[gothic-l] Re: The Language of the Goths

[Stephen Mark Carey]

> Hi,
>
> I am not a linguist, but as far as I know the only west Germanic
> language/dialect that borrowed a number of words from Gothic is
> Bavarian. Most of the Gothic words in Bavarian are detectable only or
> among others by the fact that they are exclusive to Bavarian.

Well "bavarian" and "alemannic" are "high" German -- Examples of Gothic
influence limited to bavarian are of course not the only exampls -- gothic
it a germanic language --with share influences of other languages in the
family  are some  examples off the top of my head - which also show
gothic's place as a  germanic language in general. The
shifts from Gothic to  High German do indicate a signfigant
cutural interaction or  amalgamations.  In any case Gothic
IS a germanic language -- a germanic  language that does not undergo the
2nd shift -- like ALL of the  Skandinavian languages. So if you go back
2,000 years before the common  era, and conjecture a group roaming around
in Poland presumably speaking Indo-European (before the centum/satem
divide?) -- can we really call this  group "Goths"?  aren't they then
Proto-Goths, or something of that nature?

Go. slepan   -- OHG slaffan
Go. etum     -- OHG azum
Go. mikils   -- OHG mihhil
Go. twai     -- OHG zwei
Go. hairto   -- OHG herza
Go. drigkan  -- OHG trikhan






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