Translating Getica (cerva) + Drus Griutunge

[llama_nom]

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "ualarauans" <ualarauans at ...> wrote:
>
> --- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "llama_nom" <600cell@> wrote:
> >
> > There we go:
> > 
> > http://www.oe.eclipse.co.uk/nom/drus.htm
> > 
> > Let me know if you spot any masculine pronouns or endings left over
> > from before the deer's gender change (when hind was hart); I 
> *think* I
> > got them all...
> 
> The only one I (seem to) have found is /Harduba was anaprangan/ 
> which is translated "She was hard pressed". But this may refer 
> to /þata airpo dius/ rather than to /si/ in the next strophe.


That's what I had in mind, anyway.  I used neuter here for the sake of
the meter, and because 'dius' was the last noun mentioned.  But given
what Streitberg says in section 236.1-2, and Wright in 429.1-2 about
natural gender sometimes taking precedence over grammatical gender, I
suspect either would be acceptable here (feminine because we know the
animal is female, or neuter because of the gender of 'dius').  I stuck
to feminine in the English translation though because we've lost the
idea of arbitrary grammatical gender on nouns, so it might be a bit
confusing to shift back and forth between neuter and feminine
(although even in English there's some leeway when talking about animals).

 
> A couple more comments while we are upon it...
> 
> /waurhtida ijos du wargam/ - (ga)waurhta?


You're right, of course.  Incidentally, the prefixed and unprefixed
forms can both be used perfectively: 'nahtamat waurhta' (Mk 6:21) :
'gawaurhtedun imma nahtamat' (J 12:2).

 
> /Wulþuweiseis/ "The glorious Visigoths" – but there's an opinion 
> that it was rather PG. *wesu- or *wezu- "good" (with a lot of 
> parallels in other IE languages) which accounts for Visi(goths). 
> *Wulþuwisjus:*Wulþuwiseis?


Good point, I'll look into that.  '-wisjus' doesn't affect the meter,
but '-wiseis' will mean a change due to the short root vowel.  Any
reason to favour one over the other?


> /suns selaizos sunnons broþar/. Since sels is an i-stem, probably 
> seljaizos?


Yes, well spotted!  Hmm, I'm getting a slight sense of deja-vu here, a
nasty feeling that maybe I saw this months ago and got distracted by
something else before I got round to correcting it...


> /fauhrtjan uns/. A typo!!! (ALARM!ALARM!ALARM!)


Argh, extremely well spotted!  I had to read this three times before I
saw what was wrong with it!  At first I assumed you must be pointing
out a grammatical error, so I looked at the poem, couldn't see what it
was, then looked back here, and only then did the penny drop.


> 
> /Hvana ahjis, dwala, þatei usdreiban mageis?/ "Whom, fool, doest 
> thou imagine that thou might drive out?" – perhaps, þanei usdreiban, 
> no? And, forgive my pardonless teaching English to a native speaker, 
> but is it not "thou mightest"?


I was thinking of 'hvana wileiþ ei fraletau izwis?' (Mt 27:17).  But
then we've also got 'þana gawenja þammei managizo fragaf' (L 7:43). 
And the 'ei' might be necessary in Mt 27:17 to go with the subjunctive
/optative to give the sense of wishing, so I'm incline to go with
'þanei' as you suggest.

Since I didn't actually grow up saying "thou might(est)" in everyday
conversation, all criticism is welcome!  I was thinking of 'might' as
subjunctive here, used because the ability to drive anyone out is
unreal in the opinion of the speaker.  Looking now, there seem to be
examples of both 'might' and 'might(e)st' sometimes either in the same
construction, which makes me think they may have been interchangeable
at least in some parts of the modern period.  Where Chaucer has 'thogh
thou myghtest' in the Merchant's Tale, a modern adaptation has 'though
thou might'.  Robert Pleasants in the 18th c. writes 'that thou might
be better able', but there are lots of 17th c. examples of optative
'might(e)st', however 'thou might' also appears in the King James
Bible as subjunctive:

Though thou mount on high as the eagle, and though thy nest be set
among the stars, I will bring thee down from thence, saith Jehovah.
(Obadiah 1:4, KJB 1611).

That thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou
hast been instructed.
(Luke 1:4, KJB 1611).

Compare: "Though thou pour the ocean into thy pitcher, It can hold no
more than one day's store." (Rumi's Masnavi i Ma'navi, trans.
Whinfield 1898).


> [...]
>
> What worries me about our *raih(j)o:*raig(j)o is whether the word 
> could by some chance have a -hv-:-gw- alternation after Verner's 
> Law. In which case we'd have Gothic *ráihv(j)o:*raiw(j)o
> (cf. ahva:awi = OE ea:íg).


Köbler reconstructs PGmc. *raigjon, F on-stem.  OHG has 'réia' and
'reiga'.  I'm not quite sure to get from this vowel to NHG 'ricke'
(Grimm cites dialectal alternatives 'rieke' and 'rücke'), but the
survival of /k/ there suggests that it was originally */g/ rather than
*/gw/.  I'm not sure how */wj/ develops in Proto Old English; I'll
have to look that up.

Thanks for all your eagle-eyed observations!

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/gothic-l/attachments/20071003/66498e90/attachment.htm>