[gothic-l] Old Nordic, Gothic and Old Gutnish

[Bertil Häggman]

Francisc,

Thank you for providing your view on this.
>From which time period are the Old Gutnish numbers?
Because one has to take into account that
there was an influx of Danish and Swedish
as the centuries went. The linguistic community regards
Old Gutnish as an independent language. It is
officially looked upon as an East Scandinavian language
but is more conservative than the other two East
Scandinavian languages, Danish and Swedish.
Even compared to Icelandic it seems to have kept many
features that have changed in Icelandic.

On the numbers: Gothic ains and Old Gutnish "ain"
are certainly of interest, to mention one example
where modern Swedish has "ett" and modern German
has "eins". Gothic twái (two) and Gutnish tvair (masculine).
But as said, the more detailed analysis is under way.

So, thank you for your views on Old Gutnish. As
the full story is not yet written on this language
and the comparative studies not yet undertaken
I think we will have to wait for the final answer.
The preservation of "ai" and "au" is of course
important but there are other features under
consideration.

Gothically

Bertil




Sorry, but I can not agree with you on this point.
Please look at my message no. 3988 to this list (subject: Gothic and 
Gutnish numbers).
The numbers represent a basic subsystem of every language system, and 
the comparison of numbers, especially of the basic ones (1-10) is very 
 relevant for judging the relatedness of languages.

The fact that Gutnish is phonetically more conservative does not mean 
that it is closer related to Gothic. The closer relatedness of two 
languages is proven not by common archaisms, but by common 
innovations.
In fact, why is Gutnish regarded as closer to Gothic than other 
Germanic languages? Mainly because, like Gothic, it preserves the 
Common Germanic diphthongs "ai" and "au". But this is not sufficient 
in order to affirm that Gutnish is the closest relative of Gothic.
Gothic preserves the "ai" and "au" because of its very early 
attestation, at a time when these diphthongs were still preserved in 
all Germanic languages. But in its subsequent evolution, Gothic 
doesn't appear to be particularly conservative regarding the 
diphthongs. In Crimean Gothic, ai > "e" or "ie", and au > "oe" 
(whatever it represents, it's obvious that this "oe" is different from 
"au").



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