[gothic-l] Old Gutnish

[Bertil Häggman]

Francisc,

Thank you for providing this
additional information on your sources
on Old Gutnish.

Don't know much about text books
in Romania in the 1970s, so I cannot
have a view one way or another way.
But isn't Iceland West Scandinavian
and Old Gutnish East Scandinavian?
Gutalagh and Guta saga of course are
important Old Gutnish documents.

Maybe one should also consider the
runestone inscriptions on Gotland,
which are written in the Gutnish language.
They would also be older than the Gutalagh
and the Guta saga.

Sweden's oldest runic inscription
is from the third century AD and was found
on Gotland. The youngest is on a gravestone
from the 17th century. Runic writing was
thus used on Gotland for around 1400 years.

There are around 450 runic inscriptions
on Gotland and I believe these have to be
thoroughly investigated before any
serious judgement can be made in
comparing Old Gutnish and Gothic.

 There are a number of bible texts from
1742, which provide a younger corpus
of Gutnish language documents, and I
see you have not incorporated those
into you investigation.

Personally I believe after maybe
a decade of throrugh studies of the
whole corpus of Old Gutnish texts
any judgement can be made on
the relation between the two
languages.

Also I think Neogard's wordbook, which
contains a large number of words, which
he thought was related to Gothic. There are
about 2,000 manuscript to sift through.

A final question. For how long have you
studied the Old Gutnish language?



Gothically

Bertil




1. An university course on comparative grammar of Germanic Languages, 
issued by the University of Bucharest in 1971; 2. 
The Gutalagh and Guta Saga, that were very kindly provided to the 
Gothic-L by Mr. Tore Gannholm (messages no. 3969, 3997, 4023, 4098).
My overall impression is that the language is similar to that of the 
Old Icelandic texts of my "Altisländisches Elementarbuch" by Andreas 
Heusler (Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, Heidelberg, 1967), but with 
some words looking more like Swedish than Icelandic. In no way did 
they remind me the language of the Silver Bible.
A propos: looking now through these texts, I have found another pure 
and typical North Germanic (Scandinavic) feature, that is never found 
in Gothic: the "broken" diphthongs (originating from e before a or u):
in Guta Saga (second paragraph): stierna = star
in Gothic: staírno (where aí = short e); in Swedish it is something 
like stjerna, isn't it?
in Gutalagh, the paragraph about inherit (no. 20): iorth = earth
in Gothic: aírtha; in Swedish it is something like jörd, or maybe I'm 
wrong?
I think that my conclusion (Gutnish is not Gothic, but Scandinavic) is 
based on facts. I presented these facts, that are facts. They are 
there, they are objective. But maybe my deductions are wrong. Please 
demonstrate me that my logic was wrong, and I will believe you.

Francisc

--- In gothic-l at y..., Bertil Häggman <mvk575b at t...> wrote:
> Francisc,
> 
> What are your sources on Gutnish and how
> much Old Gutnish text have you had available
> when making the conclusion above?
> 
> Gothically
> 
> Bertil
> 
> FINAL CONCLUSION:
> Taking into account these facts, the view that Gutnish is more 
Gothic 
> than Scandinavic seems to be not sustainable.


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