Auhjodjus Þahainais

Fri Dec 31 08:43:55 UTC 2010

 Hailai allai, þishun Johann.

Well, Johann, if I have been helpful to you about translation of The Sound of Silence, then you have been helpful to me, and given plenty to check up on and ponder. One or two things arise:

You want to render "stabbed" by a form of "stikan", which I had not realised existed. It is listed in Koebler, and if I correctly understand his rather cryptic presentation, it seems to be a reconstructed strong verb of class 5. So I think you are right that its past participle in the neuter plural would be "stikana".

As for "disskreitan" for splitting, would the preterite not be "disskrait" rather than "disskraiþ? According to Lehmann the verb is known only from Mark 14:63, where it occurs as a present participle; so if there was expected to be any anomaly in the preterite we presumably have to look at other verbs that belong to the same class and end in the same consonant; and at least four verbs fit the bill: "beitan", "andbeitan", "gasmeitan", and "inweitan". The preterite of "inweitan" occurs several times as "inwait", e.g. Matt. 8:2

  jah sai, manna þrutsfill habands durinnands inwait ina...

The preterite of "gasmeitan" occurs in John 9:6

...jah gasmait imma ana augona þata fani þamma blindin

 The preterite of "andbeitan" occurs several times as "andbait" e.g. Mark 1:25

  jah andbait ina Iesus qiþands...

As for ways of saying "like" in Gothic: "galeiks" in its various inflected forms seems to be fine for expressing an adjectival "like", e.g. you are like (= similar to) your brother. An example is Galatians 5:21

  neiþa, maurþra, drugkaneins, gabauros jah þata galeiko þaim...

This looks as if literally it is something along the lines of

  [various vices] and that [which is] like those,

and is presumably in weak declension because of its being preceded by the Gothic demonstrative or definite article.
The difficulty is with adverbial "like" (= similarly to). English is often potentially or actually ambiguous with this usage, and so it would not be surprising if other languages, especially highly inflected ones, favoured a conjunction.

So what about "galeiko" for adverbial "like" (my words like silent raindrops fell)? I had supposed that this was a Johannes innovation. However, Philippians 2:6 is said to have such a usage:

  saei in gudaskaunein wisands ni wulwa rahnida wisan sik galeiko guda, 

  who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,

Unfortunately I find the Gothic obscure, and on turning to the original Greek, that obscure also, though interestingly it appears to have an adjectival (neuter plural) "like". Help from others better able to understand the original and its Wulfilian rendition would be welcome.

On to verse 5. I had questioned "wreitan" as a rendition of the verb "write", but on checking I see that it is listed in Koebler as a reconstructed strong verb of class 1.

My last quibble was about the omission of an explicit reference to any prophet. Whether "waurd" in Gothic has any tendency to mean specifically a prophetic utterance I have not been able to ascertain. But in a context where writing is on a wall, it might be a reasonable liberty to assume it anyway.

 Gerry T.

-----Original Message-----
From: anheropl0x <anheropl0x at yahoo.com>
To: gothic-l at yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tue, 28 Dec 2010 14:14
Subject:  [gothic-l] Re: Auhjodjus Þahainais

Hello, Gerry! Thanks for the reply. As I said before, this final draft has flaws 

that I've found in the past few months, and you've wonderfully pointed out more 

that I will either concur with, dispute or explain. Let's go in order with what 

you said.

"I think the construction in lines 5-6 should be amended to "soei in huga" 

etc; or if "so" is allowed to stand then "was" should be dropped."

   After giving it some thought, "soei" should be in there. I originally meant 

it so be simply "so siuns" with inverted word order as I see so commonly, but 

even with the passive tense of miþsatjan, it makes no sense to not have the cj 

"that" in the line.

"In the fifth line of verse 2, I suspect the word for stabbed was meant to 

be "stugqana", and in the next line "split" should be represented by 

"disskaiskaiþ": the Goths do not seem to have let themselves off reduplication  

in

the preterite when a verb of Class 7 had a prefix: consider, e.g.,

fralailot,  the preterite of fraletan. If the indicated change would mess the 

rhythm

up, not  to mention its being awkward to pronounce, it might be reasonable

to drop the  dis- prefix, since "skaidan" by itself seems to have had

something like the  required meaning."

   Massive typo on my part. I in fact meant the sv I verb disskreitan, which in 

pret. third person sing. becomes disskraiþ (why it makes that -t a -þ I am 

somewhat lost on). But, as you pointed out, skaidan could be used as well, 

making skaiskaiþ. As for NE stabbed, I had been using the verb stikan, found 

here under S for stab (v.): http://www.oe.eclipse.co.uk/nom/letters.htm Though 

whether you find this dictionary to be legitimate is your call. P.P. of stikan 

being stikans, and declined strong to nom. pl. neut. should be stikana. I 

believe the reason I went with nom. pl. masc. is because after searching at 

length I came across a sample of my sentence in the Silver Bible where masculine 

was used for a neuter noun, which fits perfectly with augona. I can't think of 

the example, nor where I found it, because I'm sure after a few hours of working 

on this, my brain shut down haha. This verb can still be discussed though, but 

there is my reasoning for stikana.

"In verse 4, if "galeiko" governs a dative, its second occurrence would have

to be followed by "rigna dumbamma". Possibly this would make the line

rather  full of syllables. If so, then the problem might be cured by using "swe"

rather  than "galeiko"; for in all the relevant examples I have managed to

find, the  word acts like a conjunction, and so there would be a choice

between "rign dumb"  and "rign dumbata"."

   The adverb/adjective "like" is ungodly hard for me to translate correctly, 

since there seems to be so many ways to do it. There's swa, swe, galieks, 

galeiko. And they all seem the same to me, though I think of swe, swa, swaswe 

more as "as" than "like." Help would be appreciated in this. I did search as 

much as I could examples of all four and found galeiko to be the most forgiving 

and neutral to how it is used, but I had no idea it governs the dative. I have 

read that no where, though I see galeiks governs the dative. It seems that like 

is overused in English and other languages have problems coming up with a simple 

way to equal its meaning as well (take for example German having gefallen, mögen 

and gern haben). So for this one, I certainly say it's debatable. Though the 

person who helped me iron out a lot of mistakes had nothing to say about it if I 

recall.

"In the fifth line of verse 5, the reference to a prophet has been 

overlooked; and was the use of "writanona" deliberate rather than from an 

involuntary thought of English? I think the expected word would be "melida" or 

"ufmelida"."

   I agree with you for the most part of this. I had found somewhere that pl. 

waurd meant message from prophets. And now that I can't find this anywhere 

without more extensive searching, I feel.. well... less than smart at having 

done that. I do think I originally had prophets in there. "writanona" is the 

weak P.P. declension in pl. nom. neut. Wreitan, according to the aforementioned 

dictionary, means inscribed or engraved, which on a wall seems a bit more 

fitting. If I were to use the verb meljan or gameljan, the correct declension 

would be (ga)melidona for weak and (ga)melida for strong. "ufmeljan" I can not 

find in Wright's dictionary. Though according to a random site, means to sign 

(as in agreeing to a document).

"In the last line I think "auhjodjuns" should be "auhjoduns"."

   Another typo. Can't believe I let that one slip by. Thanks for catching it.

Anyway, my name is Johann. :) And I thank you for taking the time to look this 

over and point out the major flaws like that. This helps further my knowledge 

more than most things, since I've no one to sit down with and actively study 

Gothic.

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