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The Gothic language (gutiska razda, 𐌲𐌿𐍄𐌹𐍃𐌺) is a Germanic language known to us by a translation of the Bible dating from the 4th century. The language is Germanic but has major differences from other known Germanic languages. It is the only East Germanic language with a sizeable corpus; the others, including Burgundian and Vandalic, are known, if at all, only from proper names.
The Gothic Bible
See also Gothic language fragments.
The Gothic bible translation has only been preserved fragmentarily. The translation was apparently done in the Balkans region by people in close contact with Greek Christian culture and is traditionally ascribed to bishop Ulfilas. It appears that the Gothic Bible was used by the Visigoths in Spain until circa 700 AD, and perhaps for a time in Italy, the Balkans and what is now Ukraine.
Gothic language New Testament texts are preserved in the Codex Argenteus, the Codex Ambrosianus, and in some palimpsests and in other fragments, such as the Codex Carolinus in Wolfenbüttel. In exterminating Arianism, many texts in Gothic will have been expunged, and overwritten as palimpsests, or collected and burned. Apart from these texts from the New Testament, the only other Gothic document, and the only text known to us that was originally composed in the Gothic language, is the "Skeireins", a few pages of commentary on the Gospel of John.
Other attestations
In addition, there are numerous short fragments and Runic inscriptions that are known to be or suspected to be Gothic. Some scholars believe that these inscriptions are not at all Gothic (see Braune/Ebbinghaus "Gotische Grammatik" Tübingen 1981)
There are very few references to the Gothic language in secondary sources after about 800 AD, so perhaps it was rarely used by that date. In evaluating medieval texts that mention the Goths, it must be noted that many writers used "Goths" to mean any Germanic people in eastern Europe, 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.
There is also the case of the "Crimean Goths". A few fragments of their language dating to the 16th century exist today. Assuming those fragments are genuine, it appears to be a different language from the one used in the Gothic Bible (but is still certainly Germanic).
Alphabet
See Gothic alphabet.
The Gothic Bible and Skeireins were written using a special alphabet, probably created by bishop Ulfilas for his translation. Some scholars (e.g. Braune) claim that it was derived from the Greek alphabet only, while others maintain that there are some Gothic letters of runic or Latin origin.
Gothic and Old Norse
The Goths had a tradition of a Scandinavian origin. The main points cited by theories grouping North and East Germanic are:
1) The evolution of the Proto-Germanic *-jj- and *-gg- into Gothic ddj (from an older Gothic ggj?) and ggw and Old Norse ggj and ggv ("Holtzmann's law"). For instance, the Old High German genitive of zwei (two) is zweio, which is distinct from Gothic twaddje and Old Norse tveggja. Whereas German has the form treu, Gothic has triggws and modern Swedish trygg.
2) The existence of numerous inchoative verbs ending with -na, such as Gothic waknan and modern Swedish vakna.
3) Gothic is important for the understanding of the evolution of Proto-Germanic into Old Norse. For instance, the final -n in North Germanic languages, such as navn and namn (name) is explained by referring to Gothic in which namo had its plural genitive namne. Sometimes, Gothic explains forms of words found on the oldest runestones, such as the Gothic word gudja (priest) which explains the word gudija found on the runestone of Nordhuglo in Norway.
But there have also been theories grouping West and East Germanic. Today, the three groups are generally treated as derived independently from Proto-Germanic.
Gothic and the other Germanic languages
Being the first attested Germanic language, Gothic fails to display a number of traits that are shared by all other known Germanic languages. Most conspicuously, Gothic contains no morphological umlaut; the Gothic word gudja can be contrasted with the Old Norse cognate gydja ("priestess"); the Norse form contains the characteristic change /u/ > /y/ that indicates the influence of i-umlaut; the Gothic form shows no such change.
Gothic retains a passive voice inherited from Indo-European, but unattested in all other Germanic languages. Gothic preserves several verbs that display reduplication (haitan, "to be called" > haihait) in the formation of the preterit; another Indo-European inheritance that has left only a few traces in Old English, Old Norse and Old High German.
See also
External links
Wikipedia articles written in this language are located at the
Gothic language Wikipedia
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