Reconstructing Gothic

[d.faltin@hispeed.ch [gothic-l]]

Hi Edmund,
  
 I agree with you. A reconstructed Gothic is only attractive if it is reliable or, at the very least, if errors and hypothesis are systematic. Anything else would not be of much interest or value I'm afraid. Therefore, I think any attempt at reconstructing the missing parts of Gothic should involve a top linguist and expert in early Germanic. In Germany, Prof. Wolfram Euler would fit the bill. 
 Euler is a leading reconstructivist linguist who has reconstructed texts in proto-Germanic and early common Germanic and as I pointed out in a recent mail, he has reconstructed the Hildebrandslied in Langobardic. Of course, his aim is not to revive dead languages. Instead, his aim is to advance our knowledge by comparing different Germanic dialects, which involves extrapolations. In your list of languages better suited for revival I would include Old High German (OHG). For a linguist, OHG is relatively easy to reconstruct and it is of course the second oldest attested Germanic language after Gothic.
  
 Best
 Dirk
 PS Interestingly, using different methods Wolfram Euler confirmed the hypothesis of Prof. Jürgen Udolph, who, reliying on toponyms found that the proto or early Germanic language developed in a relatively small region in the south of the modern German federal state of  Lower Saxony (the Harz-region). From there the language spread north and east-wards probably in conjunction with the iron-working technology.  

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