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

Fri May 30 22:32:58 UTC 2014

A few more comments:

1) With regard to the neologism gutisk-: it is true that names of languages in Modern German and Dutch are neuter, but in the Scandinavian languages they are feminine or at least non-neuter: e.g. Icelandic Danska 'Danish', Swedish Svenska 'Swedish". This brings up a further point, namely, that it is generally preferable in the comparative method to use comparanda closest in kinship and time to the target language. What Modern German and Modern Dutch suggest is less important that what Old High German, Old Saxon, Old English, Old Norse, and the language of the earliest runic inscriptions reveal, in the case of reconstructing fourth-century Gothic. That said, it so happens that the earliest West Germanic languages, like their modern counterparts, make neuter the names of languages suffixed with the reflexes of -isk-; in fact, in Old English, englisc is not only neuter but invariable (thus on englisc 'in English' but on engliscgereorde 'in the English
 language', the former lacking the dative ending -e). Old Norse, however, shows the feminine. The problem remains that Gothic is considered an East Germanic language, and it is impossible to know whether in this case it followed the practice extant for West Germanic or North Germanic, thus, whether a Gothic language-name should be neuter or feminine. Thus, it is by no means certain at all that a name of language in Gothic must be neuter rather than feminine.

Moreover, highly moot is the very idea that the usual name for the language spoken by the Goths was based on the root Gut-. It should be borne in mind that the end of late Proto-Germanic is usually assumed to be around the beginning of the first millennium AD. The first couple of centuries of the first millennium AD must surely have been characterized by merely rather minor dialectal differences, and it seems most unlikely that the Marcomanni, for example, thought of themselves as speaking 'Marcomannian', or the Quadi 'Quadian' and likewise for many other Germanic tribal groups, such as the Goths, who in the fourth century likely did not number more than a third of a million people, a number suggested by Magomedov (Chernyakhovskaya kul'tura, problema etnosa 2001), based on the archaeological data. Indeed, the reflexes of *theudisk- were used by speakers of Old Saxon, Old High German, and Middle Dutch to refer to their languages. So too West-Saxons,
 Anglians, and Northumbrians of Anglo-Saxon England spoke englisc, a name that is cognate only with the name of the Angles. And of course today, Canadians do not speak 'Canadian', nor do Belgians speak 'Belgian'. The term 'Gothic' as the name of the language of the Goths is essentially Graeco-Latin usage, reinforced by latterday linguists in their need for a suitable term; what the Goths called their own language is unknown. One could argue that thiudisk- would be as likely a candidate as *gutisk-. At least thiudisk- is extant, albeit once in the adverbial form thiudisko meaning 'in the manner of the Gentiles', which is a literal rendering of Greek ethnicos, but outside of the New Testament, Greek ethnos means simply 'people, nation' (even the Old English Biblical translator similarly used the cognate theod to render 'Gentiles', but elsewhere the noun means simply 'people, nation').

If the intention is to teach real fourth-century Gothic, rather than some kind of 'play-Gothic', then neologisms should be avoided at all cost, and reconstructions resorted to only when one can reconstruct with a fair degree of certainty (and this demands a solid background in early Germanic historical linguistics). This is why I suggested *Gutrazda, given that both elements are extant and the compound has a direct parallel in Gutthiuda. Alternatively, *Gut(an)e razda 'language of the Goths' would partly sidestep the issue, although it is unknown to what nominal class Gut- belonged.

The example of Modern Hebrew has be alluded to a number of times recently in the postings, but this example is irrelevant. To my knowledge, Modern Hebrew is not an attempt to reconstruct the language as it existed centuries ago; rather, it is an instance of a dead language being reused and refashioned to meet modern nationalistic needs. This is not the same as linguistic reconstruction. Naive indeed is the view that one can go shopping in a variety of Germanic and non-Germanic languages for Gothic "loans" or imagined cognates and not end up with a dabbler's mishmash.

If you are bold enough to attempt comparative reconstruction, then I would suggest you read the first chapter of Benjamin Fortson's Indo-European Language and Culture, An Introduction and the first couple of chapters of Oswald Szemerenyi's Introduction to Indo-European Linguistics. These will provide a basic understanding of what is involved.

2) With regard to yes-no questions: it is NOT true that every yes-no question must be accompanied by the particle -u. Consider, for example,

Galaubeis thata? (John11:26) 'Do you believe this?'
gasaihwis tho kwinon? (Luke 7:44) 'Do you see this woman?'

A careful examination of the instances of -u show that it is in fact modal, expressing such attitudes as doubt, hostile curiosity, amazement, exasperation, dismissiveness, or a rhetorical question.

3) Note that anakunnan is a class 3 weak verb, thus 'you read' is anakunnais not **anakunnis.

Edmund

On Friday, May 30, 2014 1:47:24 AM, "Robert Cloutier lingvojn at gmail.com [gothic-l]" <gothic-l at yahoogroups.com> wrote:

A few additional comments/suggestions:

pg. 3. ni 'not' should come before the verb it negates and not after. Ik mag ni rodjan Gutisks --> Ik ni mag rodjan Gutisks.

pg. 3. The particle -u should be attached to the first word of a yes/no question, so Magt þu rodjan Gutisks? should be Magt-u rodjan Gutisks? If the first word starts with a particle, then the -u should be placed between the particle and the verb, so ana-kunnis þu ufta bokos? should be anau-kunnis ufta bokos?

I think it is all right to use Gutisks to refer to the language--it is common in the Germanic languages to use an adjective as the name of a language. Moreover, I disagree that Gutisks should be in the feminine to refer to the language; it should be neuter. If you look at Modern Dutch or German, the neuter is used to refer to the language even though the word for 'language' is common and feminine gender, respectively. So, for example, het Nederlands (neuter gender) versus de Nederlandse taal (common gender).

pg 5. haita should be haitada. Contrary to popular belief, haitan in Gothic never means "to be called" unless explicitly marked for passive voice, unlike the modern Germanic languages.

pg 7. Verbs do not have declensions or declinations but conjugations. But given the context, I'm not sure either is the correct term you mean to use. Perhaps inflection? But it is not really clear what it is you are trying to say--could you elaborate?

Best regards,

Robert

On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 4:49 AM, Edmund Fairfax edmundfairfax at yahoo.ca [gothic-l] <gothic-l at yahoogroups.com> wrote:

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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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