A short gothic poem

Sat Jul 6 20:04:08 UTC 2013

Sorry to harp. Here is why I think that "fulhan" rather than  "filhada" was 
right:

The formula "it is written" occurs repeatedly in the New  Testament, and is 
expressed by Wulfila as "gameliþ ist" or "gamelid ist".  Example:

Matt 11:10 sa ist auk bi þanei gameliþ ist:  sai, ik insandja aggilu 
meinana faura þus, saei gamanweiþ wig þeinana faura þus. 

This is he of whom it is  written,

"Behold, I send my messenger before thy face,
who shall  prepare thy way before thee."

There are many other examples, such as Mark 1:2, Mark 7:6,  Luke 2:23, 3:4, 
4:4, 4:8.

It is clear, then, that to the question "where is the word of  the prophet" 
a possible answer would be

gameliþ [ist] in malmin - [it is] written in the  sand,

Gothic, like English, using a past participle.

And so, if the question is "where is our heritage", as in the  poem we have 
been concerned with, an answer like "buried in ..." would surely  contain 
"buried" as a past participle, wherefore my belief that the original  
"fulhan" was right.

Now let us consider Edmund's counterexample:

"hwana wileith ei fraletau izwis? Barabban thau Jesu, saei haitada  
Xristus?" (Mat. 27,17)
'Whom do you want me to release to you? Barabbas or  Jesus, who is called 
Christ?'

Here, the present passive  (haitada) may have been chosen because the sense 
was that Christos is what  people keep calling him. On the other hand, "it 
is written" refers to something  written once and for all. I think the 
latter example is more relevant to the  answer for what has happened to our 
heritage: it has been buried once and for  all, rather than that people keep 
burying it.

A look at the original Greek perhaps supports my conjecture.  For 
corresponding to Edmund's quoted "saei haitada Xristus" it has "ton  legomenon 
Christon", meaning "the one called Christ" - using for "called" a  present passive 
participle, legomenon. On the other hand, "gamelid ist"  translates a Greek 
perfect, "gegraptai" - it has been written. I am told that  the Greek 
perfect expresses an abiding consequence of an action, and Wulfila  chose to 
represent this by the same construction as English uses. If our  heritage has 
been buried, or lies buried, it is in another abiding state,  and so I guess 
that Greek would use a perfect, and Wulfila would have  represented this by 
"fulhan ist".

As for compounds of "filhan", Matt 8:22 uses "gafilhan" for  burying (leave 
the dead to bury their dead). On the other hand, the suggested  "affilhan" 
is used in Luke 10:21 to mean to hide something away.

Mark 14:8 uses "usfilh" to mean burial.

Luke 9:59 and 9:60 uses "usfilhan" for bury

John 12:7 "gafilh" is burial.

Gerry T.

In a message dated 06/07/2013 00:10:03 GMT Daylight Time,  
edmundfairfax at yahoo.ca writes:

1)  "sijain" should be 'sijai'

2) There seems to be much confusion about  the formation of the Gothic 
passive. A careful look in a good grammar, such as  Braune's (5.1, 2004), will 
reveal that there is an inflected passive only in  the present indicative and 
present subjunctive; in the preterite, a  paraphrastic construction is used 
consisting of a suitable preterite form of  the auxiliary 'wisan/wairthan' 
and the past participle of the main verb. I  quote from the Braune:

"Das Passiv ist nur noch in einigen Formen des  Indikativ und Optativ 
Praes. vorhanden...die fehlenden Passivformen werden  umschrieben durch das Part. 
Praet. mit dem entsprechenden Formen von  'wairthan' oder 'wisan', z.B. 
'daupjada' "werde getauft' (Mk. 10,38), aber  'daupiths was' 'wurde getauft' 
(Mk. 1,19)."

The present passive is  formed by using the stem of the infinitive, not the 
preterite. Thus, 'fulhada'  is altogether incorrect.

It should also be noted that there is no  perfect in Gothic. A passive can 
have both an active or stative sense. As an  example of the stative sense, 
consider the following line from the Gothic  Bible:

"hwana wileith ei fraletau izwis? Barabban thau Jesu, saei  haitada 
Xristus?" (Mat. 27,17)
'Whom do you want me to release to you?  Barabbas or Jesus, who is called 
Christ?'

Here 'haitada', the  third-person singular present indicative passive of 
the verb 'haitan', clearly  has a stative rather than active sense; the 
subordinate clause could also be  rendered as 'whose name is Christ'. Thus, it 
does not follow that ''filhada'  'is buried' must have only an active sense, 
and not a stative sense.

3)  The Goths employed the convention of scriptio continua ('continuous 
writing'),  that is, writing without spaces between words (e.g.  
"tobeornottobethatisthequestion"). But in modern editions, words are normally  separated 
by spaces, and prefixes and suffixes are written together with the  word they 
belong to without the use of hyphens. Thus "af-grundithai" ought to  be 
written 'afgrundithai'.

4) The form "afilhada" lacks the 'f' of the  prefix and should be 
'affilhada'.

--- In  gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, Grsartor at ... wrote:
>
> Sorry to quibble  at this stage, but:
>  
> (i) I think "sijain" should be  "sijai".
>  
> (ii) I think the original choice of "fulhan"  for "(lying) buried" was  
> right. The form "filhada" means that a  thing is buried in the sense that 
someone 
>  is in the act or  habit of burying it. Since the burial is complete you 
> want the   past participle, which is passive in sense. In the modern 
Germanic 
>  languages it  is apparently active when used with "have" as an 
auxiliary,  but 
> this  construction I think was adopted from the Latin  tongues, and does 
not 
> appear in  Gothic. In any case the true  passive sense is brought out in 
> modern German, or  occasionally  in English, e.g.
>  
> The police have got the building  surrounded (= the police have 
surrounded  
> the  building).
>  
> Gerry T.
>  
>   
> In a message dated 05/07/2013 21:19:17 GMT Daylight Time,  nodead4 at ...  
> writes:
> 
> Understood!
>  
> Therefore, the poem finally is of this  form:
> 
>  Hvar ist othal unsar? / Hvar ist arbi unsar?
> Afilhada   ufarmaudeins af-grundithai 
> Hindana  thizos ahwos,  aiwis  andÃ©is  
> Wulthag sijain fraweit. 
> 
> I was using  "heritage" as broadly meant,  so I finally choose "arby" 
> instead  of "othal" then. I guess you should be  credited in the 
recording  booklet!!
> 
> Many thanx to all.  
> 
> 
>  
> --- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "nodead4" <nodead4@>   wrote:
> >
> > Hello all, I have composed a short poem  Gothic  language. I'm not a 
> linguist nor an expert, so there  will be several mistakes.  Some help is 
> requested to make it  right. (This is part of a song in english,  but I 
wanted to 
>  include this speech in a middle section).
> > 
> >   
> > Hvar ist othal unsar? (where is our heritage?)
> >  Fulhans ana  ufar maudeis af-grunditha (buried into the abyss of  
oblivion)
> > Thairh  thata ahwa,  aiws andï¿½is (across  the river, the end of an 
era)
> >  Wolthags fraweit wisan.  (Glorious revenge be)
> > 
> > 
> > Thanx   in  advance.
> >
> 
> 
> 
> 
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