Some pronunciation questions

[llama_nom]

Some background:

Braune [ 
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~kurisuto/germanic/goth_braune_about.html#i
mages ].

Wright [ 
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~kurisuto/germanic/goth_wright_about.html#i
mages ].

Streitberg [ http://www.wulfila.be/lib/streitberg/1920/ ].

Although these text books disagree with each other on some points, 
they're all worth a read.  The two German ones especially go into 
the reasoning behind their proposed pronunciations and mention 
alternative proposals.  For pronunciation, Braune seems the most 
reasonable to me on the whole (note: I have a later edition to the 
one online at the Germanic Lexicon Project, expanded slightly), 
although Streitberg has some extra interesting details.


> g   [x], ch as in 'Bach'   finally, or before s, t.
> This means dags and dag is pronounced with [x]


As Wright suggests.  The reasoning behind this is partly for the 
sake of symmetry.  /b/ and /d/ are usually spelt <f> and <þ> finally 
or before s, t.  The spelling <magt> might imply that <g> could 
sometimes stand for a voiceless sound.  Elsewhere /g/ is written <h> 
before /t/, e.g. <mahta> versus <mag>, <ohta> versus <og>.  But if 
Wright is right, it's strange that <g> and <h> are never confused at 
the end of a word except for <aig> and <aih>, where the confusion 
goes throughout the paradigm.  Still, this is the system I'm 
following till I know better.


> but daga and dagis with 
> [g].

By <g> in "north German sagen", it means a fricative [G], see the 
chart of upper-case symbols here [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-
SAMPA ].  That is the pronunciation suggested by Wright.  In favour 
of a fricative pronunciation is the fact that Latin writers 
sometimes miss out the <g> between vowels, when spelling Gothic 
names, especially when it comes before a front vowel.  Streitberg's 
reasoning based on "intonation" is considered flawed nowadays, but I 
don't understand it, so I can't comment.

> D is [ð] and b is [v] medially after vowel or diphthong.
> OK for ð, but b as v...that means hlaiba has [v].
> Well, this also means naubaimbair has v...but that's a exception.

Braune (or at least the edition I have) lists Gothic personal names 
where medial /b/ is spelt by Latin writers with a <v>.  Wright 
suggests a voiced bilabial fricative [B], as medially in Spanish, 
which sounds very similar.


> E [ē], a as in 'gate'...as far as I know 'gate' is not 
pronounced as 
> [gēt] but more as [geit]...and I don't think they mean that 
mena is 
> pronounced as [meina].

You're right, as far as the usual standard pronunciations of British 
and American English go, although there are some dialects which do 
preserve the simple long vowel [e:].  I think the authors are just 
offering this as the nearest English equivalent, which is why they 
say "a rough guide to pronunciation".  


> H [x], ch as in 'Bach'....this goes for the combination ht and 
initial 
> with hr, hl etc. but alone? I wouldn't say hunds as [xunds].


Lower down the page you may have noticed: "It is also likely that h 
is in Wulfila's time closer to the h of Modern English 'he' than it 
is to the ch of 'Bach', and similarly with hv."  I use the following 
system, based on what I've read in the textbooks mentioned above, 
but I'm open to any suggestions:

hlaifs [xlaifs]
hrains [xrains]
hunds [hunts]
slahan [slahan]
hloh [xlo:x]

hvaiwa [w_0aiwa]
saihvan [sEw_0an]
sahv [sax\]

[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-SAMPA ]


> W as [u] when final...this I can agree with, but didn't know...is 
this 
> like this? Waúrstw as [worstu]???


An alternative suggestion favoured by the textbooks is that final 
<w> wasn't syllabic, but just indicates that the final consonant was 
pronounced with final lip-rounding, thus:

sagq [saNk_w]
triggw [trig:_w]
þiwadw [þiwað_w]

In favour of a syllabic pronunciation is the spelling <engus> in the 
Vienna-Salzburg codex.  In favour of a non-syllablic pronunciation 
is the parallel with <sagq>, and the lack of any general spelling 
fluctuation between final <u> and <w>.  But note the regular 
change /w/ > /u/ after a short monosyllabic root: PG *skadwaz > Go. 
skadus.  The Vienna-Salzburg codex was written long after Wulfilas 
time and may indicate a change in Gothic pronunciation, or it might 
be due to confusion on the part of a High German speaker who 
transcribed the Gothic words.

 
> Iu [íu], eu as in 'reuse'. Isn't this two syllables? If it's two 
then 
> it aint no diphthong as I think it should be.


You're absolutely right as far as my British English pronunciation 
goes [%r\i:"ju:s].  I also stress it on the second syllable.  The 
Gothic sound is usually taken to have been a falling diphthong in 
words such as <biudan>; that is, with the emphasis on the first 
element of the diphthong.  We can tell that it was a diphthong 
because some of the Gothic texts (though not all of them) follow the 
rule that diphthongs are never split in writing at the end of a 
line.  But in some words, according to Braune, <iu> does mark two 
syllables: niun, bi-uhts, ni-u, bi-u-gitai, sium (alternative 
spelling <sijum>).


> I might be totaly wrongm but I thought iu was pronounced more as 
[ju] 
> as in use...no [i] as in re-. Biudan as [bíuðan] or as [bjuðan]???


I don't know if that could be disproved, but the usual 
interpretation is that it was a falling diphthong, as originally in 
West and North Germanic, see above.  Latin writers use <eu> in 
spelling names.  If it was [ju] maybe Latin writers would have used 
<i> for the first element?  (Not sure about that.)  Much later, in 
Old Norse, it became the rising diphthong just as you describe and 
the second element was lengthened (and lowered before dentals in Old 
Icelandic).


> OK...tell me what you think bout this...

I think it's a bit of a mess!  I think the explanations are not as 
clear as they could be, and that the reasoning behind them is in 
places illogical (see my recent posts).  The English examples aren't 
always ideal, for example <with> ends in a voiced consonant for many 
English speakers.  Maybe <think> would be a better example.  'Fat 
Tuesday' isn't so good because a lot of varieties of British English 
have a palatal [t_j] or the affricate [tS] at the beginning of 
<tuesday>.  I might have chosen 'hot tap'.  But even these wouldn't 
work for everyone.  If they had examples from a few languages it 
would lessen the chances of confusion.

> Some words -- e.g. bliggw- 'scourge', glaggw- 'accurate', skuggw-
 'mirror', triggw- 'faithful' -- may have contained a true prolonged 
g as in (a slow pronunciation of) English 'doggone', but this has 
probably given way to the sound [N] by the time of Wulfila's 
translation.

Probably?  I don't remember reading this before.  [g:] > [N] (or do 
they mean [Ng]?) seems unlikely in view of Latin spellings of the 
names Triggua, Trigguilla.  <gg> is usually considered to have been 
an ambiguous spelling, standing for [g:] or [Ng] depending on the 
etymology.

> By the same token, given the fact that the same spelling mistakes 
are made in several languages of the other branches of Germanic, it 
is possible that the distinctions were never actually as clean as 
the historical linguist would like. 

This is very vague.  I don't know what they're referring to.

> The resonants l, m, n, r may also function as vowels. For example: 
fugls 'bird', máiþms 'treasure', táikns 'token', ligrs 'bed'. 

Most accounts I've read agree, but some think that these were non-
syllabic.  The oldest Old English poetry apparently shows a stage in 
the language before such consonants became syllabic, but then there 
are spellings in Jordanes that suggest that they were syllabic at 
this time in Gothic.

But I quibble.  It's still a nice thing to have online.  Especially 
for the stuff on Crimean Gothic.

Llama Nom







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