Assimil-like course to learn modern Gothic (not finished yet)

Thu May 29 21:15:45 UTC 2014

I'm not surprised that you have found little useful on websites dealing with Gothic. You could try "Gothic Online" hosted by the Linguistic Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin. I have not looked very carefully through this site, but my impression is that it does seem to be reliable, showing academic rigour. Nothing, however, beats reputable studies in print by recognized scholars, and I would recommend the following:

- Thomas Lambdin's An Introduction to the Gothic Language (2006); this is a very user-friendly graded introduction to the language written by a linguist qualified to do so and includes exercises to work through, plus texts, glossary and a historical grammar, ideal for those studying on their own.

- Wilhelm Braune & Frank Heidermann's Gotische Grammatik (2004); this is the best descriptive grammar available and is indispensable for any serious study of the language, although it focuses almost exclusively on phonology and morphology.

- Gerhard Koebler's Gotische Woerterbuch (1989); not without errors, but still a very useful dictionary and concordance.

- Winfred Lehmann's A Gothic Etymological Dictionary (1986).

These four works are still in print and can be bought through amazon.com/.de., and I would strongly recommend the Lambdin book to any neophyte. Unfortunately, a comprehensive reference grammar is yet to be written, and a good deal of information concerning the language is to be found only in scholarly articles.

I also found the Gothic font that you used rather quirky and not the easiest to decipher. I have a much nicer one on my computer, which I downloaded a number of years ago from the internet; the characters in this version were modelled directly on those found in the Codex Argenteus. I will see if I can hunt down the link for you. I will give you some feedback on the remaining lessons, on the weekend.

Edmund

On Thursday, May 29, 2014 3:50:12 PM, "Dicentis a roellingua at gmail.com [gothic-l]" <gothic-l at yahoogroups.com> wrote:

Hello Edmund,

Do I have to use the subjunctive for every verb for which I want to use: 'can you'? 

I 'm thankful for your reply, you point out some things which I suspected, like the personal pronouns, and some which I didn't know, like the use of Gutisks.

The problem is that I can't really find good websites with extended explanations of the grammar, so I use books right now, but it's hard to find specific information in them. That's why I didn't really know how to use 'Gutisks'. 

I have already started with writing the course but don't master the grammar fully yet, but I have already started with the reason that I just need to correct a few things once I know well how to use Gothic, and I don't need to start with writing the whole conversation course.

I will correct the awiliudo part. If you want to correct more, that only helps me, so don't feel like not doing it.

Roel

2014-05-29 4:49 GMT+02:00 Edmund Fairfax edmundfairfax at yahoo.ca [gothic-l] <gothic-l at yahoogroups.com>:

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>You invited corrections and comments, so here are some:
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>Lesson 1:
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>1) I think it would be preferable to use Gothic names -- Why not use Wulfila or *Airmanareiks or the like? Or at least Gothic versions of the names chosen: Roderick, for example, would be *Hrothareiks.
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>2) Gothic is a pro-drop language; that is, subject pronouns are not normally expressed, unless the subject is contrastive or emphatic. Thus, magt rodjan? is then to be expected rather than magt thu rodjan?
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>3) I have misgivings about using the neologism *gutisks to render '(the) Gothic (language)'. Given gutthiuda '(the) Gothic people', I would suggest using *gutrazda (cf. Old English engliscgereord '(the) English (language)'). If you do use *gutisk-, then it should likely be feminine (assuming razda 'language' is understood). As it stands, **Magt thu rodjan gutisks? is ungrammatical: the object ('Gothic') cannot be in the nominative case here, as rodjan requires an accusative object: either gutiska (fem. acc.) or gutiskana (masc. acc.), cf. tho waurda thoei ik rodida izwis (John6,64) 'the words (acc.) that I have spoken to you'.
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>4) Wai means 'woe, alas'
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>Lesson 2:
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>1) 'I want to know' is not **ik mag witan but rather wiljau witan.
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>2) The preposition du normally takes the dative; thus **du gard is should be du garda is or du is garda. I have doubts about the construction sa wigs du garda is and will see if I can find something better.
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>3) **thu magt fraihnan imma is ungrammatical: fraihnan takes an accusative object; cf. frah ina sa kindins 'the governor asked him'. The verb magan normally denotes ability; the use of the verb here to indicate a suggestion is surely an anglicism. I suggest you use simply fraihnan in the subjunctive.
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>3) Goths must refer to a masculine noun. Based on the construction evident in batizo ist thus ei frakwistnai aina lithiwe theinaize... ('it is better for you that one of your limbs perish'), the neuter form of goths would appear to be necessary here.
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>4) 'I thank you' should be awiliudo thus cf. Guth, awiliudo thus unte ni im swaswe thai antharai mans "God, I thank thee that I am not like the others'.
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> I have not looked beyond this to see what errors may lie ahead.
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>I fear that you have introduced too many grammatical points into these exchanges (the three cases nom., acc., and dat.), verbs from a variety of classes (the pret. pres. no less), etc., which are likely to overwhelm the learner. I understand you wish to have a conversational thrust, but introducing such a variety of grammatical concepts in less than eight lines is not user-friendly.
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>Edmund
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>On Wednesday, May 28, 2014 7:10:48 PM, "roellingua at gmail.com [gothic-l]" <gothic-l at yahoogroups.com> wrote:
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>I thought that it might be an idea to already share this with you guys in order to get some reviews.
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>The texts aren't perfect and I 'm not sure about the word order, the grammar might also contain certain mistakes, but I would be happy if people point them out so that I can correct them.
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>I assume that most people here are familiar with the method of Assimil? I have learned several languages with the books of Assimil because their method simply is to use a lot of dialogs to get used to the way in which the languages is used. For the Gothic language, we only have all kinds of books to learn the grammar, new words etc. I thought that it might be a good idea to have an Assimil-like book for Gothic for the people which don't like to study too much things and just like to go straight to what you use it for: conversation 
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>At the moment I have made 12 lessons.
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>I have uploaded the current PDF and you can download it here: 
>http://roel.tengudev.com/Neo%20Gothic/download_course.php
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>   http://roel.tengudev.com/Neo%20Gothic/download_course.php  
>The download link to the Gothic Learning Book PDF: Conversational course for Gothic.   
>View on roel.tengudev.com     Preview by Yahoo    
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>This is the link to the document if you want to see updates, it looks different from the PDF though and uglier:
>https://docs.google.com/document/d/12rtTAxpUcOJrgOMBXAOFnFvH_ElTuL-EBS69kEp6was/pub
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>What I still need are people who can help with neologisms, there isn't even an official organization for it yet. I also don't know how we can set that up.
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>If it is good enough we could try to go to Assimil and ask if they see something in this.
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