Galeiks/galeiko/swa/swe

[Edmund]

Gothic 'swaswe' (cf. Old Enlish 'swaswa') can mean:

1) 'like' (prep.):

bithe fastaith, ni wairthaith, swaswe thai liutans, gaurai (Mat6,16) 'when you fast, do not look sullen like the hypocrites'

2) 'as' (conj.):

ni haurnjais faura thus, swaswe thai liutans taujand (Mat6,2) 'do not trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do'

3) 'so that' (conj.); for this function, you can also use 'swaei'

It is also possible to abbreviate 'swaswe' to 'swe':

nih Saulaumon in allamma wulthau seinamma gawasida sik swe ains thize (Mat 6, 29) not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these'

As to 'swa' it does not mean 'like, as' but rather 'so, thus, in this way':

swa liuhtjai liuhath izwar in andwairthja manne (Mat. 5,16) 'so let your light shine before men'.

A further option to show similarity is 'galeikon' (class 2 verb, not to be confused with 'galeikan' class 3 'to please'). 'galeikon' takes a nominative complement (if an overt subject is present) and a dative complement:

ni galeikoth nu thaim (Mat 6,8) 'do not, therefore, be like them'

hwe nu galeiko thata kuni? (Mat 11,16) 'to what, then, might I compare this generation?'

Instead of the verb 'galeikon', the adjective 'galeiks' ('like') can be used with a suitable verb; again the thing compared to needs to be in the dative, and the adjective must agree with its antecedent:

galeik ist barnam sitandam... (Mat. 11, 16) 'it (thata kuni) is like children sitting...' (the adjective 'galeiks' is in the nom. sg. neuter here)

Note further that the verb 'aukan' is transitive, while 'auknan' is intransitive. As 'aukan' contains a heavy syllable, the third-p. sg. pres. indic. needs to be 'aukeith' not 'aukith' (cf. sokeith, hauseith).

Thus, your line 'silence grows like a cancer' would be best rendered as 'thahains swaswe gund auknith' or 'thahains swaswe gund aukeith sik'.

The verb 'wahsjan' (cf. English 'to wax') would also seem to work here.

And, needless to say, Gothic word-order is a very uncertain area, and judging from both the corpus of texts as well as the other early Germanic languages, and other ancient Indo-European languages, many permutations are possible; I have given only one, which perhaps highlights the object compared to.


--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "anheropl0x" <anheropl0x at ...> wrote:
>
> Hello! A real long time ago I translated the song Sounds of Silence into Gothic. But there has always been a line that plagued me, and it still does.
> 
> The line goes, "Silent like a cancer grows."
> 
> What I do not know is what word to use for "like" in this use. Is it an adverb? Maybe a kind of conjunction? Basically, for the translation, I have "THaihans ___ gundX aukith." I imagine "gunds" would stay in the nominative, but I really don't know.
> 
> But also, if you can choose which is the best to use, can you please tell me why? And when and how to know to properly use swe vs. swa vs. swe-swa and so on? Thank you so much!
>


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