[gothic-l] Re: Gepids

[czobor at CANTACUZINO.RO]

--- In gothic-l at y..., keth at o... wrote:

> ...
> I see, however, that Gothic has very few words that begin on p.
> But there are many words that begin on f.

This is due to the fact that, after the first (common-Germanic)
consonant shift, I.E. *b became *p and I.E. *p became *f. In
Indo-European *b was a rare sound, and consequently *p is a rare
sound in Germanic.

> I also remember from
> Old Norse that the language often vacillates between p and f for
> a given sound (e.g. eptir/eftir).

According to my handbook of Old-Icelandic, "pt" is only a graphy, and
it's pronounced [ft].

> Hence it seems to me that one
> may equally well look for a Gothic word that begins on an f, and
> has a meaning that is related to slowness. But I was unable to
> find any. Then it strikes me that sometimes there is also a close
> relationship between p and b.

Indeed, these sounds are related, being both bilabial stops.
But Gmc. *b became p at the beginning of words only in some OHG
dialects (e.g. pruoder "brother", part "beard").

Regarding Iordanes' word "gepanta", it doesn't look very Gothic or
Germanic to me. Not only the -p-, but also -nt- is unusual among the
Germanic languages (IE *nt > Gmc. *nd or *nth). Maybe it's a
misspelling or a corrupted form.

Francisc


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