Some questions for you who might know

Sat May 13 12:46:02 UTC 2006

Hails, Wal(h?)ahrabn!

Thanks for pointing out 'aizasmiþa'.  I'd forgotten that!  I'm sure 
d'Alquen and Marchand must mention 'kaisar' and 'kreks' somewhere; 
I'll have to look that up.  From the different forms it looks as 
if 'kaisar' was an earlier loan.  Presumably a diphthong in Pre-
Gothic at least, if ON keisari, OE cásere are anything to go by.  It 
might be impossible to tell with loans from Greek, since an older 
Greek/Gothic diphthong would be spelt the same as the later Greek 
monophthong in Gothic.

At L 14:31 there may be a word for "war" which translates Gk. 
POLEMON.  Wright takes it to be a noun 'wigana', the dative of 
either 'wigan' or 'wigans'.  But Streitberg prints 'wigan ina', 
supposing that 'wigan' is a verb and that an 'i' has been left out 
accidentally by the scribe.  The Codex Argenteus has 'wiga' + the 
nasal abbreviation mark for 'n', followed by 'na' on the next line [ 
http://www.ub.uu.se/arv/codex/faksimiledition/jpg_files/235lc14f.html
 ].  See end of line 6.  Probably simplest to see the Gothic word as 
a noun, 'wigan' (neuter suffix as 'aljan'?), related to the 
verb 'weihan' by ablaut and Verner's Law.

> The form would be Alfs F. –i (Gen. Albais)

I like your river name suggestions.  Just one point, the final 
devoicing rule (Auslautsverhärtung) doesn't apply when 'b', 'g', 'd' 
follow another consonant, so my guess for the nominative singular 
would be *Albs.

> but through Greek to which it owes initial Rh-, or maybe it's a 
later orthographic influence (like in English and German). 

According to Priebsch & Collinson (The German Language) the 'h' in 
Rhein is just a modern affectation of recent centuries, like the 'h' 
in 'Thames'.

Llama Nom

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, Guenther Ramm <ualarauans at ...> 
wrote:
>
> Hails, Frithureik!
>   Don't you forget aiza-smitha which translates Greek CALKEUS with 
a certain reference to a metal?
>   About "period". I don't know whether Koebler had sufficient 
reasons to postulate *era and *stunda as possible existent Gothic 
words. The first could easily be a misspelling (and a typical one 
for Middle Latin) in the Latin-written Lex and Chronica Regum 
Visigothorum (I must confess I did not see these primary sources) of 
the ordinary Latin aera and so have nothing to do with Gothic. If 
borrowed maybe it would rather look like *aira (cf. kaisar < Caesar, 
but at the same time there is Kreks < Graecus)? Btw, is there any 
rule of reflecting Latin –ae- / Greek –ai- in Gothic depending on 
chronology and the way (oral or scribal) of borrowing? I wonder if 
it could be connected with that discussion on the phonetic value of 
Gothic digraphs we had here lately.
>   The second (*stunda) is based on Provencal estona, but are we 
quite sure that all earlier Germanic loans in Provencal and Ibero-
Romance are unexceptionally to be ascribed to Visigoths? Could not 
some of them come e.g. via Old French ultimately from Frankish or 
Old Low German?
>   If I were asked about a word for "period", so of the attested 
words I would prefer hveila and, if constructed, something like 
*hveilalaggei "a definite length of time" – we have these stems used 
together in a sort of a stable combination Mk. 2:19 swa lagga hveila 
swe mith sis haband bruthfad, ni magun fastan – in a sense "in the 
period of the presence of the bridegroom
", Rom. 7:1 s<wa> lagga 
hveila swe libaith – "in the period of his life on earth".
>   Another word-monster of mine is *hveiladrauhsna, but that must 
be a very short period:)
>   To say "in the period of the cold war" could be something like: 
swa lagga hveila swe waihun inuh wepna, lit. "as long as they (who? –
 *Airminareiki and *Raudareiki?) fought each other without (using 
their) weapons" (pity we have no dual in the 3rd person). Or, with a 
more modern syntax, "[at] hveilalaggein waihjons thizos kaldons".
>   Here I'd like to ask what would be a Gothic word to precisely 
denote "war". I mean "war" (bellum, polemos), and not a fight 
(waihjo) or military service (drauhtinassus). Maybe it could be 
*unfrithus (after ON ófriðr) or even ungawairthi (with implicit hue 
of something un-worthy). How they called a period (hvaiwa tho 
hveilalaggein haihaitun) when their current peace treaty with the 
Roman Empire expired or was broken and there was again time to cross 
the Danube, to rob and rape? And how we would call now, for example, 
the WWII? Anthar Unfrithus this Airmingrundaus (just to keep the 
vowel alliteration, for *airmingrundus cf. OE eormengrund et sim.)? 
And, is Alabrunsts really an appropriate word for the Holocaust?
>   The problem with the Rhine, I think, is its gender: masculine in 
German and neutral in ON. Latin Rhenus comes perhaps not directly 
from Gaulish, but through Greek to which it owes initial Rh-, or 
maybe it's a later orthographic influence (like in English and 
German). The fact is that the Celtic and the Germanic forms are two 
independent developments of the same PIE river name *reinos (Celtic 
regularly has long [e:] for PIE diphthong [ei]): *Renos and *Reinaz, 
later *Riinaz respectively. The proto-meaning could be something 
like "flowing (water)" (the same root PIE rei- "to flow" in Lat. 
riuus > NE river, the difference is only in suffixes: *reinos - 
*reiwos).
>   Still, *Rein or *Reins? I would vote for the latter (masculine).
>   Of other rivers in Europe we can with some grade of certainty 
reconstruct *Donawi F. -jo (Gen. Donaujos) for the Danube proceeding 
from OHG Tuoniouui and Common Slav borrowing Dunavъ. Btw it 
also seems an originally Celtic word, and in this case Germanic 
forms seem to be borrowed from Celtic *Danuvios, where long [a:] of 
the first syllable goes regularly to long Germanic [o:], and the 
suffix –uvio- is adopted as a typical Germanic river name *agwjo.
>   As you know, the Rhine and the Danube were two principal rivers 
that divided Pax Romana and Barbaricum. Notice that the Rhine is 
(most probably) male and the Danube female – could there be some 
mythological background of this gender distribution? A myth of 
brother and sister running away from parents home (their sources are 
comparatively close to each other) and from each other after having 
committed incest (an Indo-European mythological pattern)? Well, 
that's all my fancy, but we have here experts on mythology, maybe 
they know some about it?
>   Another German river is the Elbe, which is Albis in Latin < 
Celtic and *Albiz in PG, literally "the white (river)". In ON we 
have quite a common noun elfr "river" and a lot of hydronyms in 
Sweden ending on –aelven. In fact, that's a perfect "river-word" for 
reconstructed Gothic. The form would be Alfs F. –i (Gen. Albais) and 
in compounds like *Austradalalfs for Swedish Oesterdalaelven (-en is 
a reflex of the post-positive article?).
>   Jordanes has uiscla alongside with Vistula and it is supposed to 
be corrupted Gothic. Is it *Weisla, or *Weihsla (to the stem weih-
 "holy" or weihs "village")?
>   "Dan ok Danpr" of the Edda (Rígsþula 48) allow us to speculate 
what Gothic names of Don and Dnepr were. *Danus jah *Danaprus? Both 
have the same IE root as the Danube.
>   The river flowing through Prague (Czech Republic) had a German 
name Moldau (Chech Vltava). Could it be *Muldawi (the same word 
which you proposed for Moldova, this latter was also called Moldau 
in German). Or maybe *Wulthawi "a glorious river" (see Vltava)?
>   To continue I must get a map of Europe at hand.
>   Still thinking on "China"

>   Ualarauans
> 
> 
> Fredrik <gadrauhts at ...> wrote:  So what you're saying is that the 
only attested meaning is 'money'.
> And only by comparison with other languages we can suppose the 
> meaning also could be brass, bronze and copper.
> Is the meaning metal not an option?
> 
> 
> I was in a hurry before so I forgot some of my questions so here 
are 
> some of those:
> 
> I need a word for period, and have a suggestion.
> I know there are some attested words already but maybe not in 
exactly 
> this meaning.
> We have mêl, hveila, stunda and era.
> Era btw semms to be cognate to ore, aiz and aes.
> I don't wanna use era coz it's a loan word.
> Some of the other might work but what about teiþs (i-stem).
> The pgcm word tîðiz I think means 'division of time' or 'point or 
> portion of time'. This is similar to the meaning period I think.
> What I mean by period is a specific part of the time. Like the 
cold 
> war was a period of the 20th century.
> 
> I also wanna know if there are any attested word for the rivers in 
> Europe. Especially any for Rhine?
> If not attested could it have been smth like Rein?
> The word comes from gaulish Renos so the extra h, is that from the 
> latin form Rhenus?
> 
> 
> What about the word watô in compound words?
> Some one gave a suggestion for nominative as namnadrusts.
> If namô makes namna- then watô should make watna-.
> So e.g. lack of water = watnawan (or wan watins).
> 
> 
> /Fredrik
> 
> 
> --- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "llama_nom" <600cell@> wrote:
> 
>     
> ---------------------------------
>   
> 
> 
> 
> Send instant messages to your online friends 
http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com 
> 
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