Some pronunciation questions

Fri Feb 3 09:43:16 UTC 2006

Thank you very much for your info bout this.

I guess the pronunciation of gothic is a part that is as difficult 
and important to learn as the rest.
I also now realize that I know very little about pronunciation, both 
in gothic and on the whole.

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "llama_nom" <600cell at ...> wrote:
>
> 
> Some background:
> 
> Braune [ 
> 
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~kurisuto/germanic/goth_braune_about.html#i
> mages ].
> 
> Wright [ 
> 
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~kurisuto/germanic/goth_wright_about.html#i
> mages ].
> 
> Streitberg [ http://www.wulfila.be/lib/streitberg/1920/ ].
> 
> Although these text books disagree with each other on some points, 
> they're all worth a read.  The two German ones especially go into 
> the reasoning behind their proposed pronunciations and mention 
> alternative proposals.  For pronunciation, Braune seems the most 
> reasonable to me on the whole (note: I have a later edition to the 
> one online at the Germanic Lexicon Project, expanded slightly), 
> although Streitberg has some extra interesting details.
> 
> 
> > g   [x], ch as in 'Bach'   finally, or before s, t.
> > This means dags and dag is pronounced with [x]
> 
> 
> As Wright suggests.  The reasoning behind this is partly for the 
> sake of symmetry.  /b/ and /d/ are usually spelt <f> and <þ> 
finally 
> or before s, t.  The spelling <magt> might imply that <g> could 
> sometimes stand for a voiceless sound.  Elsewhere /g/ is written 
<h> 
> before /t/, e.g. <mahta> versus <mag>, <ohta> versus <og>.  But if 
> Wright is right, it's strange that <g> and <h> are never confused 
at 
> the end of a word except for <aig> and <aih>, where the confusion 
> goes throughout the paradigm.  Still, this is the system I'm 
> following till I know better.
> 
> 
> > but daga and dagis with 
> > [g].
> 
> By <g> in "north German sagen", it means a fricative [G], see the 
> chart of upper-case symbols here [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-
> SAMPA ].  That is the pronunciation suggested by Wright.  In favour 
> of a fricative pronunciation is the fact that Latin writers 
> sometimes miss out the <g> between vowels, when spelling Gothic 
> names, especially when it comes before a front vowel.  Streitberg's 
> reasoning based on "intonation" is considered flawed nowadays, but 
I 
> don't understand it, so I can't comment.
> 
> > D is [ð] and b is [v] medially after vowel or diphthong.
> > OK for ð, but b as v...that means hlaiba has [v].
> > Well, this also means naubaimbair has v...but that's a exception.
> 
> Braune (or at least the edition I have) lists Gothic personal names 
> where medial /b/ is spelt by Latin writers with a <v>.  Wright 
> suggests a voiced bilabial fricative [B], as medially in Spanish, 
> which sounds very similar.
> 
> 
> > E [ē], a as in 'gate'...as far as I know 'gate' is not 
> pronounced as 
> > [gēt] but more as [geit]...and I don't think they mean that 
> mena is 
> > pronounced as [meina].
> 
> You're right, as far as the usual standard pronunciations of 
British 
> and American English go, although there are some dialects which do 
> preserve the simple long vowel [e:].  I think the authors are just 
> offering this as the nearest English equivalent, which is why they 
> say "a rough guide to pronunciation".  
> 
> 
> > H [x], ch as in 'Bach'....this goes for the combination ht and 
> initial 
> > with hr, hl etc. but alone? I wouldn't say hunds as [xunds].
> 
> 
> Lower down the page you may have noticed: "It is also likely that h 
> is in Wulfila's time closer to the h of Modern English 'he' than it 
> is to the ch of 'Bach', and similarly with hv."  I use the 
following 
> system, based on what I've read in the textbooks mentioned above, 
> but I'm open to any suggestions:
> 
> hlaifs [xlaifs]
> hrains [xrains]
> hunds [hunts]
> slahan [slahan]
> hloh [xlo:x]
> 
> hvaiwa [w_0aiwa]
> saihvan [sEw_0an]
> sahv [sax\]
> 
> [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-SAMPA ]
> 
> 
> > W as [u] when final...this I can agree with, but didn't know...is 
> this 
> > like this? Waúrstw as [worstu]???
> 
> 
> An alternative suggestion favoured by the textbooks is that final 
> <w> wasn't syllabic, but just indicates that the final consonant 
was 
> pronounced with final lip-rounding, thus:
> 
> sagq [saNk_w]
> triggw [trig:_w]
> þiwadw [þiwað_w]
> 
> In favour of a syllabic pronunciation is the spelling <engus> in 
the 
> Vienna-Salzburg codex.  In favour of a non-syllablic pronunciation 
> is the parallel with <sagq>, and the lack of any general spelling 
> fluctuation between final <u> and <w>.  But note the regular 
> change /w/ > /u/ after a short monosyllabic root: PG *skadwaz > Go. 
> skadus.  The Vienna-Salzburg codex was written long after Wulfilas 
> time and may indicate a change in Gothic pronunciation, or it might 
> be due to confusion on the part of a High German speaker who 
> transcribed the Gothic words.
> 
>  
> > Iu [íu], eu as in 'reuse'. Isn't this two syllables? If it's two 
> then 
> > it aint no diphthong as I think it should be.
> 
> 
> You're absolutely right as far as my British English pronunciation 
> goes [%r\i:"ju:s].  I also stress it on the second syllable.  The 
> Gothic sound is usually taken to have been a falling diphthong in 
> words such as <biudan>; that is, with the emphasis on the first 
> element of the diphthong.  We can tell that it was a diphthong 
> because some of the Gothic texts (though not all of them) follow 
the 
> rule that diphthongs are never split in writing at the end of a 
> line.  But in some words, according to Braune, <iu> does mark two 
> syllables: niun, bi-uhts, ni-u, bi-u-gitai, sium (alternative 
> spelling <sijum>).
> 
> 
> > I might be totaly wrongm but I thought iu was pronounced more as 
> [ju] 
> > as in use...no [i] as in re-. Biudan as [bíuðan] or as [bjuðan]???
> 
> 
> I don't know if that could be disproved, but the usual 
> interpretation is that it was a falling diphthong, as originally in 
> West and North Germanic, see above.  Latin writers use <eu> in 
> spelling names.  If it was [ju] maybe Latin writers would have used 
> <i> for the first element?  (Not sure about that.)  Much later, in 
> Old Norse, it became the rising diphthong just as you describe and 
> the second element was lengthened (and lowered before dentals in 
Old 
> Icelandic).
> 
> 
> > OK...tell me what you think bout this...
> 
> I think it's a bit of a mess!  I think the explanations are not as 
> clear as they could be, and that the reasoning behind them is in 
> places illogical (see my recent posts).  The English examples 
aren't 
> always ideal, for example <with> ends in a voiced consonant for 
many 
> English speakers.  Maybe <think> would be a better example.  'Fat 
> Tuesday' isn't so good because a lot of varieties of British 
English 
> have a palatal [t_j] or the affricate [tS] at the beginning of 
> <tuesday>.  I might have chosen 'hot tap'.  But even these wouldn't 
> work for everyone.  If they had examples from a few languages it 
> would lessen the chances of confusion.
> 
> > Some words -- e.g. bliggw- 'scourge', glaggw- 'accurate', skuggw-
>  'mirror', triggw- 'faithful' -- may have contained a true 
prolonged 
> g as in (a slow pronunciation of) English 'doggone', but this has 
> probably given way to the sound [N] by the time of Wulfila's 
> translation.
> 
> Probably?  I don't remember reading this before.  [g:] > [N] (or do 
> they mean [Ng]?) seems unlikely in view of Latin spellings of the 
> names Triggua, Trigguilla.  <gg> is usually considered to have been 
> an ambiguous spelling, standing for [g:] or [Ng] depending on the 
> etymology.
> 
> > By the same token, given the fact that the same spelling mistakes 
> are made in several languages of the other branches of Germanic, it 
> is possible that the distinctions were never actually as clean as 
> the historical linguist would like. 
> 
> This is very vague.  I don't know what they're referring to.
> 
> > The resonants l, m, n, r may also function as vowels. For 
example: 
> fugls 'bird', máiþms 'treasure', táikns 'token', ligrs 'bed'. 
> 
> Most accounts I've read agree, but some think that these were non-
> syllabic.  The oldest Old English poetry apparently shows a stage 
in 
> the language before such consonants became syllabic, but then there 
> are spellings in Jordanes that suggest that they were syllabic at 
> this time in Gothic.
> 
> But I quibble.  It's still a nice thing to have online.  Especially 
> for the stuff on Crimean Gothic.
> 
> Llama Nom
>

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