[gothic-l] Re: some suggestions and corrects

Mon Feb 9 18:49:08 UTC 2015

Dear Albareiks, 

 A few more suggestions and corrections:

 1) Gothic normally drops subject pronouns, but a subject pronoun typically stands if emphatic or contrastive. In the English version, the 'you' here would naturally be stressed, to show emphasis, and I would recommend using the personal pronoun in the Gothic as well. Cf. the comparable line "thiuthido thu in qinom (L1,28) 'blessed art thou amongst women,' where the pronoun is used. This example also shows ellipsis of the verb 'to be', which would also be a possibility for your text: thus, "thiutheigs thu, frauja guth unsars...."

 2) When a noun or adjective is used in direct address, the "vocative" is required in Gothic. As 'lord our god, king of all' is clearly an address, the vocative is required here then. It so happens that "frauja guth unsars" is the same in the nominative sing. and the vocative sing., but in the case of "king of all", which is in apposition to the foregoing phrase, 'thiudans' should also be in the vocative as well, thus "thiudan allaize." Cf. the line "hails! Thiudan Judaie! (J19,3) 'Hail! O King of the Jews!'.

 (There is, however, a wrinkle in the use of vocatives, namely that when a vocative stands in apposition to a pronoun of address, the nominative may stand as well: cf. "...thus meljan, batista Thaiaufeilu (L1,3) '...to write to you, O most excellent Theophilus' (with the adjective + personal name in the vocative), but "wai thus Bethsaidan" (Mt11,21) 'woe to you, Bethsaida' (the name here is in dative, in agreement with 'thus', the dative form of the pronoun).)

 Thus, you have a few possibilities with the first line:

 a) thiutheigs is thu, frauja guth unsars, thiudan allaize
 b) thiutheigs thu, frauja guth unsars, thiudan allaize

 3) The subjunctive, or optative, tense has a variety of functions:

 a) In main clauses to signal: imperative, advice/moral obligation, wishes, contrary-to-fact/hypothetical, doubt/unsureness

 b) In subordinate clauses to signal: purpose (after the conjunction thatei/ei), jussives (after the conjunction thatei/ei), subjective statements, contrary-to-fact/hypothetical statements

 (The conjunction 'thatei/ei' here should not be confused with the particle 'ei' used to introduce relative clauses.)

 The use of the subjunctive forms in your text suggests that doubt is implied about these acts of God, such that "saei gaskapjai akrana weinatainis" would be naturally rendered in English as "who might create..., who perhaps creates..." I doubt that this was the intention. If I am correct, then the indicative forms are needed. Thus, the second line should run:

 saei skapjith akrana weinatainis

 I would also suggest not using the prefix ga- here, which is generally believed to have a resultative or perfective sense (amongst other functions). As the creation is apparently ongoing here, the prefix would seem wrongly to stress the completion of the process.

 4) The preposition 'mith' can be dropped in "mith waurda seinamma," although it is not wrong to use it here. Cf. "uswarp thans ahmans waurda (Mt8,16) 'he cast out the spirits with a word', but "aftra afaiaik mith aitha" (Mt26,72) 'again he denied it with an oath.' The omission of the preposition reduces the number of syllables and makes the line closer to the foregoing ones in length, which I imagine would be better if these lines are being set to the same music.

 Edmund

---In Gothic-L at yahoogroups.com, <medieval_music at ...> wrote :

 Hi Edmund, 

 Thank you for the offer of feedback, I'll start posting revised lines with English translation:

 Thiutheigs is, frauja guth unsars, thiudans allaize
 Blessed are you, lord our god, king of all,

 saei gaskapjai akrana weinatainis
 who creates the fruit of the vine. 

 saei gabairai hlaibans af airthai
 who brings forth bread from out of the earth.

 saei allos waihtins gaskapjai mith waurda seinamma.
 who creates all things with his word.

 In this revision I used the optative forms for the verbs but I still wonder if it is really appropriate to do so in this context?

 Albareiks

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