[gothic-l] Re: the word "the" as in "the house" or "the car"

[Peter Gutierrez]

Thanks for your reply. It was an answer worth paying
for, actually :) They've all been.  It was very
detailed and it helps me a lot.  Written languages are
an obsession of mine and I find myself comparing
languages a lot of the time.  Gothic struck my fancy
because of its peculiarity. It was widespread for a
while and then it seemed to drop off the face of the
earth. It's understandable that there's little to go
off of as far as research, since the language was
originally written in runes but I understand Wulfila
tried his hardest to translate it without much
success.  Why? Perhaps if the Gothic words were used
with English grammar, it would go a lot further.
Anyway, just a thought.

Peter Gutierrez
--- llama_nom <600cell at oe.eclipse.co.uk> wrote:

> --- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "Ingemar Nordgren"
> <ingemar at n...>
> wrote:
> > I have never succeeded to see definite article
> before words in
> Gothic.
> > Indefinite like  'a house' or 'that house, this
> house' et c. I rather
> > see the definite in the ending of the word like in
> Scandinavian
> > languages or rather the word is bowed  according
> to it's function in
> a
> > special sequence. I am of course not very good in
> Gothic so I might
> be
> > wrong.
>
> No, you're right, Ingemar--except that I think the
> enclitic article
> (attached to the end of a noun) is a later
> development in North
> Germanic.  This lack of the definite article is one
> of the most
> frequent ways in which the Gothic bible translation
> differs in syntax
> from the Greek original.  It's apparent in virtually
> every line [
> http://www.wulfila.be/gothic/browse/ ].
>
> e.g. du hunslastada "to THE altar"
>
> 'sa', 'so' and 'þata' are the nominative sigular
> forms (nominative
> mostly = the subject of a sentence).  They are used
> as a demonstrative
> pronoun "that [one]" or "this [one]" or sometimes
> "he/she/it",
> depending on the context.  They are inflected for
> four cases:
> accusative, dative, genitive; singular and plural
> ("those").  An old
> intrumental form 'þe' appears in certain phrases.
>
> But where the noun is definite and qualified by an
> adjective or
> prepositional phrase, the same pronouns are often
> used like the
> definite article "the" in English.
>
> ahma sa weiha
> "THE Holy Spirit"
> (masculine nominative)
>
> unte usgibis ÞANA minnistan kintu
> "till you´ve paid THE smallest farthing [a type of
> coin]"
> (masculine accusative)
>
> SO garehsns bi ina
> "THE plan concerning him"
> (feminine nominative)
>
> Sometimes though the definiteness is expressed in
> another way by using
> a special set of inflections for the adjective,
> called the "weak"
> declension--particularly with fixed expressions,
> names or titles.  But
> there is some fluctuation.  "on THE last day" is
> rendered either 'in
> spedistin daga' or 'in ÞAMMA spedistin daga'
> (masculine dative).
>
> The definite article is also often translated with
> 'sa', 'so', 'þata',
> etc. when an adjective or participle is used on its
> own as a noun:
>
> ÞAI unhailans
> "THE ill"
> "THOSE [who are] unwell"
>
>
> Occasionally also with a simple (abstract) noun:
>
> jah ufkunnaiþ sunja, jah SO sunja frijans izwis
> briggiþ
> "and you will know THE truth, and THE truth will
> make you free"
>
> iþ ik, þatei sunja rodida, ni galaubeiþ mis
> "and because I tell you THE truth, ye believe me
> not"
>
> hva ist SO sunja!
> "what is truth?"
>
> But maybe the reason is that the
> demonstrative/article is used only
> when "truth" has already been mentioned and is
> already the subject of
> the discussion: "What is this truth of which you
> speak."  The same
> rule applies according to Streitberg for the use of
> the article with a
> possessive pronoun, which is the rule in Greek, but
> only used in
> Gothic in this more limited circumstance, see Mark
> 3,32-33: aiþei
> þeina...hvo ist so aiþei meina "your mother...Who is
> my mother?"
> (...this mother of mine of whom you speak).
>
> Streitberg also notes some examples of the
> combination ARTICLE + NOUN
> + ARTICLE + ATTRIBUTE, which is how Greek behaves.
> But more common in
> the Gothic translation is: NOUN + ARTICLE +
> ATTRIBUTE:
>
> rums wigs SA bigganda in fralustai
> "THE broad road leading to destruction"
>
> Note the combination of strong (rums) and weak
> (brigganda) adjectives
> here.  But also quite common even here, no article
> at all:
>
> sunus gudis libandins
> (THE) son of THE living God
>
> us dauþaim
> "from THE dead"
> (literally: "out from among the dead people)
>
> So to get back to the original question, "the house"
> RAZNA; "the car"
> *WAGNS (i.e. "cart", not attested, except as Crimean
> 'waghen').
> But "the blue car": SA BLEWA WAGNS, or else WAGNS SA
> BLEWA.
> Incidentally, does anyone have any thoughts on how
> each of these
> possibilities would sound in terms of emphasis?
>
> Llama Nom
>
>
>


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