[gothic-l] Gothic Language Corner 8

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

This Gothic language corner is a very good idea Edmund, they contain very
fun and informative facts! Also you made very clear how the word table is
used and your explanations are comprehensible for everyone. Some scholars
like to use hard words, but forget that it makes their work not very
accessible. I guess that, as working was important, they used the Latin
words. Germanuc people, also nowadays, prefer to use Latin terms for more
important things, English is the best example of that.

Op zaterdag 10 januari 2015 heeft edmundfairfax at yahoo.ca [gothic-l] <
gothic-l at yahoogroups.com> het volgende geschreven:
>
>
> 'Table' in Gothic
>
> 1) (table for eating): biuths (masc. a-stem);
>
> 'for even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs'
>
> jah auk hundos undaro biuda matjand af drauhsnom barne (Mk7,28)
>
> '(they) have been received at my table'
>
> ana biuda meinamma andnumanai wesun (Neh5,17)
>
> 2) (table for working): mes (neut. a-stem);
>
> 'he began to drive out those selling and buying in the temple and
overturned the money-lenders' tables and the seats of those selling doves'
>
> dugann uswairpan thans frabugjandans jah bugjandans in alh jah mesa
skattjane jah sitlans thize frabugjandane ahakim uswaltida (Mk11,15)
>
> What did Gothic dining-tables look like?
>
> Tacitus (22) writes of the Germani in the first century AD that "after
their bath they take their meal, each having a separate seat and table of
his own." Rare archaeological finds of tables from Northern Europe dating
to the first millennium confirm Tacitus' statement. These tables are very
small, more a short-legged tray than a table, averaging about 20 cm high,
with small tops that are either round (Oberflacht grave 80), rectangular
(10th-century Sala Hytta grave 4 in Vastmanland), or square (4-5th-century
Wremen).
>
> It would seem that the diner assumed a semi-recumbant position in eating
from these small tables, i.e., lying on one side with the upper body
propped up on one elbow. To attempt to eat from so low a table while
sitting upright is uncomfortable and results in food being dribbled on
one's clothes (eating-forks were largely unknown in Northern Europe well
into the sixteenth century), and there is no real room for one's legs if
one attempts to sit crossed-legged at such a low table.
>
> The practice of dining from a small low table clearly lived on into the
Middle Ages: a couple of references to dining in the Middle High German
poem >Parzival< indicate that a dining-table was brought into the room and
then removed after eating, and an attendant had to kneel down in order to
cut up the food for the dining guest, the which clearly suggests some kind
of very low table.
>
> Edmund
>
> 
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