[gothic-l] Re: Gutnish and Gutnish documents et al

[Francisc Czobor]

Hi Bertil,

as I have promised, I try now to analyze your examples of 
Gutnish-Gothic relationship.

--- In gothic-l at y..., Bertil Häggman <mvk575b at t...> wrote:
> Francisc,
> 
> Am providing a few additional clues to the
> Gutnish-Gothic relation, which you may
> not have considered (all from professor
> Sophus Bugge, who early called
> for a thorough investigation):
> 
> 1. Gutnish skurae and Skaeurae "shovel" has
> no equivalent in other Nordic languages.
> It fits pretry well with Gothic skauro i
> winthiskauro.
> 

But it has equivalent in OHG scora "shovel", MHG schor "shovel", so it 
is not an exclusive Gothic-Gutnish word. Moreover, it has verbal 
derivatives in some Germanic languages: MHG schorn "to push", OE 
scorian "to throw away" (whence English "to scorn")

> 2. Another possibility is lukarna-staki in
> Gutnish which seems to be related to
> Gothic lukarna-stapha. This word does
> not exist in other Nordic languages.
> Bugge believed that it was related
> to Gothic lukarr=small fire.
> 

The Gothic word lukarn is derived from Lat. lucerna "oil lamp". In 
this case we have either a common (or parallel) borowing from Latin, 
or a borrowing from Gothic to Gutnish (the variant 
Latin>Gutnish>Gothic seems unconceivable to me)

> 3. Gutnish bloejnae with probably an older
> *blyna (for the weather to become milder).
> The prefix bi- is common in Gothic.
> 

And also in German (OHG bi-, Mod. Germ. be-, b-) and Old English 
(be-). I think that the Gutnish word is rather related to Icelandic 
blíður "mild, soft", since I did not find any Gothic equivalent.

> 4. Old Gutnish ver and Gothic wairilo seem
> close.
> 

And in Icelandic vör = lip = Goth. wairilo. It seems that here we have 
a common North-East Germanic (Gothic-Scandinavic) word.

> 5. In Gutasaga (which you have studied)
> there is the word briscathus=grow in number,
> "foeroekas" in Swedish. Could there a relation
> to Gothic?
> 

There is not such a word in Gothic. The Gothic word for "to grow in 
number" is aukan. It has the following cognates in Germanic and 
Indo-European languages:
Old Norse: auka "to grow in number"
Modern Icelandic: auka "to grow in number"
Norwegian-Nynorsk: auke "to grow in number"
Norwegian-Bokmål: øke "to grow in number"
Danish: øge "to grow, to increase"
Swedish: öka "to raise, to enlarge"
Old High German: ouhhón "to grow in number"
This word comes from the Indo-European root aug'-, whence also:
Latin: augere "to grow" (augmentum "growth")
Greek: auxano: "to grow (in number)"
Sanskrit: ojas "power, strength"
Following your argumentation, it would result that Icelandic, 
Norwegian, and even Greek and Latin are "more Gothic" than the Gutnish 
language!


> 6. Lamb in Gutnish mean sheep, while in other
> Nordic languages it means lamb (Gothic lamb=
> sheep).
> 

Other list members showed that lamb = sheep appears also in other 
North Germanic languages.

Dear Bertil, in my country there is a proverb:
"With a flower doesn't come the spring"
Your 6 examples are not convincing. And even if they would, 6 words 
(or 12, or 20) can not change the overall clearly Scandinavic 
character of Gutnish (characteristic Scandinavic phonetic innovations, 
word usage like in Scandinavian languages).
A Gothic drop can not make a Scandinavic ocean to become Gothic.
This would be hilarious, it would be like sustaining that Bavarian 
(that has some words that appear to be of Gothic origin) is not West 
Germanic, but of Gothic origin!
I am convinced that there is a missunderstanding here.
I am shure that Prof. Bugge does not claim that Gutnish is not 
Scandinavic, but Gothic. Probably he just wants to draw attention that 
it might be some special connection between Old Gutnish and Gothic (I 
also would agree with this: I think that Gutnish could be an 
East-Scandinavic language with Gothic substratum).

> For the time being I would like to stop here but
> there is more. BTW, maybe you should take a
> look in the Gotlandic dictionary (no English
> edition available, I am afraid, I just translated
> the title into English), 1991, 1270 pages.

An etymological dictionary would be very useful, that compares the 
Guntish words not only with Gothic, but also with Old Norse, (Old) 
Swedish and (Old) Danish.

> I can also recommend Saeve's five volumes
> of Gutnish documents, that in my view would
> have to be investigated carefully. I do not want
> to put you off in your quest, which is admirable,
> but if the search for answer is seriously considered,
> one has to do things in the finest detail.
> Of a certain value is of course the knowledge of
> Swedish which makes the access to the documents
> more easy and is smoothing the way, so to say.
> 
 Other people cleverer than me have done the work, and the result is 
that the general opinion among the specialists is that Old Gutnish is 
an East Scandinavic language, like Swedish and Danish.

Francisc


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