[gothic-l] Re: The Language of the Goths

[faltin2001]

--- In gothic-l at y..., Stephen Mark Carey <smcarey at a...> wrote:
>
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > I am not a linguist, but as far as I know the only west Germanic
> > language/dialect that borrowed a number of words from Gothic is
> > Bavarian. Most of the Gothic words in Bavarian are detectable
only or
> > among others by the fact that they are exclusive to Bavarian.
>
> Well "bavarian" and "alemannic" are "high" German -- Examples of
Gothic
> influence limited to bavarian are of course not the only exampls --
gothic
> it a germanic language --with share influences of other languages
in the
> family  are some  examples off the top of my head - which also show
> gothic's place as a  germanic language in general. The
> shifts from Gothic to  High German do indicate a signfigant
> cutural interaction or  amalgamations.  In any case Gothic
> IS a germanic language -- a germanic  language that does not
undergo the
> 2nd shift -- like ALL of the  Skandinavian languages. So if you go
back
> 2,000 years before the common  era, and conjecture a group roaming
around
> in Poland presumably speaking Indo-European (before the centum/satem
> divide?) -- can we really call this  group "Goths"?  aren't they
then
> Proto-Goths, or something of that nature?
>
> Go. slepan   -- OHG slaffan
> Go. etum     -- OHG azum
> Go. mikils   -- OHG mihhil
> Go. twai     -- OHG zwei
> Go. hairto   -- OHG herza
> Go. drigkan  -- OHG trikhan



Hi Stephen,

of course, Gothic and Old High German are related, because they are
both Germanic. However, Old High German did not develop out of
Gothic. Old High German developed out of various West Germanic
dialects, like Bavarian, Alamannic and Frankish. The split between
East Germanic and West Germanic was long completed when Old High
German emerged in the 8th century. Yet, Bavarian preserves a number
of Gothic words due to contacts in the early 6th century, which does
not mean that Bavarian is derived from Gothic or developed out of
Gothic. Also, in 2000BC there is of course no such thing as Germanic,
not even pre-Germanic. Germanic emerged only during the middle of the
last millennium BC when the first Germanic soundshift separated it
from other Indo-European languages.

cheers,
Dirk





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