Translating Getica (cerva) (was Re: Attila's speech)

[llama_nom]

Hey there, Ualarauans,

I see I've got a bit of catching up reading recent posts!  In the
meantime, another Germanic word for "deer" could be reconstructed as

'raiha' M. -an. (OE 'rá', earlier 'ráha'; OE 'ráh-déor'; ON 'rábukkr'
"roe-buck", OHG rêh, rêch - but 'rêho' "billy goat").
'raih(j)o', F. -on. (OE 'ræ:ge', G 'Rehe' - but OHG 'rêia'"she-goat";
ON 'rá').

Under Rehe, Grimm lists the following synonyms: ricke, rehe, hille, geisz.

When I was working on that poem [
http://www.oe.eclipse.co.uk/nom/drus.htm ], I didn't realise (or else
had forgotten) that the deer was female in Jordanes.  I referred to it
as 'hairuts', 'raiha' and less specifically 'dius' "animal".  So I
might have to revise that.  Or just call it an alternative tradition...

> *haíruts M.-a "deer" (ON hjörtr, OE heor(o)t, OHG hiruz). Seems OK 
> semantically, but I am at a total loss with probable feminine. 
> *hairuti F.-jo?

It would be handy for my alliteration if we could find one.  I wonder
what Grimm's 'hille' comes from.

> Possible objection: the first /a/ in presumed Alanic *saga (> Oss. 
> sag) must have been a long â. The question is whether the phonetic 
> system of Gothic did already have the long â too, and, if not, what 
> sound it could have substituted for it. Proto-Germanic did in fact 
> turn all â's into ô's, and it involved loanwords too. Examples are 
> PCelt. Dânuvios > Go. Dônawi, Lat. Rômânus > Go. Rumôns. But later, 
> Gothic developed an â of its own, in words like brâhta, þâhta etc 
> where the -âh- is from earlier -anh-. It seems to have been spoken 
> without nasalization in the "historical time" (Braune-Helm 1952). 
> Later loans from Greek and Latin display Gothic /a/ standing for the 
> long vowel: fâskja, pâska (Streitberg 1920). The exact dating of the 
> loss of the nasalization however is not known. Also, some dialects 
> of Gothic might have been keeping the nasalized pronunciation longer 
> than others. In which case the old conventional ô could still have 
> been used to render foreign â.

The change /a:/ to /o:/ is very early, already in complete in
Proto-Germanic.  The loss of /n/ before /h/ and compensatory
lengthening is also shared by all branches of Germanic, so unless more
information comes to light, I'd guess Alanic /a:/ would find its
closest match in Gothic /a:/ (whether nasalised or not).

LN

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