Hello

[llama_nom]

>> The angel who comes to Mary greets her with the imperative verb
>> 'fagino' "rejoice" or "be happy". This translates Greek CAIRE, as
does
>> 'hails' when the soldiers mock Jesus, saying 'hails, þiudan(s)
Iudaie'
>> "hail, king of the Jews".
>>


> OK, but it's kinda weird if one would greet today by saying "be
happy" so I wouldnt prefer that one.


Not so strange to the Greeks who greeted each other with CAIRE (be
happy, contented, well), or in Modern Icelandic 'komdu sæll' (hello),
'vertu sæll' (goodbye). I guess it depends what we're used to... I
read somewhere that when the Ancient Greek philosophers advicated "the
happy life", they meant a life of contentment and feeling well, rather
than a life of debauchery! On the other hand, I think Priscus uses
CAIRE to translate whatever word was used by Attila's followers (who
included many Goths) to salute each other's health at a feast, and
then there's the Latin 'De conviviis barbaris' epigram:

Inter "eils" goticum scapiamatziaiadrincan
non audet quisquam dignos edicere versos.

Between the Gothic "(h)ails!" [and] "skapja(m) matja(n) ja(h)
drigkan!" no one dares utter worthy verses.

http://www.univie.ac.at/indogermanistik/quellentexte.cgi?5

But I think we can be more confident of 'hails' as a native Gothic
greeting than 'fagino' because 'fagino' is a literal translation of
the Greek 2nd person singular imperative, whereas rendering CAIRE with
the adjective 'hails' instead of a verb suggests that the translator
was influenced by native usage. That isn't to rule out the possibility
that 'fagino' was a native Gothic greeting, but the evidence for
'hails' seems stronger.


> It would probably be weird to use the noun to greet if it is an 
> initial greeting, but when ending a message I think it is acceptable, 
> just as in modern languages such as english and swedish to, where you 
> could say "hälsningar *your name*".


That seems reasonable to me. All examples of the noun used in this way
at the end of Paul's letters are singular (I Cor 16:21, Col 4:18, II
Thess 3:17 A & B). Although these are in agreement with the Greek,
there are instances elsewhere of the Gothic translator using singular
where Greek has plural, and plural where Greek has singular, so
presumably singular was acceptable here in Gothic. Maybe plural would
have been too, but we don't have any evidence for that, unless there's
anything I've missed.

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