[gothic-l] Lehmann's GEW

[keth at ONLINE.NO]

Matþaius wrote:

>Hails
>
>I was wondering if anyone could give me their professional opinion on the
>utility of Lehmann's Gotisches Etymologisches Woerterbuch. I'm trying to
>rate the Gothic resources available currently.
>

I can't give you a professional opinion.
But the book certainly tells you a lot more than the "Gotisch-Griechisch-
Deutsches Wörterbuch" that accompanies Streitberg's "Gotische Bibel".
It is based upon Sigmund Feists's "Vergleichendes Wörterbuch der
Gotischen Sprache" and contains a Note from Sigmund Feist's daughter,
where she says that this 4th edition of her father's work is being
prepared in the United States by someone she describes as a scholar of
great experise. From this same note it also appears that the book
was prepared with financial support from the University of Texas at
Austin. She (Elisabeth Feist Hirsch) also declares that her father
had great respect for the scholarship in this field in the United States.


Somewhat confusing I find it that Old Norse words are referred to
by the abbreviation "OI" which is not listed among the abbreviations.
At first I thought it referred to "Old Irish", but after looking at
a few examples, I concluded that it must mean "Old Icelandic".
Personally I should have preferred the abbreviation "ON", since
the sources for this languages are not only Icelandic.

In the back of the book there are also many lists of words in
different languages, that allows you to start from a word
in a given language, and then find the Gothic word that corresponds
to it etymologically. These are, in other words, not small
dictionaries, but lists that allow a quick overview of which words a
given language has in common with the part of the Gothic vocabulary
that is still known to us today.

However, one will look in vain for exotic lists of words from
such "trümmer" languages, as were recently discussed on this list
(Vandalic etc).

How easy it is to use in actual practice, I do not know.
But I should think that its usefulness can only improve
if used in conjunction with such standard items as Falk and Torp's
"Norwegisch Dänisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch", certainly
if you are from somewhere in Scandinavia. There also exist
a number of excellent German etymological dictionaries, and
these too I would consider as a must in order to tap the
full potential of the book. Also of great use would be any
Biblical concordance that lists the original Greek and Gothic words
in their contexts, by actually writing out in full the biblical
sentences in which a given word occurs.

What other dictionaries/reference books are there that you can recommend?


Keth



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