is possible to reconstruct much of Gothic pronunciation from translated texts. In addition, the way in which non-Greek names are transcribed in the Greek Bible and in Ulfilas's Bible is very informative.
Vowels
* , and can be either long or short. Gothic writing distinguishes between long and short vowels only for by writing ''i'' for the short form and ''ei'' for the long (a
digraph or ''false diphthong''), in an imitation of Greek usage (ει = ). Single vowels are sometimes long where a historically present
nasal consonant
In phonetics, a nasal, also called a nasal occlusive or nasal stop in contrast with an oral stop or nasalized consonant, is an occlusive consonant produced with a lowered velum, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The vast majorit ...
has been dropped in front of an (a case of
compensatory lengthening
Compensatory lengthening in phonology and historical linguistics is the lengthening of a vowel sound that happens upon the loss of a following consonant, usually in the syllable coda, or of a vowel in an adjacent syllable. Lengthening triggered b ...
). Thus, the preterite of the verb ''briggan'' "to bring" (English ''bring'', Dutch ''brengen'', German ''bringen'') becomes ''brahta'' (English ''brought'', Dutch ''bracht'', German ''brachte''), from
Proto-Germanic
Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages.
Proto-Germanic eventually developed from pre-Proto-Germanic into three Germanic bran ...
*''branhtē''. In detailed
transliteration
Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus ''trans-'' + '' liter-'') in predictable ways, such as Greek → , Cyrillic → , Greek → the digraph , Armenian → or L ...
, when the intent is more
phonetic transcription
Phonetic transcription (also known as phonetic script or phonetic notation) is the visual representation of speech sounds (or ''phones'') by means of symbols. The most common type of phonetic transcription uses a phonetic alphabet, such as the I ...
, length is noted by a macron (or failing that, often a
circumflex
The circumflex () is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from la, circumflexus "bent around"a ...
): ''brāhta'', ''brâhta''. This is the only context in which appears natively whereas , like , is found often enough in other contexts: ''brūks'' "useful" (Dutch ''gebruik'', German ''Gebrauch'', Icelandic ''brúk'' "use").
* and are long
close-mid vowel
A close-mid vowel (also mid-close vowel, high-mid vowel, mid-high vowel or half-close vowel) is any in a class of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned one th ...
s. They are written as ''e'' and ''o'': ''neƕ'' "near" (English ''nigh'', Dutch ''nader'', German ''nah''); ''fodjan'' "to feed".
* and are short
open-mid vowels. They are noted using the digraphs ''ai'' and ''au'': ''taihun'' "ten" (Dutch ''tien'', German ''zehn'', Icelandic ''tíu''), ''dauhtar'' "daughter" (Dutch ''dochter'', German ''Tochter'', Icelandic ''dóttir''). In transliterating Gothic, accents are placed on the second vowel of these digraphs ''aí'' and ''aú'' to distinguish them from the original diphthongs ''ái'' and ''áu'': ''taíhun'', ''daúhtar''. In most cases short and are allophones of before . Furthermore, the reduplication syllable of the reduplicating preterites has ''ai'' as well, which was probably pronounced as a short . Finally, short and occur in loan words from Greek and Latin (''aípiskaúpus'' = "bishop", ''laíktjo'' = ''lectio'' "lection", ''Paúntius'' = ''Pontius'').
* The Germanic diphthongs and appear as digraphs written and in Gothic. Researchers have disagreed over whether they were still pronounced as diphthongs and in Ulfilas's time (4th century) or had become long open-mid vowels: and : ''ains'' "one" (German ''eins'', Icelandic ''einn''), ''augo'' "eye" (German ''Auge'', Icelandic ''auga''). It is most likely that the latter view is correct, as it is indisputable that the digraphs and represent the sounds and in some circumstances (see below), and and were available to unambiguously represent the sounds and . The digraph is in fact used to represent in foreign words (such as ''Pawlus'' "Paul"), and alternations between / and / are scrupulously maintained in paradigms where both variants occur (e.g. ''taujan'' "to do" vs. past tense ''tawida'' "did"). Evidence from transcriptions of Gothic names into Latin suggests that the sound change had occurred very recently when Gothic spelling was standardized: Gothic names with Germanic ''au'' are rendered with ''au'' in Latin until the 4th century and ''o'' later on (''Austrogoti'' > ''Ostrogoti''). The digraphs and are normally written with an accent on the first vowel (''ái, áu'') when they correspond to Proto-Germanic and .
* Long and also occur as allophones of and respectively before a following vowel: ''waian'' "to blow" (Dutch ''waaien'', German ''wehen''), ''bauan'' "to build" (Dutch ''bouwen'', German ''bauen'', Icelandic ''búa'' "to live, reside"), also in Greek words ''Trauada'' "Troad" (Gk. ). In detailed transcription these are notated ''ai, au''.
* (pronounced like German ''ü'' and French ''u'') is a Greek sound used only in borrowed words. It is transliterated as ''w'' (as it uses the same letter that otherwise denoted the consonant ): ''azwmus'' "unleavened bread" ( < Gk. ). It represents an υ (y) or the diphthong οι (oi), both of which were pronounced in the Greek of the time. Since the sound was foreign to Gothic, it was perhaps pronounced .
* is a falling diphthong (: ''diups'' "deep" (Dutch ''diep'', German ''tief'', Icelandic ''djúpur'').
* Greek diphthongs: In Ulfilas's era, all the diphthongs of Classical Greek had become simple vowels in speech (''
monophthong
A monophthong ( ; , ) is a pure vowel sound, one whose articulation at both beginning and end is relatively fixed, and which does not glide up or down towards a new position of articulation. The monophthongs can be contrasted with diphthongs, wh ...
ization''), except for αυ (au) and ευ (eu), which were probably still pronounced and . (They evolved into and in
Modern Greek
Modern Greek (, , or , ''Kiní Neoellinikí Glóssa''), generally referred to by speakers simply as Greek (, ), refers collectively to the dialects of the Greek language spoken in the modern era, including the official standardized form of the ...
.) Ulfilas notes them, in words borrowed from Greek, as ''aw'' and ''aiw'', probably pronounced : ''Pawlus'' "Paul" (Gk. ), ''aíwaggelista'' "evangelist" (Gk. , via the Latin ''evangelista'').
* All vowels (including diphthongs) can be followed by a , which was likely pronounced as the second element of a diphthong with roughly the sound of . It seems likely that this is more of an instance of phonetic juxtaposition than of true diphthongs (such as, for example, the sound in the French word ''paille'' ("straw"), which is not the diphthong but rather a vowel followed by an
approximant
Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough nor with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a ...
): ''alew'' "olive oil" ( < Latin ''oleum''), ''snáiws'' ("snow"), ''lasiws'' "tired" (English ''lazy'').
Consonants
In general, Gothic consonants are
devoiced
Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced.
The term, however, is used to refer ...
at the ends of words. Gothic is rich in fricative consonants (although many of them may have been
approximant
Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough nor with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a ...
s; it is hard to separate the two) derived by the processes described in
Grimm's law
Grimm's law (also known as the First Germanic Sound Shift) is a set of sound laws describing the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) stop consonants as they developed in Proto-Germanic in the 1st millennium BC. First systematically put forward by Jacob Gr ...
and
Verner's law
Verner's law describes a historical sound change in the Proto-Germanic language whereby consonants that would usually have been the voiceless fricatives , , , , , following an unstressed syllable, became the voiced fricatives , , , , . The law w ...
and characteristic of
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, E ...
. Gothic is unusual among Germanic languages in having a phoneme, which has not become through rhotacization. Furthermore, the doubling of written consonants between vowels suggests that Gothic made distinctions between long and short, or
geminated
In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from ''gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from s ...
consonants: ''atta'' "dad", ''kunnan'' "to know" (Dutch ''kennen'', German ''kennen'' "to know", Icelandic ''kunna'').
Stops
* The voiceless stops , and are regularly noted by ''p'', ''t'' and ''k'' respectively: ''paska'' "Easter" (from the Greek ), ''tuggo'' "tongue", ''kalbo'' "calf".
* The letter ''q'' is probably a
voiceless labiovelar stop, , comparable to the Latin ''qu'': ''qiman'' "to come". In later Germanic languages, this phoneme has become either a
consonant cluster
In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound, is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word ''splits''. In the education fie ...
of a
voiceless velar stop
The voiceless velar plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in almost all spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is k.
The sound is a very ...
+ a
labio-velar approximant
Labiovelar consonant may refer to:
* Labial–velar consonant such as (a consonant made at two places of articulation, one at the lips and the other at the soft palate)
* Labialized velar consonant such as or (a consonant with an approximant-lik ...
(English ''qu'') or a simple voiceless velar stop (English ''c, k'')
* The voiced stops , and are noted by the letters ''b'', ''d'' and ''g''. Like the other Germanic languages, they occurred in word-initial position, when doubled and after a nasal. In addition, they apparently occurred after other consonants,: ''arbi'' "inheritance", ''huzd'' "treasure". (This conclusion is based on their behavior at the end of a word, in which they do not change into voiceless fricatives, unlike when they occur after a vowel.)
* There was probably also a
voiced labiovelar stop, , which was written with the digraph ''gw''. It occurred after a nasal, e.g. ''saggws'' "song", or long as a regular outcome of Germanic *''ww'': ''triggws'' "faithful" (English ''true'', German ''treu'', Icelandic ''tryggur'').
* Similarly, the letters ''ddj'', which is the regular outcome of Germanic *''jj'', may represent a voiced palatal stop, : ''waddjus'' "wall" (Icelandic ''veggur''), ''twaddje'' "two (genitive)" (Icelandic ''tveggja'').
Fricatives
* and are usually written ''s'' and ''z''. The latter corresponds to Germanic *''z'' (which has become ''r'' or silent in the other Germanic languages); at the end of a word, it is regularly devoiced to ''s''. E.g. ''saíhs'' "six", ''máiza'' "greater" (English ''more'', Dutch ''meer'', German ''mehr'', Icelandic ''meira'') versus ''máis'' "more, rather".
* and , written ''f'' and ''þ'', are voiceless bilabial and voiceless dental fricatives respectively. It is likely that the relatively unstable sound became . ''f'' and ''þ'' are also derived from ''b'' and ''d'' at the ends of words and then are devoiced and become fricatives: ''gif'' "give (imperative)" (infinitive ''giban'': German ''geben''), ''miþ'' "with" (
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
''mid'',
Old Norse
Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and t ...
''með'', Dutch ''met'', German ''mit''). The cluster became in some words but not others: ''þlauhs'' "flight" from Germanic ''*flugiz''; ''þliuhan'' "flee" from Germanic ''*fleuhaną'' (but see ''flōdus'' "river", ''flahta'' "braid"). This sound change is unique among Germanic languages.
* is written as ''h'': ''haban'' "to have". It was probably pronounced in word-final position and before a consonant as well (not , since > is written ''g'', not ''h''): ''jah'' "and" (Dutch, German, Scandinavian ''ja'' "yes").
* is an allophone of at the end of a word or before a voiceless consonant; it is always written ''g'': ''dags'' "day" (German ''Tag''). In some borrowed Greek words is the special letter ''x'', which represents the Greek letter χ (''ch''): ''Xristus'' "Christ" (Gk. ).
* , and are voiced fricative found only in between vowels. They are
allophones
In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor ''phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in '' ...
of , and and are not distinguished from them in writing. may have become , a more stable labiodental form. In the study of Germanic languages, these phonemes are usually transcribed as ''ƀ'', ''đ'' and ''ǥ'' respectively: ''haban'' "to have", ''þiuda'' "people" (Dutch ''Diets'', German ''Deutsch'', Icelandic ''þjóð'' > English ''Dutch''), ''áugo'' "eye" (English ''eye'', Dutch ''oog'', German ''Auge'', Icelandic ''auga''). When occurring after a vowel at the end of a word or before a voiceless consonant, these sounds become unvoiced , and , e.g. ''hláifs'' "loaf" but genitive ''hláibis'' "of a loaf", plural ''hláibōs'' "loaves".
* ''ƕ'' (also transcribed ''hw'') is the labiovelar equivalent of , derived from Proto-Indo-European *kʷ. It was probably pronounced (a voiceless ), as ''wh'' is pronounced in certain dialects of English and in Scots: ''ƕan'' "when", ''ƕar'' "where", ''ƕeits'' "white".
Sonorants
Gothic has three nasal consonants, one of which is an allophone of the others, all found only in
complementary distribution
In linguistics, complementary distribution, as distinct from contrastive distribution and free variation, is the relationship between two different elements of the same kind in which one element is found in one set of environments and the other ele ...
with them. Nasals in Gothic, like most other languages, are pronounced at the same
point of articulation
In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation (also point of articulation) of a consonant is a location along the vocal tract where its production occurs. It is a point where a constriction is made between an active and a passive articula ...
as the consonant that follows them (
assimilation). Therefore, clusters like and are not possible.
* and are freely distributed and so can be found in any position in a syllable and form
minimal pair
In phonology, minimal pairs are pairs of words or phrases in a particular language, spoken or signed, that differ in only one phonological element, such as a phoneme, toneme or chroneme, and have distinct meanings. They are used to demonstrate ...
s except in certain contexts where they are neutralized: before a
bilabial consonant becomes , while preceding a
dental stop In phonetics and phonology, a dental stop is a type of consonantal sound, made with the tongue in contact with the upper teeth (hence dental), held tightly enough to block the passage of air (hence a stop consonant).
Dental and alveolar stops are ...
becomes , as per the principle of assimilation described in the previous paragraph. In front of a
velar stop
In phonetics and phonology, a velar stop is a type of consonantal sound, made with the back of the tongue in contact with the soft palate (also known as the velum, hence velar), held tightly enough to block the passage of air (hence a stop consonan ...
, they both become . and are transcribed as ''n'' and ''m'', and, in writing, neutralisation is marked: ''sniumundo'' ("quickly").
* is not a phoneme and cannot appear freely in Gothic. It is present where a nasal consonant is neutralised before a velar stop and is in a complementary distribution with and . Following Greek conventions, it is normally written as ''g'' (sometimes ''n''): ''þagkjan'' "to think", ''sigqan'' "to sink" ~ ''þankeiþ'' "thinks". The cluster ''ggw'' sometimes denotes , but sometimes (see above).
* is transliterated as ''w'' before a vowel: ''weis'' ("we"), ''twái'' "two" (German ''zwei'').
* is written as ''j'': ''jer'' "year", ''sakjo'' "strife".
* and occur as in other European languages: ''laggs'' (possibly , or ) "long", ''mel'' "hour" (English ''meal'', Dutch ''maal'', German ''Mahl'', Icelandic ''mál''). The exact pronunciation of is unknown, but it is usually assumed to be a
trill
TRILL (Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links) is an Internet Standard implemented by devices called TRILL switches. TRILL combines techniques from bridging and routing, and is the application of link-state routing to the VLAN-aware cus ...
or a
flap
Flap may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
* ''Flap'' (film), a 1970 American film
* Flap, a boss character in the arcade game ''Gaiapolis''
* Flap, a minor character in the film '' Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland''
Biology and he ...
): ''raíhts'' "right", ''afar'' "after".
* , , and may occur either between two other consonants of lower sonority or word-finally after a consonant of lower sonority. It is probable that the sounds are pronounced partly or completely as
syllabic consonants in such circumstances (as in English "bottle" or "bottom"): ''tagl'' or "hair" (English ''tail'', Icelandic ''tagl''), ''máiþms'' or "gift", ''táikns'' or "sign" (English ''token'', Dutch ''teken'', German ''Zeichen'', Icelandic ''tákn'') and ''tagr'' or "tear (as in crying)".
Accentuation and intonation
Accentuation in Gothic can be reconstructed through phonetic comparison,
Grimm's law
Grimm's law (also known as the First Germanic Sound Shift) is a set of sound laws describing the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) stop consonants as they developed in Proto-Germanic in the 1st millennium BC. First systematically put forward by Jacob Gr ...
, and
Verner's law
Verner's law describes a historical sound change in the Proto-Germanic language whereby consonants that would usually have been the voiceless fricatives , , , , , following an unstressed syllable, became the voiced fricatives , , , , . The law w ...
. Gothic used a
stress accent rather than the
pitch accent
A pitch-accent language, when spoken, has word accents in which one syllable in a word or morpheme is more prominent than the others, but the accentuated syllable is indicated by a contrasting pitch ( linguistic tone) rather than by loudness ...
of
Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo- ...
. This is indicated by the shortening of long vowels and and the loss of short vowels and in unstressed final syllables.
Just as in other Germanic languages, the free moving
Proto-Indo-European accent
Proto-Indo-European accent refers to the accentual (stress) system of the Proto-Indo-European language.
Description
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is usually reconstructed as having had variable lexical stress: the placement of the stress in a word ...
was replaced with one fixed on the first syllable of simple words. Accents do not shift when words are inflected. In most compound words, the location of the stress depends on the type of compound:
* In compounds in which the second word is a ''noun'', the accent is on the first syllable of the first word of the compound.
* In compounds in which the second word is a ''verb'', the accent falls on the first syllable of the verbal component. Elements prefixed to verbs are otherwise unstressed except in the context of separable words (words that can be broken in two parts and separated in regular usage such as
separable verb
A separable verb is a verb that is composed of a lexical core and a separable particle. In some sentence positions, the core verb and the particle appear in one word, whilst in others the core verb and the particle are separated. The particle canno ...
s in German and Dutch). In those cases, the prefix is stressed.
For example, with comparable words from modern Germanic languages:
* Non-compound words: ''marka'' "border, borderlands" (English ''march'', Dutch ''mark''); ''aftra'' "after"; ''bidjan'' "pray" (Dutch, ''bidden'', German ''bitten'', Icelandic ''biðja'', English ''bid'').
* Compound words:
** Noun first element: ''guda-láus'' "godless".
** Verb second element: ''ga-láubjan'' "believe" (Dutch ''geloven'', German ''glauben'' <
Old High German
Old High German (OHG; german: Althochdeutsch (Ahd.)) is the earliest stage of the German language, conventionally covering the period from around 750 to 1050.
There is no standardised or supra-regional form of German at this period, and Old High ...
''g(i)louben'' by
syncope of the unaccented ''i'').
Grammar
Morphology
Nouns and adjectives
Gothic preserves many archaic Indo-European features that are not always present in modern Germanic languages, in particular the rich Indo-European
declension
In linguistics, declension (verb: ''to decline'') is the changing of the form of a word, generally to express its syntactic function in the sentence, by way of some inflection. Declensions may apply to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and ...
system. Gothic had
nominative,
accusative
The accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb.
In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘th ...
,
genitive and
dative case
In grammar, the dative case (abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used in some languages to indicate the recipient or beneficiary of an action, as in "Maria Jacobo potum dedit", Latin for "Maria gave Jacob a ...
s, as well as vestiges of a
vocative case
In grammar, the vocative case ( abbreviated ) is a grammatical case which is used for a noun that identifies a person (animal, object, etc.) being addressed, or occasionally for the noun modifiers (determiners, adjectives, participles, and nume ...
that was sometimes identical to the nominative and sometimes to the accusative. The three
genders of Indo-European were all present. Nouns and adjectives were inflected according to one of two
grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one", "two" or "three or more"). English and other languages present number categories of ...
s: the singular and the plural.
Nouns can be divided into numerous declensions according to the form of the stem: ''a'', ''ō'', ''i'', ''u'', ''an'', ''ōn'', ''ein'', ''r'', etc. Adjectives have two variants, ''indefinite'' and ''definite'' (sometimes ''indeterminate'' and ''determinate''), with definite adjectives normally used in combination with the definite
determiners (such as the
definite article
An article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech.
In English, both "the" and "a(n)" a ...
''sa''/''þata''/''sō'') while indefinite adjectives are used in other circumstances., Indefinite adjectives generally use a combination of ''a''-stem and ''ō''-stem endings, and definite adjectives use a combination of ''an''-stem and ''ōn''-stem endings. The concept of "strong" and "weak" declensions that is prevalent in the grammar of many other
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, E ...
is less significant in Gothic because of its conservative nature: the so-called "weak" declensions (those ending in ''n'') are, in fact, no weaker in Gothic (in terms of having fewer endings) than the "strong" declensions (those ending in a vowel), and the "strong" declensions do not form a coherent class that can be clearly distinguished from the "weak" declensions.
Although descriptive adjectives in Gothic (as well as superlatives ending in ''-ist'' and ''-ost'') and the
past participle
In linguistics, a participle () (from Latin ' a "sharing, partaking") is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. More narrowly, ''participle'' has been defined as "a word derived from ...
may take both definite and indefinite forms, some adjectival words are restricted to one variant. Some pronouns take only definite forms: for example, ''sama'' (English "same"), adjectives like ''unƕeila'' ("constantly", from the root ''ƕeila'', "time"; compare to the English "while"), comparative adjective and
present participle
In linguistics, a participle () (from Latin ' a "sharing, partaking") is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. More narrowly, ''participle'' has been defined as "a word derived from ...
s. Others, such as ''áins'' ("some"), take only the indefinite forms.
The table below displays the declension of the Gothic adjective ''blind'' (English: "blind"), compared with the ''an''-stem noun ''guma'' "man, human" and the ''a''-stem noun ''dags'' "day":
This table is, of course, not exhaustive. (There are secondary inflexions of various sorts not described here.) An exhaustive table of only the ''types'' of endings that Gothic took is presented below.
* vowel declensions:
** roots ending in ''-a'', ''-ja'', ''-wa'' (masculine and neuter): equivalent to the Greek and Latin second declension in ''‑us'' / ''‑ī'' and ‑ος / ‑ου;
** roots ending in ''-ō'', ''-jō'' and ''-wō'' (feminine): equivalent to the Greek and Latin first declension in ''‑a'' / ''‑ae'' and ‑α / ‑ας (‑η / ‑ης);
** roots ending in ''-i'' (masculine and feminine): equivalent to the Greek and Latin third declension in ''‑is'' / ''‑is'' ( ''‑ī'', ''-ium'') and ‑ις / ‑εως;
** roots ending in ''-u'' (all three genders): equivalent to the Latin fourth declension in ''‑us'' / ''‑ūs'' and the Greek third declension in ‑υς / ‑εως;
* ''n''-stem declensions, equivalent to the Greek and Latin third declension in ''‑ō'' / ''‑inis/ōnis'' and ‑ων / ‑ονος or ‑ην / ‑ενος:
** roots ending in ''-an'', ''-jan'', ''-wan'' (masculine);
** roots ending in ''-ōn'' and ''-ein'' (feminine);
** roots ending in ''-n'' (neuter): equivalent to the Greek and Latin third declension in ''‑men'' / ''‑minis'' and ‑μα / ‑ματος;
* minor declensions: roots ending in ''-r'', ''-nd'' and vestigial endings in other consonants, equivalent to other third declensions in Greek and Latin.
Gothic adjectives follow noun declensions closely; they take same types of inflection.
Pronouns
Gothic inherited the full set of Indo-European pronouns:
personal pronoun
Personal pronouns are pronouns that are associated primarily with a particular grammatical person – first person (as ''I''), second person (as ''you''), or third person (as ''he'', ''she'', ''it'', ''they''). Personal pronouns may also take dif ...
s (including
reflexive pronoun
A reflexive pronoun is a pronoun that refers to another noun or pronoun (its antecedent) within the same sentence.
In the English language specifically, a reflexive pronoun will end in ''-self'' or ''-selves'', and refer to a previously n ...
s for each of the three
grammatical person
In linguistics, grammatical person is the grammatical distinction between deictic references to participant(s) in an event; typically the distinction is between the speaker ( first person), the addressee ( second person), and others ( third pe ...
s),
possessive pronouns, both simple and compound
demonstratives
Demonstratives (abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic; their meaning depending on a particular frame ...
,
relative pronoun
A relative pronoun is a pronoun that marks a relative clause. It serves the purpose of conjoining modifying information about an antecedent referent.
An example is the word ''which'' in the sentence "This is the house which Jack built." Here the r ...
s,
interrogatives
An interrogative word or question word is a function word used to ask a question, such as ''what, which'', ''when'', ''where'', ''who, whom, whose'', ''why'', ''whether'' and ''how''. They are sometimes called wh-words, because in English most o ...
and
indefinite pronouns. Each follows a particular pattern of inflection (partially mirroring the noun declension), much like other Indo-European languages. One particularly noteworthy characteristic is the preservation of the
dual number
In algebra, the dual numbers are a hypercomplex number system first introduced in the 19th century. They are expressions of the form , where and are real numbers, and is a symbol taken to satisfy \varepsilon^2 = 0 with \varepsilon\neq 0.
Du ...
, referring to two people or things; the plural was used only for quantities greater than two. Thus, "the two of us" and "we" for numbers greater than two were expressed as ''wit'' and ''weis'' respectively. While proto-Indo-European used the dual for all grammatical categories that took a number (as did Classical Greek and
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
), most Old Germanic languages are unusual in that they preserved it only for pronouns. Gothic preserves an older system with dual marking on both pronouns and verbs (but not nouns or adjectives).
The simple demonstrative pronoun ''sa'' (neuter: ''þata'', feminine: ''so'', from the Indo-European root ''*so'', ''*seh
2'', ''*tod''; cognate to the Greek article ὁ, ἡ, τό and the Latin ''istud'') can be used as an article, allowing constructions of the type ''definite article + weak adjective + noun''.
The interrogative pronouns begin with ''ƕ-'', which derives from the proto-Indo-European consonant ''*kʷ'' that was present at the beginning of all interrogatives in proto-Indo-European, cognate with the ''wh-'' at the beginning of many English interrogative, which, as in Gothic, are pronounced with in some dialects. The same etymology is present in the interrogatives of many other Indo-European languages: ''w-'' in
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
, ''hv-'' in
Danish
Danish may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark
People
* A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark
* Culture of Denmark
* Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish a ...
, the Latin ''qu-'' (which persists in modern
Romance languages
The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language fam ...
), the Greek τ- or π-, the
Slavic and
Indic
Indic may refer to:
* Indic languages (disambiguation)
* Various scripts:
** Brahmic scripts, a family of scripts used to write Indian and other Asian languages
** Kharosthi (extinct)
* Indian numerals
* Indian religions, also known as the Dharm ...
''k-'' as well as many others.
Verbs
The bulk of Gothic verbs follow the type of Indo-European conjugation called '
thematic' because they insert a vowel derived from the reconstructed proto-Indo-European phonemes ''*e'' or ''*o'' between roots and inflexional suffixes. The pattern is also present in Greek and Latin:
*Latin - ''leg-i-mus'' ("we read"): root ''leg-'' + thematic vowel ''-i-'' (from ''*o'') + suffix ''-mus''.
*Greek - λύ-ο-μεν ("we untie"): root λυ- + thematic vowel -ο- + suffix -μεν.
*Gothic - ''nim-a-m'' ("we take"): root ''nim-'' + thematic vowel ''-a-'' (from ''*o'') + suffix ''-m''.
The other conjugation, called '
athematic
In Indo-European studies, a thematic vowel or theme vowel is the vowel or from ablaut placed before the ending of a Proto-Indo-European (PIE) word. Nouns, adjectives, and verbs in the Indo-European languages with this vowel are thematic, and tho ...
', in which suffixes are added directly to roots, exists only in unproductive vestigial forms in Gothic, just like in Greek and Latin. The most important such instance is
the verb "to be", which is athematic in Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, and many other Indo-European languages.
Gothic verbs are, like nouns and adjectives, divided into strong verbs and weak verbs. Weak verbs are characterised by
preterite
The preterite or preterit (; abbreviated or ) is a grammatical tense or verb form serving to denote events that took place or were completed in the past; in some languages, such as Spanish, French, and English, it is equivalent to the simple pas ...
s formed by appending the suffixes ''-da'' or ''-ta'', parallel to past participles formed with ''-þ'' / ''-t''. Strong verbs form preterites by
ablaut
In linguistics, the Indo-European ablaut (, from German '' Ablaut'' ) is a system of apophony (regular vowel variations) in the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE).
An example of ablaut in English is the strong verb ''sing, sang, sung'' and its ...
(the alternating of vowels in their root forms) or by
reduplication (prefixing the root with the first consonant in the root plus ''aí'') but without adding a suffix in either case. This parallels the Greek and Sanskrit
perfects. The dichotomy is still present in modern Germanic languages:
* weak verbs ("to have"):
** Gothic: ''haban'', preterite: ''habáida'', past participle: ''habáiþs'';
** English: ''(to) have'', preterite: ''had'', past participle: ''had'';
** German: ''haben'', preterite: ''hatte'', past participle: ''gehabt'';
** Icelandic: ''hafa'', preterite: ''hafði'', past participle: ''haft'';
** Dutch: ''hebben'', preterite: ''had'', past participle: ''gehad'';
** Swedish: ''ha(va)'', preterite: ''hade'', supine: ''haft'';
* strong verbs ("to give"):
** Gothic: infinitive: ''giban'', preterite: ''gaf'';
** English: infinitive: ''(to) give'', preterite: ''gave'';
** German: infinitive: ''geben'', preterite: ''gab'';
** Icelandic: infinitive: ''gefa'', preterite: ''gaf'';
** Dutch: infinitive: ''geven'', preterite: ''gaf'';
** Swedish: infinitive: ''giva'' (''ge''), preterite: ''gav''.
Verbal conjugation in Gothic have two
grammatical voice
In linguistics, grammaticality is determined by the conformity to language usage as derived by the grammar of a particular speech variety. The notion of grammaticality rose alongside the theory of generative grammar, the goal of which is to form ...
s: the active and the medial; three numbers: singular, dual (except in the third person) and plural; two tenses: present and preterite (derived from a former perfect); three
grammatical moods:
indicative
A realis mood ( abbreviated ) is a grammatical mood which is used principally to indicate that something is a statement of fact; in other words, to express what the speaker considers to be a known state of affairs, as in declarative sentences. Mos ...
,
subjunctive (from an old
optative
The optative mood ( or ; abbreviated ) is a grammatical mood that indicates a wish or hope regarding a given action. It is a superset of the cohortative mood and is closely related to the subjunctive mood but is distinct from the desiderative mo ...
form) and
imperative as well as three kinds of nominal forms: a present
infinitive
Infinitive (abbreviated ) is a linguistics term for certain verb forms existing in many languages, most often used as non-finite verbs. As with many linguistic concepts, there is not a single definition applicable to all languages. The word is deri ...
, a present
participle
In linguistics, a participle () (from Latin ' a "sharing, partaking") is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. More narrowly, ''participle'' has been defined as "a word derived from ...
, and a past
passive
Passive may refer to:
* Passive voice, a grammatical voice common in many languages, see also Pseudopassive
* Passive language, a language from which an interpreter works
* Passivity (behavior), the condition of submitting to the influence of o ...
. Not all tenses and persons are represented in all moods and voices, as some conjugations use
auxiliary forms.
Finally, there are forms called 'preterite-present': the old Indo-European perfect was reinterpreted as present tense. The Gothic word ''wáit'', from the proto-Indo-European ''*woid-h
2e'' ("to see" in the perfect), corresponds exactly to its Sanskrit cognate ''véda'' and in Greek to ϝοἶδα. Both etymologically should mean "I have seen" (in the perfect sense) but mean "I know" (in the preterite-present meaning). Latin follows the same rule with ''nōuī'' ("I have learned" and "I know"). The preterite-present verbs include ''áigan'' ("to possess") and ''kunnan'' ("to know") among others.
Syntax
Word order
The word order of Gothic is fairly free as is typical of other inflected languages. The natural word order of Gothic is assumed to have been like that of the other old Germanic languages; however, nearly all extant Gothic texts are translations of Greek originals and have been heavily influenced by Greek syntax.
Sometimes what can be expressed in one word in the original Greek will require a verb and a complement in the Gothic translation; for example, διωχθήσονται (''diōchthēsontai'', "they will be persecuted") is rendered:
:
Likewise Gothic translations of Greek noun phrases may feature a verb and a complement. In both cases, the verb follows the complement, giving weight to the theory that basic word order in Gothic is object–verb. This aligns with what is known of other early Germanic languages.
However, this pattern is reversed in imperatives and negations:
:
:
And in a ''wh''-question the verb directly follows the question word:
:
Clitics
Gothic has two
clitic particles placed in the second position in a sentence, in accordance with
Wackernagel's Law
In morphology and syntax, a clitic (, backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a w ...
.
One such clitic particle is -''u'', indicating a yes–no question or an indirect question, like Latin -''ne'':
:
:
The prepositional phrase without the clitic -''u'' appears as ''af þus silbin'': the clitic causes the reversion of originally voiced fricatives, unvoiced at the end of a word, to their voiced form; another such example is ''wileid-u'' "do you () want" from ''wileiþ'' "you () want". If the first word has a
preverb
Although not widely accepted in linguistics, the term preverb is used in Caucasian (including all three families: Northwest Caucasian, Northeast Caucasian and Kartvelian), Caddoan, Athabaskan, and Algonquian linguistics to describe certain elem ...
attached, the clitic actually splits the preverb from the verb: ''ga-u-láubjats'' "do you both believe...?" from ''galáubjats'' "you both believe".
Another such clitic is ''-uh'' "and", appearing as ''-h'' after a vowel: ''ga-h-mēlida'' "and he wrote" from ''gamēlida'' "he wrote", ''urreis nim-uh'' "arise and take!" from the imperative form ''nim'' "take". After ''iþ'' or any indefinite besides ''sums'' "some" and ''anþar'' "another", -''uh'' cannot be placed; in the latter category, this is only because indefinite determiner phrases cannot move to the front of a clause. Unlike, for example, Latin -''que'', -''uh'' can only join two or more main clauses. In all other cases, the word ''jah'' "and" is used, which can also join main clauses.
More than one such clitics can occur in one word: ''diz-uh-þan-sat ijōs'' "and then he seized them ()" from ''dissat'' "he seized" (notice again the voicing of ''diz-''), ''ga-u-ƕa-sēƕi'' "whether he saw anything" from ''gasēƕi'' "he saw".
Comparison to other Germanic languages
For the most part, Gothic is known to be significantly closer to Proto-Germanic than any other Germanic language except for that of the (scantily attested) early Norse runic inscriptions, which has made it invaluable in the reconstruction of Proto-Germanic. In fact, Gothic tends to serve as the primary foundation for reconstructing Proto-Germanic. The reconstructed Proto-Germanic conflicts with Gothic only when there is clearly identifiable evidence from other branches that the Gothic form is a secondary development.
Distinctive features
Gothic fails to display a number of innovations shared by all Germanic languages attested later:
* lack of
Germanic umlaut,
* lack of
rhotacism
Rhotacism () or rhotacization is a sound change that converts one consonant (usually a voiced alveolar consonant: , , , or ) to a rhotic consonant in a certain environment. The most common may be of to . When a dialect or member of a language ...
.
The language has also preserved many features that were mostly lost in other early Germanic languages:
* dual inflections on verbs,
* morphological passive voice for verbs,
* reduplication in the past tense of Class VII strong verbs,
* clitic conjunctions that appear in second position of a sentence in accordance with
Wackernagel's Law
In morphology and syntax, a clitic (, backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a w ...
, splitting verbs from pre-verbs.
Lack of umlaut
Most conspicuously, Gothic shows no sign of morphological umlaut. Gothic , , can be contrasted with English ''foot'' : ''feet'', German : , Old Norse : , Danish : . These forms contain the characteristic change > (English), > (German), > (ON and Danish) due to i-umlaut; the Gothic form shows no such change.
Lack of rhotacism
Proto-Germanic ''*z'' remains in Gothic as ''z'' or is devoiced to ''s''. In North and West Germanic, ''*z'' changes to ''r'' by
rhotacism
Rhotacism () or rhotacization is a sound change that converts one consonant (usually a voiced alveolar consonant: , , , or ) to a rhotic consonant in a certain environment. The most common may be of to . When a dialect or member of a language ...
:
* Gothic ,
≠
* Old English , "wild animal" (Modern English ''deer'').
Passive voice
Gothic retains a morphological passive voice inherited from Indo-European but unattested in all other Germanic languages except for the single fossilised form preserved in, for example, Old English ''hātte'' or Runic Norse () ''haitē'' "am called", derived from Proto-Germanic ''*haitaną'' "to call, command". (The related verbs ''heißen'' in modern German and ''heten'' in Dutch are both derived from the active voice of this verb but have the passive meaning "to be called" alongside the dated active meaning "to command".)
The morphological passive in North Germanic languages (Swedish ''gör'' "does", ''görs'' "is being done") originates from the
Old Norse
Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and t ...
middle voice
In grammar, the voice of a verb describes the relationship between the action (or state) that the verb expresses and the participants identified by its arguments (subject, object, etc.). When the subject is the agent or doer of the action, the ...
, which is an innovation not inherited from Indo-European.
Dual number
Unlike other Germanic languages, which retained dual numbering only in some pronoun forms, Gothic has dual forms both in pronouns and in verbs. Dual verb forms exist only in the first and second person and only in the active voice; in all other cases, the corresponding plural forms are used. In pronouns, Gothic has first and second person dual pronouns: Gothic and Old English ''wit'', Old Norse ''vit'' "we two" (thought to have been in fact derived from ''*wi-du'' literally "we two").
Reduplication
Gothic possesses a number of verbs which form their preterite by reduplication, another archaic feature inherited from Indo-European. While traces of this category survived elsewhere in Germanic, the phenomenon is largely obscured in these other languages by later sound changes and analogy. In the following examples the infinitive is compared to the third person singular preterite indicative:
* Gothic ''saian'' "to sow" : ''saiso''
* Old Norse ''sá'' : ''seri'' < Proto-Germanic *''sezō''
* Gothic ''laikan'' "to play" : ''lailaik''
* Old English ''lācan'' : ''leolc'', ''lēc''
Classification
The standard theory of the origin of the Germanic languages divides the languages into three groups:
East Germanic
East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth.
Etymology
As in other languages, the word is formed from the ...
(Gothic and a few other very scantily-attested languages),
North Germanic
The North Germanic languages make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages—a sub-family of the Indo-European languages—along with the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic languages. The language group is also r ...
(
Old Norse
Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and t ...
and its derivatives, such as
Swedish
Swedish or ' may refer to:
Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically:
* Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland
** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
,
Danish
Danish may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark
People
* A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark
* Culture of Denmark
* Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish a ...
,
Norwegian
Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to:
*Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe
* Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway
* Demographics of Norway
*The Norwegian language, including ...
,
Icelandic, and
Faroese) and
West Germanic
The West Germanic languages constitute the largest of the three branches of the Germanic family of languages (the others being the North Germanic and the extinct East Germanic languages). The West Germanic branch is classically subdivided into ...
(all others, including
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
,
Old High German
Old High German (OHG; german: Althochdeutsch (Ahd.)) is the earliest stage of the German language, conventionally covering the period from around 750 to 1050.
There is no standardised or supra-regional form of German at this period, and Old High ...
,
Old Saxon
Old Saxon, also known as Old Low German, was a Germanic language and the earliest recorded form of Low German (spoken nowadays in Northern Germany, the northeastern Netherlands, southern Denmark, the Americas and parts of Eastern Europe). It i ...
,
Old Dutch
In linguistics, Old Dutch (Dutch: Oudnederlands) or Old Low Franconian (Dutch: Oudnederfrankisch) is the set of Franconian dialects (i.e. dialects that evolved from Frankish) spoken in the Low Countries during the Early Middle Ages, from aroun ...
,
Old Frisian
Old Frisian was a West Germanic language spoken between the 8th and 16th centuries along the North Sea coast, roughly between the mouths of the Rhine and Weser rivers. The Frisian settlers on the coast of South Jutland (today's Northern Fri ...
and the numerous modern languages derived from these, including
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
,
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
, and
Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
). Sometimes, a further grouping, that of the
Northwest Germanic
Northwest Germanic is a proposed grouping of the Germanic languages, representing the current consensus among Germanic historical linguists. It does not challenge the late 19th-century tri-partite division of the Germanic dialects into North Germ ...
languages, is posited as containing the North Germanic and West Germanic languages, reflecting the hypothesis that Gothic was the first attested language to branch off.
A minority opinion (the so-called Gotho-Nordic hypothesis) instead groups North Germanic and
East Germanic
East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth.
Etymology
As in other languages, the word is formed from the ...
together. It is based partly on historical claims: for example,
Jordanes
Jordanes (), also written as Jordanis or Jornandes, was a 6th-century Eastern Roman bureaucrat widely believed to be of Gothic descent who became a historian later in life. Late in life he wrote two works, one on Roman history ('' Romana'') a ...
, writing in the 6th century, ascribes to the Goths a Scandinavian origin. There are a few linguistically significant areas in which Gothic and Old Norse agree against the West Germanic languages.
Perhaps the most obvious is the evolution of the
Proto-Germanic
Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages.
Proto-Germanic eventually developed from pre-Proto-Germanic into three Germanic bran ...
*''-jj-'' and *''-ww-'' into Gothic ''ddj'' (from Pre-Gothic ''ggj''?) and ''ggw'', and Old Norse ''ggj'' and ''ggv'' ("
Holtzmann's Law
Holtzmann's law is a Proto-Germanic sound law originally noted by Adolf Holtzmann in 1838. It is also known by its traditional German name ''Verschärfung'' (literally: "sharpening"). (A similar sound law which has affected modern Faroese, called ...
"), in contrast to West Germanic where they remained as semivowels. Compare Modern English ''true'', German ''treu'', with Gothic ''triggws'', Old Norse ''tryggr''.
However, it has been suggested that these are, in fact, two separate and unrelated changes. A number of other posited similarities exist (for example, the existence of numerous inchoative verbs ending in -''na'', such as Gothic ''ga-waknan'', Old Norse ''vakna''; and the absence of gemination before ''j'', or (in the case of old Norse) only ''g'' geminated before ''j'', e.g. Proto-Germanic *''kunją'' > Gothic ''kuni'' (kin), Old Norse ''kyn'', but Old English ''cynn'', Old High German ''kunni''). However, for the most part these represent
shared retentions, which are not valid means of grouping languages. That is, if a parent language splits into three daughters A, B and C, and C innovates in a particular area but A and B do not change, A and B will appear to agree against C. That shared retention in A and B is not necessarily indicative of any special relationship between the two.
Similar claims of similarities between
Old Gutnish
Old Gutnish or Old Gotlandic was a North Germanic language spoken on the Baltic Sea, Baltic island of Gotland. It shows sufficient differences from the Old West Norse and Old East Norse dialects that it is considered to be a separate branch. ...
(''Gutniska'') and
Old Icelandic are also based on shared retentions rather than shared innovations.
Another commonly-given example involves Gothic and Old Norse verbs with the ending ''-t'' in the 2nd person singular preterite indicative, and the West Germanic languages have ''-i''. The ending ''-t'' can regularly descend from the Proto-Indo-European perfect ending ''*-th₂e'', while the origin of the West Germanic ending ''-i'' (which, unlike the ''-t''-ending, unexpectedly combines with the zero-grade of the root as in the plural) is unclear, suggesting that it is an innovation of some kind, possibly an import from the optative. Another possibility is that this is an example of independent choices made from a doublet existing in the proto-language. That is, Proto-Germanic may have allowed either ''-t'' or ''-i'' to be used as the ending, either in
free variation or perhaps depending on dialects within Proto-Germanic or the particular verb in question. Each of the three daughters independently standardized on one of the two endings and, by chance, Gothic and Old Norse ended up with the same ending.
Other
isoglosses have led scholars to propose an early split between East and
Northwest Germanic
Northwest Germanic is a proposed grouping of the Germanic languages, representing the current consensus among Germanic historical linguists. It does not challenge the late 19th-century tri-partite division of the Germanic dialects into North Germ ...
. Furthermore, features shared by any two branches of Germanic do not necessarily require the postulation of a
proto-language
In the tree model of historical linguistics, a proto-language is a postulated ancestral language from which a number of attested languages are believed to have descended by evolution, forming a language family. Proto-languages are usually unattes ...
excluding the third, as the early
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, E ...
were all part of a
dialect continuum
A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated varie ...
in the early stages of their development, and
contact
Contact may refer to:
Interaction Physical interaction
* Contact (geology), a common geological feature
* Contact lens or contact, a lens placed on the eye
* Contact sport, a sport in which players make contact with other players or objects
* ...
between the three branches of Germanic was extensive.
Polish linguist
Witold Mańczak had argued that Gothic is closer to German (specifically
Upper German
Upper German (german: Oberdeutsch ) is a family of High German dialects spoken primarily in the southern German-speaking area ().
History
In the Old High German time, only Alemannic and Bairisch are grouped as Upper German. In the Middle High ...
) than to Scandinavian and suggests that their ancestral homeland was located southernmost part of the Germanic territories, close to present-day Austria rather than in Scandinavia.
Frederik Kortlandt
Frederik Herman Henri (Frits) Kortlandt (born 19 June 1946) is a Dutch former professor of descriptive and comparative linguistics at Leiden University in the Netherlands. He writes on Baltic and Slavic languages, the Indo-European languages in g ...
has agreed with Mańczak's hypothesis, stating: "I think that his argument is correct and that it is time to abandon Iordanes' classic view that the Goths came from Scandinavia."
Influence
The reconstructed
Proto-Slavic
Proto-Slavic (abbreviated PSl., PS.; also called Common Slavic or Common Slavonic) is the unattested, reconstructed proto-language of all Slavic languages. It represents Slavic speech approximately from the 2nd millennium B.C. through the 6th ...
language features several apparent
borrowed words from East Germanic (presumably Gothic), such as , "bread", vs. Gothic .
The
Romance languages
The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language fam ...
of
Iberia
The Iberian Peninsula (),
**
* Aragonese and Occitan: ''Peninsula Iberica''
**
**
* french: Péninsule Ibérique
* mwl, Península Eibérica
* eu, Iberiar penintsula also known as Iberia, is a peninsula in southwestern Europe, defi ...
also preserve several loanwords from Gothic, such as
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
(warm clothing), from Gothic (*, “companion, comrade”); (goose), from Gothic (, "goose"); (glove), from Gothic (, “palm of the hand”); and (truce), from Gothic (, “treaty; covenant”).
Use in Romanticism and the Modern Age
J. R. R. Tolkien
Several linguists have made use of Gothic as a creative language. The most famous example is "" ("Flower of the Trees") by
J. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (, ; 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer and philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings''.
From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was the Rawlins ...
, part of ''
Songs for the Philologists
''Songs for the Philologists'' is a collection of poems by E. V. Gordon and J. R. R. Tolkien as well as traditional songs. It is the rarest and most difficult to find Tolkien-related book. Originally a collection of typescripts compiled by Gordo ...
''. It was published privately in 1936 for Tolkien and his colleague
E. V. Gordon
Eric Valentine Gordon (14 February 1896 – 29 July 1938) was a Canadian philologist, known as an editor of medieval Germanic texts and a teacher of medieval Germanic languages at the University of Leeds and the University of Manchester.
Early ...
.
Tolkien's use of Gothic is also known from a letter from 1965 to Zillah Sherring. When Sherring bought a copy of
Thucydides
Thucydides (; grc, , }; BC) was an Athenian historian and general. His ''History of the Peloponnesian War'' recounts the fifth-century BC war between Sparta and Athens until the year 411 BC. Thucydides has been dubbed the father of "scientifi ...
' ''
History of the Peloponnesian War
The ''History of the Peloponnesian War'' is a historical account of the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), which was fought between the Peloponnesian League (led by Sparta) and the Delian League (led by Athens). It was written by Thucydides, an ...
'' in Salisbury, she found strange inscriptions in it; after she found his name in it, she wrote him a letter and asked him if the inscriptions were his, including the longest one on the back, which was in Gothic. In his reply to her he corrected some of the mistakes in the text; he wrote for example that should be and ("of those books"), which he suggested should be ("of this book"). A semantic inaccuracy of the text which he mentioned himself is the use of for read, while this was . Tolkien also made a
calque
In linguistics, a calque () or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language w ...
of his own name in Gothic in the letter, which according to him should be .
Gothic is also known to have served as the primary inspiration for Tolkien's
invented language
A constructed language (sometimes called a conlang) is a language whose phonology, grammar, and vocabulary, instead of having developed natural language, naturally, are consciously devised for some purpose, which may include being devised for a ...
, Taliska which, in
his legendarium, was the language spoken by the race of Men during the
First Age before being displaced by another of his invented languages,
Adûnaic. , Tolkien's Taliska grammar has not been published.
Others
On 10 February 1841, the published a reconstruction in Gothic of the Creed of
Ulfilas
Ulfilas (–383), also spelled Ulphilas and Orphila, all Latinisation of names, Latinized forms of the unattested Gothic language, Gothic form *𐍅𐌿𐌻𐍆𐌹𐌻𐌰 Wulfila, literally "Little Wolf", was a Goths, Goth of Cappadocian Ancie ...
.
The Thorvaldsen museum also has an alliterative poem, "", from 1841 by
Massmann, the first publisher of the Skeireins, written in the Gothic language. It was read at a great feast dedicated to Thorvaldsen in the Gesellschaft der Zwanglosen in
Munich
Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...
on July 15, 1841. This event is mentioned by
Ludwig von Schorn
Johann Karl Ludwig Schorn, after 1838 von Schorn (10 June 1793, Castell - 17 February 1842, Weimar) was a German art historian and university Professor. His second wife was the poet, .
Biography
From 1811 to 1814, he studied evangelical theo ...
in the magazine from the 19th of July, 1841. Massmann also translated the academic
commercium song
Commercium songs are traditional academic songs that are sung during academic feasts: commercia and tablerounds.
Some very old commercium songs are in Latin, like '' Meum est propositum'' or '' Gaudeamus igitur''.
In some countries, hundreds ...
into Gothic in 1837.
In 2012, professor Bjarne Simmelkjær Hansen of the
University of Copenhagen
The University of Copenhagen ( da, Københavns Universitet, KU) is a prestigious public university, public research university in Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in ...
published a translation into Gothic of for
Roots of Europe
Roots of Europe (full name: Roots of Europe – Language, Culture, and Migrations) is an interdisciplinary research centre at the University of Copenhagen, focusing on prehistoric Europe. It is headed by Birgit Anette Olsen (2008-2013 by Jens Elme ...
.
In , an online magazine for art and literature, the poem of Dutch poet Bert Bevers appeared in a Gothic translation.
''
Alice in Wonderland'' has been translated into Gothic () by David Carlton in 2015 and is published by
Michael Everson
Michael Everson (born January 9, 1963) is an American and Irish linguist, script encoder, typesetter, type designer and publisher. He runs a publishing company called Evertype, through which he has published over a hundred books since 2006.
H ...
.
Examples
See also
*
Geats
*
Gutes
The Gutes (old west norse ''Gotar'', old gutnish ''Gutar'') were a North Germanic tribe inhabiting the island of Gotland. The ethnonym is related to that of the ''Goths'' (''Gutans''), and both names were originally Proto-Germanic *''Gutaniz'' ...
*
List of Germanic languages
*
Modern Gutnish
*
Name of the Goths
The name of the Goths is one of the most discussed topics in Germanic philology. It is first recorded by Greco-Roman writers in the 3rd century AD, although names that are probably related appear earlier. Derived from Proto-Germanic *''Gutōz'' ~ ...
*
Old Gutnish
Old Gutnish or Old Gotlandic was a North Germanic language spoken on the Baltic Sea, Baltic island of Gotland. It shows sufficient differences from the Old West Norse and Old East Norse dialects that it is considered to be a separate branch. ...
*
Thurneysen's law
References
Sources
* G. H. Balg: ''A Gothic grammar with selections for reading and a glossary''. New York: Westermann & Company, 1883
archive.org.
* G. H. Balg: ''A comparative glossary of the Gothic language with especial reference to English and German''. New York: Westermann & Company, 1889
archive.org.
*
* W. Braune and E. Ebbinghaus, ''Gotische Grammatik'', 17th edition 1966, Tübingen
** 20th edition, 2004. (hbk), (pbk)
*
Fausto Cercignani
Fausto Cercignani (; born March 21, 1941) is an Italian scholar, essayist and poet.
Biography
Born to Tuscan parents, Fausto Cercignani studied in Milan, where he graduated in foreign languages and literatures with a dissertation dealing with ...
, "The Development of the Gothic Short/Lax Subsystem", in ''Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung'', 93/2, 1979, pp. 272–278.
*
Fausto Cercignani
Fausto Cercignani (; born March 21, 1941) is an Italian scholar, essayist and poet.
Biography
Born to Tuscan parents, Fausto Cercignani studied in Milan, where he graduated in foreign languages and literatures with a dissertation dealing with ...
, "The Reduplicating Syllable and Internal Open Juncture in Gothic", in ''Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung'', 93/1, 1979, pp. 126–132.
*
Fausto Cercignani
Fausto Cercignani (; born March 21, 1941) is an Italian scholar, essayist and poet.
Biography
Born to Tuscan parents, Fausto Cercignani studied in Milan, where he graduated in foreign languages and literatures with a dissertation dealing with ...
, "The ''Enfants Terribles'' of Gothic 'Breaking': ''hiri, aiþþau'', etc.", in ''The Journal of Indo-European Studies'', 12/3–4, 1984, pp. 315–344.
*
Fausto Cercignani
Fausto Cercignani (; born March 21, 1941) is an Italian scholar, essayist and poet.
Biography
Born to Tuscan parents, Fausto Cercignani studied in Milan, where he graduated in foreign languages and literatures with a dissertation dealing with ...
, "The Development of the Gothic Vocalic System", in ''Germanic Dialects: Linguistic and Philological Investigations'', edited by Bela Brogyanyi and Thomas Krömmelbein, Amsterdam and Philadelphia, Benjamins, 1986, pp. 121–151.
* N. Everett, "Literacy from Late Antiquity to the early Middle Ages, c. 300–800 AD", ''The Cambridge Handbook of Literacy'', ed. D. Olson and N. Torrance (Cambridge, 2009), pp. 362–385.
*
Carla Falluomini
Carla Falluomini (born 1970) is an Italian philologist who specializes on Gothic and Lombardic palaeography, languages and cultures. She is currently professor at the University of Perugia.
Biography
Carla Falluomini was born in 1970 in Ferrara ...
, "Traces of Wulfila's Bible Translation in Visigothic Gaul", ''Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik'' 80 (2020) pp. 5-24.
* W. Krause, ''Handbuch des Gotischen'', 3rd edition, 1968, Munich.
* Thomas O. Lambdin, ''An Introduction to the Gothic Language'', Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2006, Eugene, Oregon.
*
* F. Mossé, ''Manuel de la langue gotique'', Aubier Éditions Montaigne, 1942
*
E Prokosch, ''A Comparative Germanic Grammar'', 1939, The Linguistic Society of America for Yale University.
* Irmengard Rauch, ''Gothic Language: Grammar, Genetic Provenance and Typology, Readings'', Peter Lang Publishing Inc; 2nd Revised edition, 2011
* C. Rowe, "The problematic Holtzmann’s Law in Germanic", ''Indogermanische Forschungen'', Bd. 108, 2003. 258–266.
*
*
*
Wilhelm Streitberg Wilhelm August Streitberg (23 February 1864, in Rüdesheim am Rhein – 19 August 1925, in Leipzig) was a German Indo-Europeanist, specializing in Germanic languages. Together with Karl Brugmann he founded the ''Indogermanische Forschungen'' j ...
, ''Die gotische Bibel '', 4th edition, 1965, Heidelberg
*
Joseph Wright Joseph Wright may refer to:
*Joseph Wright of Derby (1734–1797), English painter
*Joseph Wright (American painter) (1756–1793), American portraitist
*Joseph Wright (fl. 1837/1845), whose company, Messrs. Joseph Wright and Sons, became the Metro ...
,
Grammar of the Gothic language', 2nd edition, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1966
** 2nd edition, 1981 reprint by Oxford University Press,
External links
Portal for information on Gothic (in German)
– early (Public Domain) editions of several of the references.
* Texts:
*
The Gothic Bible in Latin alphabet*
The Gothic Bible in Ulfilan script (Unicode text) from Wikisource*
has Streitberg's ''Gotische Bibel'' and Crimean Gothic material after Busbecq.
*
Wulfila Project*
Skeireins ProjectA website with the Skeireins including translations in Latin, German, French, Swedish, English, Dutch, Greek, Italian and Icelandic.
Gothic Onlineby Todd B. Krause and Jonathan Slocum, free online lessons at th
Linguistics Research Centerat the
University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,07 ...
Gothic ReadingsVideo clips in Gothic language
Gothic basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical DatabaseA page with information about the discovered Bononiensa fragment from 2013
an online collection of introductory videos to Ancient Indo-European languages produced by the University of Göttingen
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gothic Language
East Germanic languages
Extinct languages of Europe
Extinct languages of Spain
Gothic writing
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Languages of Portugal
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