[gothic-l] Marcomannic Challenge in _Gladiator_

[David Salo]

>    A friend of mine, a graduate student in Scandinavian Studies with a
>(un)healthy interest in historical linguistics says that when he saw the
>movie Gladiator he instantly interpreted the first sentence of the chief's
>challenge as something like "suk thu nu hyde?" (spelling is mine), which
>would mean something like "sokjist thu nu haubith?" i.e. "Are you looking for
>the head, now?"

   Small correction: sokjist > sokeis because *-ji- > -ei- after a heavy
syllable.  The original Germanic (as also I-E in general) 2nd singular
ending is -s-; in English and German it becomes -st by virtue (it is
thought) of combining the -s of the ending with a t- (from th) of the
following pronoun thu.  This doesn't actually occur in written Gothic, but
it's far from inconceivable that the Goths might have combined (for
instance) sokeis and thu as "sokeistu".

/\     WISTR LAG WIGS RAIHTS
\/            WRAIQS NU IST                               <> David Salo
<dsalo at softhome.net> <>



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