[gothic-l] Re: Pronunciation questions

[Francisc Czobor]

Hi Fredrik,

Your questions are quite difficult and I expected someone who knows
better to answer them. I'll try my best.

1. words ending in -jus: *waddjus "wall" is attested in the compounds
baurgswaddjus "city wall", grunduwaddjus "ground-wall, groundwork,
foundation", and midgardiwaddjus / mithgardawaddjus "dividing wall,
partition". According to Koebler, all these are attested only in
singular forms: Nom. -waddjus, Gen. -waddjaus, Dat. -waddjau, Acc. -
waddju (thus like a regular u-stem). Another word ending in -jus,
namely drunjus "sound, call", is attested only in Nom. sg.
In plural appears the problem, since the Nom. pl. ending for u-stems
(masc. and probably also fem.) is -jus, but sg. -jus ~ pl. -j-jus is
not thinkable.
One can try to infer what could be the ending following the sound
changes from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and Proto-Germanic (PGmc).
So for masc.& fem. u-stems we have:
Nom. sg.: PIE *-us > PGmc *-uz > Goth. -us
Nom. pl.: PIE *-ewes > PGmc. *-iwiz > Goth. -jus

Similarly, for masc. & fem. ju-stems we should have:
Nom. pl.: PIE *-yewes > PGmc. *-jiwiz > Goth. ??? (maybe -jius ???)
(thus waddjus would be in plural *waddjius ?? Hard to believe ...)

2. I think the only rule to distinguish the two kinds of "gg" is the
etymologic rule: when gg comes from Germanic ng or from Greek gg
(pronounced ng), then it should be pronounced ng; when it appears as -
ggw- < PGmc. *-ww-, then it should be pronounced gg.

3. The letter "x" appears only in words borrowed from Greek. While
the educated Goths pronounced it probably like in Greek (at that time
probably already a sort of "ach-sound", rather than an aspirated k),
the common people (as far as they knew/used such neologisms) most
probably approximated it by more familiar sounds: k or h.

4. The letter w appears for y only in words borrowed from Greek, to
transcribe the Greek ypsilon; in fact, the Gothic letter for [w]
comes from the uppercase Greek ypsilon ("Y").

5. They write "naubaimbair" instead of "nauvaimbair" for the same
reason for they write e.g. "laggs" instead of "langs": in order to
keep the transcription close to the original spelling. Otherwise, if
we write phonetically, why should we write "nauvaimbair" and
not "november", for instance?

Francisc

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "Fredrik" <gadrauhts at h...> wrote:
> Hi all!
>
> I'd like to know how words ending in -jus in singular would be in
> plural.
> Like waddjus. How to say walls?
>
> Is there any rule when gg is pronounced as ng and when as gg?
> Like siggwan, that is like singwan, right? But triggws like ggw?
>
> Also wanna know if there's any evidence about letter x, how it
should
> be pronounced, or if not, what you think about it.
> I've been told that it should be as k, but couldn't it be possible
> that it was as a german ach-sound?
>
> I have also thought about another thing. The letter w is sometimes
> pronounced as y, and then, sometimes, it is written as y when using
> roman letters. I think that is ok. But if that's so, why not write
v
> instead of b is those cases when the letter b was used for a v-
sound?
> E.g. naubaimbair is spelled with b, coz they had no v but when
using
> roman letters it could be written as nauvaimbair. Or what do you
> think about that???
>
> /Fredrik




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