Gothic word for "girl"...?

[Edmund]

Dear Justine,

The Gothic word for girl is 'mawi' (fem. ja-stem). There is also one instance of the diminutive 'mawilo' (fem. n-stem) 'little girl'. The latter is kin to Old English 'meowle' ('little girl'). According to Lehmann's etymological dictionary, 'mawi' appears to descend from an earlier unattested *'magwi', a derivative of 'magus' ('boy'), with the loss of the 'g'. You may find it interesting to know that the onomastic prefix 'Mac' in such Scottish names as MacDonald, MacDougal, which means 'son of', is cognate with the Gothic word.

The Gothic words 'frijonds" (masc.) and 'frijondi (fem.) could likely serve as translations for 'boyfriend' and 'girlfriend' respectively; I have not gone through all the attestations of these to determine whether they are in fact used in this sense. There is also the adjective 'liufs' ('beloved, dear'), which one could substantivize (cf. ModE 'my beloved', ModGerman 'meine Geliebte'). Again, I have not gone through all the extant examples, but I will try to do so in the next day or so.

The usual way to greet in Old English was to wish someone health, to wit 'wes hal' or 'wes thu hal' (both singular here, lit. 'be (thou) whole!'), whence comes the expression 'wassail'. Greeting by wishing someone good health is attested in other IE languages as well, e.g. Latin 'salve', and Russian 'zdravstuj'. The cognate of 'hal' in Gothic is of course 'hails'. I would suggest using it to fill the lacuna.

And by the way, 'thagkjan' is a weak verb, so 'I thank' should be 'thagkja', and 'all-' in your opening and closing needs an inflection, if you do not mind my saying so.

Hope this was of some help. If I find anything further apropos, I will pass it on.

Yours truly,

Edmund



--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "underwoodjustine" <underwoodjustine at ...> wrote:
>
> Haila all,
> 
> I hate to post only when I am inquiring or needing something, I hope to someday be able to contribute rather than only posing questions and "taking" however I am quite at a loss here as I have scoured every neologism list and lexicon I can find and came up empty.
> 
> As a girl, I would quite like to know the Gothic word for "girl" and yet the word does occur quite commonly in the New Testament as there are many 'girls' healed and exorcised though any account of the miracles is either a lost translation or the manuscript exists and I have simply failed to come across it.  (I suppose it should be noted at times a 'girl' is healed though scripture may refer to her as someone's 'daughter' and not as a 'girl'.)  Please let me know if I'm quite insane.
> 
> It seems boy is "magus"?  I have found that "friend" is "frijonds" though I wonder (and hope) that there would be a term equivalent to today's "boyfriend" that is not a simple compounding of the two as the English term itself makes much less since than "lover" as the terms "boy" and "girl" mostly refer to children in other contexts.
> 
> I have also found on this group's neologism list the terms "Fráuja" and "Fráujo" proposed as abbreviations "Fr." and "Fro." respectively for Mr., and Ms./Mrs.  I wonder what everyone's thoughts are on this proposal and if these terms double as "Gentelman" and "Lady"?
> 
> I would love to end my post with "Goodbye" however I am afraid I have not discovered that phrase either.  One would barely guess I have spent a great deal of time studying this language since my last post... ;)
> 
> Þagka all!
> 
> Justine
>


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