[gothic-l] Re: The Goths, Gutland (Gutones) and the Guta Saga

[M. Carver]

> Hi Matthew,
> 
> I am not a linguist, so in my ignorance I thought one can simply
> analyse two similar examples of the two languages to establish whether
> Old Gutnish and Gothic are as close (even to the degree of mutual
> intelligibility) as some participants have claimed.
> 
> cheers,
> Dirk  

Hails Dirk

I apologize for sounding either haughty or pedantic, as I, being practically
uneducated among such esteemed colleagues, have the least right to be either
(and what right in such a case could excuse such qualities?!).

As for mutual intelligibility, we must first define our date of interaction.
You see what a great divide lies between the periods of late Old Swedish and
Gothic proper: some thousand years perhaps. If Gothic indeed had "ai" and
"au", in the 4th c. AD, the North Germanic could not have done much
different, it is supposed. Thus these diphthongs in remnant form are a
feature of conservation peculiar to Gotlandic into modern time, formerly
however shared among all speakers of North-Germanic and East-Germanic (and
before that, Common Germanic), at a time before that the languages grew
separate and distinct.

It is generally attested by a variety of constructed proofs and inferred
laws that the divide between such languages as Old Swedish and Church
Gothic, for example, extends so far to a point that, if one should so refer
to a time when one could call them (or their predecessors) similar, one
would be amiss thus not to bring into that relativity also the West-Germanic
languages. Innovation and evolution occured without particular and
consistent sibling favoritism among all three of these sororal branches.
Admittedly scholarship still debates even the exact character and shape of
such relationships once held so elementary.

Matþaius


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