century, events, deaths

[llama_nom]

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "Lombard" <manielombard at ...> wrote:
>
> Dear "Llama nom"

Hi Manie!
 
> 4th fidworda

Or maybe the root fidur- would be used. There's also a question over
whether -d- would be devoiced to -þ- to dissimilate it from the
preciding voiced consonant, or whether -d- would be kept by analogy
with other ordinal numerals: *fidurda, *fidurþa, *fidworda, *fidworþa?
 For comparison, we've got OE. féorða, OS. fiorðo, OHG. fiordo (MHG.
vierde, mod.G. vierte), ON. fiórði.

> 20th twai tigjuda (Verner's law þ > d?; or anþara tigjuda, like
fimfta-taihunda instead of fimf-taihunda ?)

The -j- in twai tigjus "twenty" is part of the nominative plural
u-stem noun ending of what would in the singular be *tigus, so if
Gothic did use a system like this, I'd expect: anþar tigus. (anþar is
always declined strong). If Gothic was more like the other Germanic
languages here and formed a compound word with an ordinal suffix, the
regular form would be -þa (if the same suffix was used as in Old
English), devoiced to dissimilate it from the -g- of tigu-, so:
*-tiguþa. But I can well imagine that this might be changed back to
-d- by analogy with other ordinals like ahtuda, so maybe *-tiguda
would be equally possible. We could avoid this dilemma if we used the
-osta suffix, as in Old High German. In favour of -da (or -þa) is the
fact that this suffix is actually attested in Gothic. As I mentioned,
Old Norse -gandi might be a later development by analogy with the
teens. In favour of -osta is the fact that this occurs in Old High
German, as well as in Icelandic for hundreds and thousands (and
probably on hundreds and thousands also in Old Norse, although
examples happen to be lacking).

> Quite difficult :)))

Yes! And knowing those Goths, they probably counted in a completely
different way to any of these, just to confuse us...

LN

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