Wanna share your ambitions and intenstions?

[akoddsson]

> This had impications for anyone who wants to write or speak in a 
reconstructed Gothic.  I think it would be good to establish all 
that can be established about the historical language, otherwise any 
reconstruction would tend to take the form of people expressing 
their thoughts in modern ways but just using Gothic words, whereas a 
language is more than just vocabulary. 

In my opinion, thou hast hit the nail on the head here. What is most 
important is understanding and reconstructing the historical tongue 
itself. Inventing new words for things non-existed in the historical 
language may be fun, but reconstructing the historical vocabulary is 
much more important. Essentially, learning an histrical tongue has a 
lot to do with learning historical words ;) In the case of Gothic, 
so much of the basic vocabulary has been lost (i.e. is unattested) 
that in order for the language to be usable, vocabulary must be re-
constructed. This is where prioritization needs to occur if Gothic 
is to approach usablity in modern times, whether as a purley written 
or spoken langauge. There is little talk or writing if no one knows 
what words to use. Furthermore, a focus on historical vocabulary is 
consistent with typical reasons why a person might choose to study 
Gothic, such as understanding an early germanic tongue. Thus, words 
like *grôneis (green) and *aihvs (horse) or much more important than 
new words for democracy or the stock market, for example. Likewise, 
historical syntax is what we should be after, rather than learning 
how to use Gothic words with foreign syntax. These two points are 
especially relevant in the case of Gothic, I think, as attestation 
of syntax is through a translation of a foreign book (rather than 
via the speech of a native speaker) and attestation of vocabulary 
largely limited to words (some even foreign) needed to translated a 
book containing culture, concepts, geograpy, history, etc. which 
have no roots in native Gothic culture. Thus, the syntax and choice 
of words may or may not closely reflect native speech. What is then 
needed is a focus on native speech, in as much as this is possible 
with a dead language - making a concerted effort to reconstuct what, 
in all likelihood, was the vocabulary and manner of daily speech. 
Now, if this sounds easy, try the following exercise and ask which 
of the two you found easier:

Translate in Gothic:
1. Hello, John. It is good to see you. How have you been?
2. ME words 'casino' and 'telephone' (using Gothic roots)

Now, number 2 could prove a fun competition for those of us who 
perhaps think we know what we are doing, but it is not likely going 
to help get gothic back on its feet. Number one, on the other hand, 
poses deeply challenging problems for us, as simply translating the 
English words is out of the question. Simply put, we know that they 
do not represent Gothic syntax or vocabulary.

Regards,
Konrad

> I also have a Secret Plan to write something on pronunciation.  
Having read (and ranted at!) the rather chaotic and contradictory 
Wikipedia entry a couple of months back, and then this new Gothic 
Online Course, I've finally been galled into starting a file on the 
matter.  That could take ages too, but I'm concentrating to begin 
with on the thorny issue of <ai> and <au>.  Again, a lot of problems 
will never be solved, but I reckon I can narrow down the 
possibilities a bit with logic.  For example, some scolars have 
suggested that each digraph stood for a single phoneme, but the loss 
of final inflectional -s only after a short syllable implies that 
<ai> and <au> probably had both short and long variants.  Loanwords 
and the spelling of personal names in Latin and Greek texts suggests 
that the old Germanic diphthings were preserved well after Wulfila's 
time in some dialects, but lost in others, though it may not be 
possible to make a simple division between "Visigoths" 
and "Ostrogoths" on this point.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> --- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "Fredrik" <gadrauhts@> wrote:
> >
> > Hi!
> > 
> > I guess everyone here have some intentions and reasons why you 
> wanna 
> > learn gothic. One could be a general interest in languages and 
> > specially in gothic, but why is that?
> > 
> > Different from other languages like english, german and spanish 
> which 
> > people learn (mostly) because it could be useful in their work. 
> > Gothic is not that useful, coz nobody uses it.
> > 
> > So why do you wanna learn it/did you learn it?
> > Was it maybe because you wanna know how to speak it, of some 
> reason 
> > or was it coz you wanna understand germanic hostory more??
> > 
> > Myself I have changed my reasons during the time. First of all I 
> have 
> > a interest in languages and especially in germanic ones. When I 
> > first, long ago, found out that there was a third branch of the 
> > germanic family, the eastern this become my main interest, so I 
> began 
> > to study it as much as possible. First just to learn a little 
> about 
> > it and see what this east germanic branch was like, and what was 
> > different between this and the west and noth germanic branches.
> > 
> > Later I got a book with some basic grammar, a tiny dictionary 
and 
> > some text samples from the bible. Since that time I have been 
> trying 
> > to learn gothic. Mostly when it comes to understanding those 
texts.
> > It's kinda hard to learn speaking it when it lacks so much 
> (attested) 
> > words.
> > 
> > Do you also wanna share your ambitions and dreams/thoughts?
> > 
> > Mine is to learn to speak gothic fluently and with a much better 
> > pronunciation then I have now. (It's still a long way to go...my 
> > grammar kinda sucks for now). This means that my vocabulary has 
to 
> > expand but also that the total gothic vocabulary has to that 
too. 
> > That's why I'm tryin to collect neologisms in a dictionary. My 
> > present goal is to reach 30 000 words, which is the average 
number 
> of 
> > words is a pocket dictionary.
> > I don't think it's total necessary that all these neologisms is 
> > standard for all gothic speakers, if some one like to use other 
> words 
> > I think thats OK. For example we can say that I prefer a 
puristic 
> > vocabulary so a word like republic should be thiudawaihts, but 
if 
> > some one like raí°µbleik (to remind of other germanic languages) 
or 
> > smth like that...go for it.
> > 
> > My dreams and (utopic) thought is that I should be able to use 
it 
> in 
> > daily speech. For that I probably need some one or two in my 
life 
> > that also know how to speak it, (and that's not like it today).
> > 
> > I think it would be interesting to know a little about you and 
> what's 
> > on your mind about all this...so plz share your thought.
> > 
> > /Fredrik
> >
>






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