[gothic-l] Re: Inquiry (number symbols & letters)

[llama_nom]

Hi Sean,

The Gothic symbol for 90 comes from the Greek alphabet, where it was 
called KOPPA.  Greek preserved certain archaic letters as numbers, 
although by the time of Wulfila, these had long ceased to be used as 
letters.  Some corresponded to sounds which had once existed in Greek 
but later disappeared - e.g. DIGAMMA, orgiginally called WAU, which 
looks like F in the Roman alphabet, and came between epsilon & zeta, 
but stood for /w/.  Digamma had the numerical value 6, and 
corresponds to Gothic *QAIRTHRA.

KOPPA looks similar to the Gothic sign for 90.  It was never a 
distinct phoneme in Greek, but was taken along with the other letters 
from Phoenecian, where it stood for the uvular plosive /q/ (Compare 
the Hebrew QOPH/KUF and Arabic QAF).  In Greek it was at first used 
for /k/ before back vowels, but eventually replaced by KAPPA, and 
only survived as a numeral.  (Modern Greek however has replaced the 
old numeral KOPPA with Z.)  Our Q (q) has the same origin, and the 
same place in the alphabet, between P and R.

The other purely numerical sign in Gothic, which looks like the runic 
T, is in fact derived from the archaic Greek letter SAMPI, which may 
once have had the values /ks/ or /ss/, but survived into Classical 
times only as the number 900.  This was probably a Greek invention, 
hence its position at the end of the alphabet - although it might 
have been based on an earlier Phoenecian-derived letter SAN.

I don't think that koppa/90 would have had the name AIHWS 'horse' 
(<Germanic *ehwaz), since this is already taken by the fifth letter, 
E, according to the Vienna-Salzburg codex (?10th century), where the 
name is spelt phonetically in Roman characters: EYZ.  Given the 
resemblance of the 900 symbol to the T-rune, I guess that might have 
been called *TIUS (the Gothic cognate of the Norse & Old English 
names for that rune).  But I don't know.  Maybe the Greek names were 
borrowed.  Or maybe new Gothic names were invented based on their 
previous sound values in Greek, or the values they were supposed to 
have had...

You can find more details on archaic Greek letters here:

http://ptolemy.tlg.uci.edu/~opoudjis/unicode/nonattic.html
http://ptolemy.tlg.uci.edu/~opoudjis/unicode/numerals.html

...or by doing a search for KOPPA, SAN, SAMPI and DIGAMMA.


And for a good comparative table of runes, including the Gothic names:
http://titus.fkidg1.uni-frankfurt.de/didact/idg/germ/runennam.htm


Llama Nom




--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "imgconcept" <Valvinir at r...> wrote:
> Heilsa all,
> 
> While doing a little research of the Gotic language, I came across 
> number values assigned to characters or letters and was intrigued 
by 
> the number value of 90 not having a name. I have seen this 
referenced 
> in an American publication where it is given a Gotic letter but no 
> name was offered. In the "ABCs" it is placed between
> PAIRÞRA and 
> RAIDA.
> 
> I have also seen it conjectured as EIHWAS. Is this correct?
> 
> Can someone offer an explanation of this? Does the number value 90 
> not have a letter significant to it?
> 
> Sæll,
> Sean



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