[gothic-l] dipthongs

[jdm314 at AOL.COM]

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In a message dated 9/6/00 2:08:35 AM, you wrote:

<< Are there the same number of Gothic dipthongs as there are dipthongs in Old
English or even Latin or Greek.>>

No. Gothic has somewhere between 0 and 3 diphthongs in native words depending 
on whom you ask and what phase the moon is in, (In other words, the evidence 
varies): a'i, a'u, and iu. 
    Note that we are not discussing ai' or ai here, just the combinations 
with the accent on the first letter. The other ones were fairly 
uncontrovercially open midvowels; they come from proto-germanic i and u 
before r, h, or hw, and from short e and o in loanwords. A'i and a'u (that 
is, ái and áu if you have a fancy email reader that can handle accents) come 
from proto-germanic ai and au, so may be genuine diphthongs. But Ulphilas 
chose to write them and the open-midvowels in the same manner, so many 
believe that they were in fact just longer versions of the midvowels. I 
myself prefer to read Gothic this way.
    On the other hand, Greco-Latin transcriptions of Gothic names and phrases 
sometimes seem to indicate a diphthong there, so some prefer to believe that 
they represented diphthongs. It seems probably though that if they are 
diphthongs that they are not actually [ai] and [au] though, but perhaps 
somthing more like [Ei] and [Ou] (i.e. Ulphilas might have written aij and 
auw instead)
    As for iu, it was almost certainly pronounced [iw], but I think we 
occasionally find evidence that it was pronounced like a German umlaut-u, 
[y]. 
    (Keep in mind that it is possible that these were all at one point 
diphthongs and  ended up as smooth vowels later, and of course in loanwords 
you will see such oddities as <aiw> for Greek <eu>)

    While Latin has only two frequently occuring diphthongs: ae and au, you 
will occasionally see several others, especially (but not exclusively) in 
loanwords: oe, ei, ui, and eu.
    Classical Greek had the following diphthongs (note that u is actually [y] 
in these) ai, au, oi, eu, and in some stages of the language ou and ei too 
(those however smoothed into single vowels relatively early)
    Old English seems to have had a ton of diphthongs, but then I'm not an 
expert. Let's see... ea, e:a, eo, e:o, ie, i:e... is that right? Modern 
English of course has kept the tradition of overstockign the diphtongs, but 
they're not the same ones as in OE.


-IUSTEINUS

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