[gothic-l] Re: International

Fri Aug 20 15:38:46 UTC 2004

Hails Fredrik!

First, here's a revised version with the right number of syllables, 
and closer in meaning to the original too I think (although the 
second verse also borrows something from the German one):

Usstandith allans huhraus bandjans!
Usstandith uswaurpos thiude!
So unraihteins skal suns gaandjan:
atist airtha batizei.

Thos fairnjons bandjos nu aflagjith!
Urreisand aftra hlains jah dal.
Jus harjis thiwe us! Framthragjith!
Ni waiht, habam wairthan all.

Haifst tho spediston haifstjam,
uns gagahaftjandans.
Alathiudaliuth laistoth,
gawidan alamans.

Literally:
Arise ye prisoners of hunger!  Arise ye outcasts of the nations!  
Injustice shall soon end: a better world is at hand.
Let us put aside the old chains.  Hill and dale will rise anew.  Up 
ye army of slaves!  Run forwards!  [We are] nothing, we will be all.
The last fight let us fight, uniting together.  The International 
Song succeeds in joining all human kind.

(I'm not entiresly sure of the syntax to use with *LAISTON as this is 
an etymological reconstruction from Koebler's dictionary, and not 
attested.  An alternative might be "Alathiudaliuth maisto / gawidith 
alamans" (the greatest song of all nations), but that might sound a 
bit clunky/awkward.  I've yet to think of a good Gothic rhyme for 
THATA INTAIRNATSJONALO.  Some alternative translations I wondered 
about: gathiudalith, alathiudasaggws, etc.)

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "Fredrik" <gadrauhts at h...> wrote:
> Hails, Llama Nom!
> 
> --- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "llama_nom" <penterakt at f...> wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > If we treat "The International" like an adjective made into an 
> > abstract definite noun, I reckon it would probably be neuter: 
thata 
> > Intairnatsjonalo (cf. thata ubilo).  (With AI to represent the 
> > short /e/ sound.)
> 
> Is that a common/usual way to create nouns out of adjectives?
> Do they always becomes neuter? What stem does these nouns, could it 
> possibly be n-stems / weak nouns?

Probably the most common and productive methods for making abstract 
nouns from adjectives in Gothic are the feminine suffixes -ei and -
itha.  Examples of abstract neuter on-stems from adjectives are: 
THATA GODO 'good, goodness', and THATA UBILO 'evil', which also 
appears as a strong a-stem THATA UBIL.  I think I suggested THATA 
INTAIRNATSJONALO though because it's a concrete noun: the 
International [thing/song].  Cf. thata andwairtho 'the present 
[moment]'; thata anawairtho 'the future'; thata managizo þaim 'that 
which is more than these'; thata samo 'the same [thing]', etc...  
Where there is no noun stated neuter is the obvious choice, so where 
English might say "the red one", Gothic would say "thata raudo" (made 
up example), like German: "das Rote", Swedish: det röda (Is that 
right?).

> Btw, the usage of ai and au for monoftongs, should it be au in e.g. 
> aúrþo- for ortho- in e.g. orthodoxy?

Loanwords from Greek and Latin into Gothic have AU in place of Latin 
short /o/ and Greek omicron, not only before R.  Similarly Latin 
short /e/ and Greek epsilon become Gothic AI.  (I mostly miss off the 
accents because they're hard to get on this keyboard...)  For 
instance, Lat. November > Got. Naubaimbair.

> > That takes a bit of liberty with GADETH, since the GA- is usually 
> > considered to have been stressed in nouns & adjectives, unlike in 
> Old 
> > English and modern German.  But it's probably acceptable, since 
the 
> > root DETH must have had a quite strong secondary stress. 
> 
> Is it always the syllable of ga- that has the stress in words with 
ga-
>  prefix? 
> >
> > 
> Are there any more rules of where the stresses should be?
> I guess this is where i'm worst about gothic.

The traditional view is that all words have their main stress on the 
first syllable except for verbs, which have their main stress on the 
first syllable of the root not counting prefixes (which are 
unstressed).  E.g.:

us-WAIRP-an (verb)
US-waurp-a (noun)

and-NIM-an (verb)
ANDA-nems (adjective)

ga-RAID-jan (verb)
GA-raid-eins (noun)

The older stressed form of this prefix can be seen in Old English 
geatwe 'armour' (in compounds: -getawe), but otherwise in Old English 
ge- is unstressed wherever it occurs.

Of course, in longer words there must have been secondary stresses 
somewhere in Gothic.  But there is little information about where 
these might have fallen.  It has been suggested that there must have 
been a secondary stress on the first GA of words like ga-ga-haftjan, 
ga-ga-mainjan, etc.  Other clues might be found in Old English and 
Old Norse verse.  Since these occasionally make a seconadary stress 
count as a full stress, for the sake of the metre, we might have a 
bit of freedom there.  There is a natural tendency in many languages 
not to have strong stresses close together, and to alternate between 
stronger and weaker stresses.  But awarness of the semantic elements 
of the word might counteract this sometimes.  Since the other 
Germanic languages de-stressed the ga- prefix, and placed the stress 
on the root, it could have been the root that had the secondary 
stress in Gothic (...unless in Old English, etc. the change just came 
about by analogy with the verbs, which is quite possible).  For a 
generalised change of secondary to primary stress, cf. the difference 
between Polish & Czech.

I also wonder about a verb like ATWISAN 'to be near at hand'.  Since 
the meaning depends more on the AT than WISAN, it would be easy to 
imagine the prefix having more emphasis sometimes, as perhaps in the 
fourth line of my latest version.  Maybe it depended a bit on the 
context, just as in English you might stress something that wasn't 
normally stressed if that was especially important to the meaning, or 
to make a contrast.

Another thing I've wondered, is whether Gothic had a lexically 
significant pitch accent besides the stress accent, like Swedish!  
But I don't know of any evidence one way of the other.

> > Afwairpam bandjom midjungardis.
> > Was aftra gasatiths hlains jah dal.
> > Nist nauths uns stauins aiththau wardis.
> > Ni waiht, weis habam wairthan all.
> > 
> This is a good version too. Does the first sentence mean smth 
> like 'we throw off the chains of the world'?
> About 'bandi' does it mean 'chain' or could it probably mean 
> band/bond too?

Yes, that's right: BANDI means literally 'bond'.  It has a lot of 
synonyms in Gothic, but I'm not sure if any of them meant 
specifically 'chain' to the exclusion of other types of restraint.  I 
don't think there are any clues in the etymologies, although EISARNA 
is literally 'irons'.  I guess you could look at the Greek words they 
translate and investigate how these were used in New Testament times; 
and see if there are any hints in the use of Germanic cognates, but 
still we might never know for sure.

I rejected that line anyway because "chains of the world" is a bit 
ambiguous (more like The Gnostic International!), and the original 
sense is of getting rid of tradition and the tyranny of the past, 
rather than the world in general.

> > 
> > (-wairpan can take dative or accusative)  "We have no need of 
> > judges/rulers or guards."  (Compare Portuguese: não mais 
> senhores!)  
> > That's probably saying the same as all the versions which have 
the 
> > theme of "no more in thrall", no masters = no slaves.  
> >
> In the swedish version we have 'slav, stig upp för att slå dig 
fri!' 
> which means 'thrall, arise to break free.' The signification is the 
> same. Did you have anything of this meaning in your first version? 

See the new version.  There is actually attested in Gothic: so sunja 
frijans izwis briggith "the truth will make you free"  So we could 
have: Thius, usstand ei thuk freis briggais!  Masculine adjectives 
and pronouns seem to be used by default where no individual of a 
specific sex is mentioned, although a male/female pair can be 
described with a neuter adjective/pronoun.  Mixed groups often have 
masculine adjectives, but where at least one woman is specifically 
mentioned in the sentance neuter is used.

That said, it might be preferable (politically) to avoid gender 
specific grammar where possible.

> > 
> > 
> > 
> I also have some completely different questions.
> Did the goths have anything like 'good day' for greeting or did 
they 
> use anything else? If they used it how did they say it?
> I've thought about it and at first I thought 'goþs dags', which 
> litteraly means good day. But then I thought 'godan dag'. You 
> probably know what i'm thinking about there. The adjective is 
> masculine singular accusative and weak, the noun is also masculine 
> accusative singular. As model I've used german 'guten tag' which 
has 
> that form because of it could fit in the sentence 'ich wünsche dir 
> einen guten tag' = I wish you a good day, with 'you' in dative 
> and 'day' in accusative.
> The whole sentence could be smth like this in gothic, maybe:
> Ik gairnja þus ainana godan dag. (The word for 'wish' that I used 
> isn't probably the right one but you probably understand it anyway 
i 
> hope)
> > 

Good thinking.  You're probably right about GODANA DAG, a version of 
which is actually attested in Crimean Gothic: knauen tag.  How 
accurately this represents the pronunciation is unclear, but it 
certainly suggests an accusative as in modern German.  Maybe the full 
unstated wish would be: habais godana dag 'may you have a good day', 
with the subjunctive (which happens to have to same form as the 
indicative with HABAN).

GAIRNJAN, and verbs of wishing, desiring, and asking for, usually 
take the genitive case for the thing desired, e.g. L 19,31 frauja þis 
gairneiþ "the lord desires it" (literally "the lord desires of that").

There was a discussion a few months ago in this group about the use 
of HAILS in greetings and acclamations.  There is evidence to suggest 
that it could have been a greeting (like "hal!" in Old English), a 
formal salutation or acclamation ("hail, King of the Jews" J 19,3 
hails þiudans Iudaie!, Mk 15,18 hails, þiudan Iudaie!), and a toast 
said before drinking.  Literally: "[be] healthy/well".  In Old 
English it is inflected for number, so maybe you'd say in Gothic to 
more than one person HAILAI (males, or mixed group), HAILOS 
(females), HAILA (a man and a woman, or a mixed group).  Old English 
can include the verb: WES HAL 'be well', or plural WESATH HAL.  So 
maybe the Goths sometimes said: SIJAIS HAILS, SIJAITS/SIJAITH HAILAI.

There's also at Rom 6,22: golja izwis 'I greet you'.

Gawairthi,

Llama Nom

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