[gothic-l] Re: Another new member / "hails!" as exclamation

[llama_nom]

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "faltin2001" <dirk at s...> wrote:
> The normal 
> > greeting was hails (as in: hails thiudan Iudaie "hail, king of 
the 
> > Jews"). 
> 
> 
> Hi Llama Nom,
> 
> I was wondering about this word 'Hails'; was that really a common 
> greeting formular amongst Goths? and if so where is that attested. 
If 
> it really occurs only in acclamations like 'hails thiudan Iudaie', 
I 
> would be rather sceptical about this. Hence, in modern German this 
> would also be 'Heil, dir Koenig der Juden....', without Heil beeing 
a 
> greeting at all in normal usage.
> 
> Cheers
> Dirk


Hi Dirk,

How common?  Well, the short answer is: I don't know!  But there is 
the Latin epigram 'De conviviis barbaris', a snide comment on Gothic, 
or perhaps Vandal, feasting:

Inter eils Goticum scapiamatziadrincan
 non audet quisquam dignos educere versus.

"Between the Gothic 'eils, scapiamatziadrincan'
no-one dares utter worthy verses"

(I hope I've got that right).  From this we can assume that hails 
(eils) was a current expression in Gothic, in some sense, and not 
just an artifact of Wulfila's translation.  Okay, in this context it 
might be a toast rather than  a greeting, and it's hard to know how 
formal it would have sounded, but my guess at the moment is that it 
could have encompassed all of these functions.  Compare: Old Norse 
heill!, and Old English hal wes thu!, wesath hale!, etc., which are 
cognate with Gothic hails, and - as far as I'm aware - could serve 
both as acclamation and greeting.  Do you know if heil was ever 
a "normal greeting" in earlier stages of the German language?  (Not 
counting the politically motivated revival in Nazi times, of 
course).  Presumably the present-day formal & archaic-sounding usage 
of German "heil", or English "hail", preserves an exclamation that 
was once more common, and perhaps therefore applicable to a wider 
range of registers.

 OE also has "ic grete the", literally "I greet you", so maybe Goths 
said *"golja thuk" as well.  Not attested though.

so goleins meinai handau Pawlaus, þatei ist bandwo ana allaim 
aipistaulem meinaim; swa melja "The salutation of Paul with mine own 
hand, which is the token in every epistle: so I write." 

jah meina...
Llama Nom




You are a member of the Gothic-L list.  To unsubscribe, send a blank email to <gothic-l-unsubscribe at egroups.com>. 
Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
     http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gothic-l/

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
     gothic-l-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
     http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/