[gothic-l] Re: is Gothic the language of one or a few men?

[write2andy@yahoo.com [gothic-l]]

I actually think there was a distinction between "aí/ái" or "aú/áu" (which is why I always write the accents-it helps me).
 The Pietroassa ring spells out "HAILAG" and not "HELAG"; the Goths hadn't been in contact with the Greeks enough at the time to borrow the spelling "ai" for "e". (If that were so, the ring would spell "weih" as such and not "wih".)
 Many Gothic names are recorded with "ai" and "au" (though some are not and it is confusing why not).
 Long-stem nouns and adjectives whose stems end in -r do have a -s on the end for masc. a-stems and I-stems, but not short stems. This is why "weraz" becomes "waír" (not "waírs"), but "gauraz" becomes "gáurs" (and not "gaúr").
 Words like "mawi" (<PG *mawi) turn into "máujos" (<PG *mawjoz) in the plural, and not "maújos". They both come from the same diphthong in Proto-Germanic, and the reason we don't see "mawjos" is because Wulfila uses the existing digraph for that sound before a consonant. The word "þiwi" turns into "þiujos", showing the same w-->u change, but there is no change in the pronunciation in the stem.
 Modern Gothic generally uses this distinction at least in pronunciation, and so many neologisms have been made utilising it to mimic the pronunciation of the word it's derived from, so it would be awkward to reverse this part of the Gothic revival which so many already do.

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