I haven't seen you since we crossed the Danube...

[Grsartor at AOL.COM]

Hi, All.

About how to say "since" in Gothic: as no-one else has replied, I offer a few remarks in the hope that others with greater knowledge may be prompted to answer, if only to put right whatever mistakes I make.

What we really ought to do is see whether the available texts give us any examples of how Gothic coped. I do not know whether such exist, and in this state of unblissful ignorance offer the following.

First, we have to distinguish between different uses of the word in question:

(1) as an adverb, eg "he had breakfast but has not eaten since".

(2) as a preposition, eg. "he has eaten nothing since breakfast".

(3) as a conjunction, eg "he has eaten nothing since he had breakfast".

There is also the question of what tense we should use. In a previous message I said that it seems Gothic regularly used the preterite where English uses a perfect, even when this perfect indicates a persisting state, and might well be expressed by a present in other tongues than English (eg, he has been here for three hours). If this is right, then it might be reasonable to express "since" by "after". My second and third example sentences could then become:

(2) waiht ni matida afar undaurnimat.

(3) waiht ni matida afar þatei matida undaurnimat. A similar construction is actually attested in Gothic: Afar þatei atgibans was Iohannes (Mark 1:14)


As for the adverbial use of "since", or "after", it might be reasonable to render the first sentence as:

(1) matida undaurnimat iþ waiht ni matida afar þata. This construction is at any rate paralleled in the surviving Gothic: Afar þata galaiþ Iesus (John 6:1)

A shortcoming of this way of coping with how to express "since" is that there would be no distinction between the following:

(A) He did not smoke a cigar after breakfast.

(B) He has not smoked a cigar since breakfast.

In favour of the suggested use of "fram" for expressing "since" there is the Gothic idiom "fram himma nu", which was used to mean "from now on".

I hope these remarks, if not specially useful, may spur others into offering their help.

Gerry T.

 

 


 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Claire Knudsen-Latta <clairemargery at gmail.com>
To: gothic-l at yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 18:39
Subject: [gothic-l] I haven't seen you since we crossed the Danube...


Ik ni gesahw þuk fram donaujai.

I'm having trouble with the last bit of the translation, would _fram_ be the
correct preposition?  And, do I need to include the "we crossed" bit or
could that be implied?

Thanks,
Claire


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