logic error: Gapt [gothic-l]

[keth at ONLINE.NO]

Dear List!
I am sorry. In my hastiness to acknowledge the ingenuity of
Ingemar's solution of the Gapt problem, I committed a silly
logical error -- for which see below:

Ingemar wwrote:
>>As a matter of fact the word Gapt is considered to be a mistake by a
>>copist. The Gothic 'u', similar to a Runic 'u' looks very much like a
>>Greek 'pi'. The copist took if for a Greek letter. That is all with that
>>mystery!

And here is what I replied:
>Well, that certainly sounds like "Columbi Egg" !
>Once you see it, it is obvious. I had simply
>forgotten that Jordanes uses the Greek "pi" for
                ^^^^^^^^
>the sound "p". But once you mentioned it, I
>looked in Braune, page 14, and then it was easy
>to verify that the two signs Jordanes uses for
>"p" and "u" are indeed quite similar.


In the above quote of what I wrote, you will see that
I have now (as of this writing) underlined the name "Jordanes",
in order to make my hasty error plain.

What I _should_ have written - I think - instead of "Jordanes",
is "Wulfila" !   In fact, as I have understood the matter thus far,
in spite of only knowing the sources at the transcription level,
is that it was _Wulfila_ who used the peculiar synthetic alphabet
that you can see for example on page 14 of the "Gotische Grammatik"
by Braune u. Ebbinghaus (=Verlag Max Niemeyer). Thus, one
ought to find, upon investigation, that it is the _Codex_Argenteus_
that was written in a calligraphic script, where a "u" and a "p"
look very similar.

However, Jordanes book "Getica", in which the name GAPT occurs,
was NOT written in Wulfila's alphabet, where the "u" and the "p"
are represented by graphic signs that are of simmilar shape.

At least this is how I have understood it thus far :

Jordanes "Getica" was originally, i.e. by Jordanes himself,
composed in the LATIN language, using the ordinary LATIN
alphabet, where a "p" and a "u" are as dissimilar as two
letters can be, and as a result the probability that a
scribe acidentally wrote a "p" instead of an "u" becomes
much reduced. [Probability estimate: l.t.*) 1:100].

*) l.t. = "less than".


Best regards
Keth



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