A short gothic poem

[OSCAR HERRE]

thought heritage mite be more like kunjitham......

--- On Tue, 7/2/13, Edmund Fairfax <edmundfairfax at yahoo.ca> wrote:


From: Edmund Fairfax <edmundfairfax at yahoo.ca>
Subject: [gothic-l] Re: A short gothic poem
To: "gothic-l at yahoogroups.com" <gothic-l at yahoogroups.com>
Date: Tuesday, July 2, 2013, 11:32 AM



  





If I may be allowed my two cents,

1) the form 'aiwis' as genitive singular is indeed correct (see, for example, Luke 1,70).

2) I think a better way to render 'heritage' in the cited lines would be the word 'arbi' (neuter ja-stem), glossed by Koebler as 'inheritance, heritage'. A word 'othal' is in fact not extant in the Gothic corpus; 'haimothli' is, however, but means 'patrimonial homestead'. The cognates in the other early Germanic languages suggest that if a Gothic 'othal(s)' did in fact exist, it likely mean mainly 'homeland, native land, inherited land'. If heritage broadly was meant by the writer, then I would suggest that he/she use 'hwar ist arbi unsar?'

3) If you decide to keep *'othal' and assume that it is neuter, the past participle 'fulhans' must agree in number and gender with it, thus 'fulhan(ata)'; in this case, the past participle is used as an adjective. If you wish to use a passive construction, as was suggested by one of the commenters, then the form needs to be 'filhada', not 'fulhada'; the present passive is formed on the non-past stem, in other words, based on the infinitive, in this case 'filhan'. Given the context, I would recommend the use of 'affilhan' 'to bury away'.

4) A quick look at some instances of 'filhan' and its prefixed forms in the Gothic Bible suggests that 'buried in' (with a stative sense) rather than 'buried into' would be more natural in Gothic, thus, 'in' + dative rather than 'inn' + accusative. Instead of a preposition with 'afgrunditha', you could also use the dative of place, such that the second cited line would read 'affilhada ufarmaudeins afgrundithai'. This use of the dative of place rather than a prepositional phrase appears to have been less common in Gothic, and the same is true for the other early Germanic languages; in Old English, for example, it is found mainly in poetry. This more literary use may have been valid for Gothic as well.

5) In the last line, the form 'wolthags' should be 'wulthag': it must agree in number and gender with its head, in this case 'fraweit', which is a neuter noun in the nominative singular. Thus the last line should run: 'wulthag sijai fraweit'.

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