Principles of reconstruction.

[Justïn]

Wow, I just wanted to say, with much pride, that I was able to follow 
and conceptualise that whole explanation...I wish there was a 
published textbook that breaks things down step-for-step like that.  
Okay, I'm getting better at this and exploring it a lot more...I 
think it'll be a while but I don't think it's beyond my reach.
What do you all use this skill for?  Besides applying it in 
developing better second-language acquisition, do you reconstruct 
Gothic to write in it regularly or...?

I was really hoping I'd be able to journal in Gothic but the nature 
of journaling implies that I'd be fluent enough to represent a 
natural daily thought spontaneously in Gothic, whereas I'm getting 
the idea now that it would be such an effort and require so many 
resources to coin neologisms and reconstructions that it'd be very, 
very laboured, much too much for journaling.

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "llama_nom" <600cell at ...> wrote:
>
> --- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "ualarauans" <ualarauans@> wrote:
> >
> > Now, the "dwarf". You should know that the short [e] (like in PG
> *dwergaz) is written as aí (or ai) in the Wulfilan script. So, our
> root is *dwaírg-. What's with the ending? Is it also dropped? No,
> not all of it. The –a- disappears, that's right, but the final 
Proto-
> Germ. –z does not. It just gets voiceless [s]. So, the correct
> reconstruction is *dwaírgs.
> 
> One more detail worth mentioning here:
> 
> The Proto-Germanic short vowels *e and *i fell together in Gothic.
> That's to say, the old distinction between these sounds was lost.
> Normally the resulting sound appears in Gothic as 'i'.
> 
> PG e > Old English 'wesan' : Gothic 'wisan'
> PG i > Old English 'fisc' : Gothic 'fisks'
> 
> But before 'r' or 'h' or 'hv' (the letter written in the Gothic
> alphabet as a dot in a circle), PG 'i' and 'e' each appear in Gothic
> as 'aí'--probably representing a short open 'e' sound.
> 
> PG e > Old English 'beran' : Gothic 'baíran'
> PG i > Old English 'birþ' : Gothic 'baíriþ'
>


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