[gothic-l] Gothic Language Corner 11

Fri Feb 13 00:11:00 UTC 2015

Hello Edmund,

Even before I read about pronunciation in academic works I assumed that, as
Wulfila was basing himself on Greek which didn't have a diphthong that it
was much more logical to me to pronounce all instances of "ai" as "e" and
"au" as a short "o".

I have a question though, Koebler for example has reconstructed several
instances in which "ai" is pronounced differently, is this simply a mistake
and do they all have the same pronunciation, or is there a difference?

2015-02-13 0:57 GMT+01:00 edmundfairfax at yahoo.ca [gothic-l] <
gothic-l at yahoogroups.com>:

>
>
> As the question concerning the pronunciation of the digraph <ai> has been
> raised latterly, I give here a more detailed discussion, and include the
> digraph <au> too, as it is related to the issue. The following is based on
> the discussion found in Braune / Heidermanns (2004 sections 20-26).
>
>
> In older scholarship, the view that <ai> represented the diphthong /ai/,
> and <au> the diphthong /au/, specifically in those contexts where a
> diphthong existed in the Proto-language (e.g. *stainaz > Go stains, ON
> steinn, OHG stein, OE stan), is found almost without exception, although
> already Gabelentz / Loebe (1843-1846) questioned this shaky assumption.
> This old view was based mainly on the following arguments:
>
>
> 1) The corresponding sound in the other Germanic languages appears partly
> as a diphthong, eg. OHG /ei/. This, however, is a non-argument, since such
> forms tell us only about the proto-form and nothing about Wulfilian Gothic.
> Such an argue is tantamount to claiming that the 'k' in Modern English
> 'knee' -- imagine that the pronunciation was unknown -- should be
> pronounced because the 'k' is in fact pronounced in all the other Germanic
> languages, e.g. German 'Knie,' etc., the which of course is false.
>
>
> 2) The word HAILAG in the Pietroassa runic inscription is clearly a
> diphthong, since runic writing was by and large phonetic. But it is
> questionable whether the inscription is in fact West Gothic (it was found
> in present-day Rumania), nor is the dating certain. Even if the inscription
> is indeed Gothic and dates to the fourth century or even early fifth
> century, again this tells us nothing about the Gothic spoken in Moesia
> (present-day Bulgaria) by the Gothi Minores, that is, the Goths of Wulfila,
> since the diphthong is HAILAG could very well be an instance of dialectal
> difference.
>
>
> 3) Some Latinized Gothic personal names show <ai> rather than <e>.
> Latinized versions of Germanic names, however, are notorious for being
> inaccurate and traditional. The Latin form of Gothic 'gut-' is consistently
> written 'goth-', with an inorganic 'th' and the wrong vowel. Similarly, the
> thematic connecting vowel in many Germanic ethnonyms, such as Langobardi (=
> *Langabardoz) have been apparently modelled on Gaulish and Greek names,
> wherein a connecting theme -o- was common, and do not reflect actual
> Germanic pronunciation. A further example is the common Latin spelling 'eu'
> for Gothic 'iu' in such names as 'Theudoricus' = *Thiudareiks. And by the
> end of the fourth century, spellings with <e> or <i> become in fact the
> norm where earlier an <ai> could appear, that is very close to the time of
> the Wulfilian translation. (For a discussion of Latin and Greek distortion
> of Germanic names, see the introduction to Schoenfeld's >Woerterbuch der
> altgermanischen Personen- und Voelkernamen<.)
>
>
> 4 Gothic loanwords into Occitan and Ibero-Romance typically substitute the
> the value represented by <ai> with /a/: these languages did not contain in
> their phonemic inventory /ai/ but did have an /e/, and so, it is argued,
> the value of <ai> must have been /ai/, otherwise /e/ would have the valued
> adopted instead. Yet it is been pointed out that there are very few such
> words, and these could equally be the result of borrowings from a dialect
> still with /ai/, and again tells us nothing about specifically Wulfilian
> Gothic.
>
>
> There is in effect no real convincing argument for a diphthongal
> pronunciation of Wulfilian <ai> and <au>. Speaking strongly in favour of a
> monothongal value for these digraphs is the fact that Wulfilian Gothic is
> written in a script modelled on the Greek alphabet and clearly follows
> Greek orthographic conventions in a number of cases (e.g. <gg> = /ng/). In
> the Greek alphabet of the age in question, the diagraph <ai> represented a
> monothong, to wit an open /e/. Moreover, the diagraph <ai> is used in
> places in Gothic where historically there was never an /ai/ in Germanic
> (e.g. wair < *wiraz; haihait < *hehait; aith-thau <*eth-). The same digraph
> is used in adopted Latin and Greek words to represent an e-sound, not a
> diphthong (e.g. naubaimbair < Latin november). In fact, Wulfilian Gothic
> uses a different digraph to capture instances where /ai/ and /au/ still
> existed in the language, to wit, <aj> and <aw>: cf. Pawlus = Latin Paulus;
> (and from a later source, the Deed of Naples, kawtsjo = Latin cautio);
> tawida (/au/) verus taujan (/o/); and bajoths (/ai/) versus bai (/e/).
> Thus, if the word for 'stone' contained a diphthong rather than a
> monothong, the expected spelling would then be *stajns, and not stains.
>
>
> The survival of the old view amongst amateurs of Gothic is seemingly owing
> partly to the reliance on a few older works in English, such Bennet's
> introduction, which still tow the old line, and failure to consult more
> current academic research, which has seriously undermined the foundations
> of the old argument.
>
>
> Of course, one is free to pronounce Gothic in any ol' way one wants, but
> in that case, such Gothic is well on its way to becoming a kind Elvish or
> Klingon.
>
>
> Edmund
>
>  
>
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