New to the List, Learning Gothic

[mike r]

Greetings Francisc!

 Your input was most helpful. Thank you very much! 

Salutations!

Mike

--- Francisc Czobor <fericzobor at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Hi Michael,
> 
> welcome to the Gothic List!
> Here you will find for sure people sharing your
> interest, even 
> fascination, for the Gothic language.
> Regarding the things that you find "confusing", they
> are confusing 
> you just because you expect the Gothic to be a sort
> of English in a 
> little bit different phonetic clothing. But no,
> Gothic is not 
> English. It is a Germanic language indeed, but
> structurally it stays 
> closer (from the modern Germanic languages) to
> German and Icelandic 
> than to English.
> So, for instance, Modern English uses a single form
> of the definite 
> artice: "the", regardless gender, number and case,
> unlike Old English 
> and the other Germanic languages, including Gothic.
> "Sa" is the 
> Gothic definite article for masculine, singular,
> nominative, 
> whereas "thai" is the definite article for
> masculine, plural, 
> nominative.
> "Do not" or "does not" are typical English
> expressions, you won't 
> find anything similar in any other Germanic
> language, including 
> Gothic. Thus, "the hound doesn't bite" is in Gothic
> "The hound not 
> bite" (Sa hunds ni beitith). In German there is
> still another 
> construction: "The hound bites not" (Der Hund beisst
> nicht).
> Regarding verb endings, Gothic has a conjugation
> with different 
> endings for different persons and numbers; thus, "to
> bite" in 
> indicative present is:
> ik beita "I bite"
> thu beitis "thou bite"
> is/si/ita beitith "he/she/it bites"
> wit beitos "we two bite"
> jut beitats "you two bite"
> weis beitan "we bite"
> jus beitith "you bite"
> eis/ijos/ija beitand "they bite".
> 
> beitan is the infinitive form of the verb (like in
> German beissen, 
> for instance, corresponding to the English "to
> bite"); "beit" is just 
> a word root, it never occurs independently (i.e.
> without any ending) 
> in Gothic.
> 
> Good luck with your Gothic studies!
> 
> Francisc
> 
> --- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "Mike"
> <raging_viking at y...> wrote:
> >
> > Greetings!
> > 
> >  I am new to the list and I joined because of my
> research into the
> > Gothic language. I think that it is a very
> beautiful, fascinating, 
> and
> > complex language and I am having alot of fun
> learning it. 
> > 
> >  I am amazed by how many modern english words can
> be transmuted into
> > Gothic with a high degree of accuracy, and I am
> even taking some
> > amusing liberties with it, for an example I turned
> the word "jive"
> > into a gothic equivalant: jeivan just by following
> the rules of the
> > ablaut (i turns into ei and the e at the end is
> dropped and is
> > replaced with -an).
> > 
> >  This is the very first language that I have ever
> attempted outside 
> of
> > English. Some of it is a bit confusing, for an
> example, they use the
> > word "the" in two different contextes, for an
> example:
> > 
> > Example of Sa used:
> > Sa hunds ni beitith
> > The hound [do]not bite.
> > 
> > Example of Thai used:
> > Thai wulfos beitand
> > The wolves bite
> > 
> > And if you look above, "ni" means "do not" or
> "does not", yet the 
> word
> > "does" is not in front of "ni"! Why is this? 
> > 
> > And for some reason, if the noun is singular, the
> verb ends with -
> ith,
> > but if the noun being referred to is plural, the
> verb ends with -
> and.
> > I am also wondering why the present singular
> strong verb "beitan" 
> ends
> > with -an, why not just "beit"? 
> > 
> >  Just so many questions....I'm hoping that there
> will be someone who
> > will be willing to answer some of my questions.
> > 
> > Salutations!
> > Michael
> >
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 


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