[gothic-l] Gothic Language Corner 11

[Dicentis a roellingua@gmail.com [gothic-l]]

This is only logical. Why would Wulfila make it difficult for the Goths by
using one symbol for different phonetic values.

Op vrijdag 13 februari 2015 heeft edmundfairfax at yahoo.ca [gothic-l] <
gothic-l at yahoogroups.com> het volgende geschreven:
>
>
> Dear Roel,
>
> I'm not sure which features you are referring to here: the division into
elements or the presence or absence of an accent over <ai>. As to the
former, the separation is to break down the word into its part
etymologically: thus "af-airz-jan" says as much as prefix af- + root -airz-
+ infinitive ending of an i-stem. As to the latter, the acute accent over
the 'i' of <ai> indicates that the vowel captured by <ai> does NOT descend
from Proto-Germanic /ai/. I cite here a passage from Lambdin's
>Introduction to the Gothic Language< (2006, p. xiv) concerning this
convention:
> "Since the early years of Indo-European studies it has been a convention
in Gothic grammars to indicate the historical distinctions between ai [with
acute accent over the 'a'] = PG *ay, the diphthong [ay] as in 'nice', and
ai [with acute accent over the 'i'] = PG *i. A third ai, printed with no
diacritic, is allegedly found prevocalically in a few words, i.e. saian (to
sow), faian (to find fault), waian (to blow), where it corresponds to PG
*ae, the [ae] of 'at, sat' but longer. And likewise for au [with acute
accent over the 'a'] = PG *aw, the diphthong [aw] in 'house', au [with
acute accent over the 'u'] = PG *u and au [no accent] = ?PG *o [long o] or
[long u]. We see no need to follow this convention since it implies that
each of these digraphs actually had these three different pronunciations in
Gothic, for which there is no evidence whatsoever."
> As to Robert Pfeffer's readings, he, of course, follows modern thinking
on <ai> and <au> and pronounces them as monothongs. He goes very quickly,
but the only thing I would question is his pronunciation of /h/. He
pronounces it as 'ch' in German 'Bach, Fach, Buch' etc. The fact that <h>
in the Gothic Bible is subject to assimilation (e.g. jah than > jath than)
or outright loss suggests, rather, that the <h> was more likely like the
'h' in ModE 'hand, hold' etc. Moreover, he does not attempt apparently to
capture a phonemic difference in vowel length, which I am somewhat inclined
to think is possibly right, although most Gothic scholars today usually
maintain a system wherein there is a meaningful difference in vowel
quantity, thus the 'a' in '-hah-', for example, is thought to be twice as
long as the 'a' in 'was.'
> Edmund
>
>
> ---In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, <roellingua at ...> wrote :
>
> Hi Edmund,
> abgeben -- einen Teil abgeben: got. afdailjan*
> abirren: got. afaírzjan 6, af-aírz-jan,  sw. V. (1):
> -- von irdischer Abkunft: got. aírþakunds* 1, aír-þ-a-kun-d-s*,
> „abscheiden“: got. afskaidan 6, af-skai-d-an,
> What would be the difference in pronunciation and is his assumption
correct?
>
> I also have a question, are these spoken texts in Gothic a correct
pronunciation?
> Gotische Lesungen — Lukas I
>
> Gotische Lesungen — Lukas II, 1–20
>
> 2015-02-13 1:20 GMT+01:00 edmundfairfax at ... [gothic-l] <
gothic-l at yahoogroups.com>:
>
>
>
> Dear Roel,
>
> You'll need to give me some examples from Koebler in order to be able to
answer.
> Audamunds
>
> 
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