Comparing languages. Examples [gothic-l]

[Francisc Czobor]

Hi Cory,

--- In gothic-l at y..., Cory B Strohmier <corystrohmier at j...> wrote:
> ... for example, Gothic has two words 
for
> "father":  "atta" and "fadar"; Old High German has "fater."  Bishop
> Wulfila wrote:  "Atta unsar"; the Old High German scribes wrote:  
"Fater
> unser."  The texts seem far apart.  Yet Bishop Wulfila could have
> written:  "Fadar unsar,"  and the presence in Middle High German of 
the
> word "Etzel" (from Gothic Attila, meaning "Little Father") may point 
to
> an Old High German form of "atta", which may have dropped out as a 
result
> of the scribes choosing "Fater."  In any case, a comparision of the
> actual texts would make the two languages seem further apart than 
what
> they actually are.
> ...

In fact, Wulfila uses mostly "atta", and "fadar" appears only once in 
the whole Silver Bible. The fact that the Goths preferred "atta" 
instead of "fadar" is proved also by the fact that they called the 
Hunish king Attila "little father", and not *Fadrila.
The presence of "Etzel" in the Niebelungenlied is due, in my opinion, 
not to the existence of an OHG correspondent of Gothic atta, but to 
the borrowing of the name from the Gothic saga, together with Dietrich 
(< Theodoric/Þiudareiks) etc. The shift t>tz is due, I think, to the 
fact that the word was borrowed into OHG at a time when the second 
consonant shift was still active (around A.D. 500).
Regarding the relationship of Gothic with OHG, especially Old 
Bavarian, I wrote largerly in an earlier message to this list (no. 
2225). This relationship is however interpreted not through a Gothic 
origin of OHG or Old Bavarian, but rather of a Gothic influence, that 
was explained in two ways:
1. OHG owes a series of loanwords to Gothic, respectively to the
Gothic mission and its influence on the High German, especially 
Bavarian church language. 
2. According to other sources, since a Gothic mission in Bavaria is 
not historically attested and few probable, having in view the 
tolerance of the Arian-Gothic Christianity, the relations between 
Gothic and southern OHG (especially O. Bav.) are more probably due to 
the influence of Gothic-Christian population groups on the mixed 
people of the Bavarians, that appeared suddenly about A.D. 500. 
Probably that after the defeat of the Ostrogoths in Italy, some of 
their remnants migrated northwards and participated in the 
ethnogenesis of the Bavarian people, giving them some words and the 
legend of Theodoric the Great (which became Dietrich von Bern in the 
German mediaeval epic).

With best regards,

Francisc


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