Gothic lessons, learn Gothic here!

[GothicSp]

Hello Unilang members,

I want to spread the Gothic language so one way might be to start teaching you Gothic here. The lessons are quite extensive!

Introduction

The Gothic language is delivered to us by the Gothic Bible of Wulfila. Although he used the Greek syntax mostly (not completely, but the native Gothic syntax will be dealt with in a lesson too), we know the native morphology, words and other grammar like verbs.

The Goths were tribes from Scandinavia which moved south and east from there. The Ostrogoths settled in modern day Italy, Ravana and the Visigoths in Spain. It was in Ravana that the Gothic Bible was most likely written for the Ostrogothic king Theodoric the Great.
The Gothic language is written in a special and own language with it's own alphabet, based on Greek, Latin and Rune signs, if you have Gothic unicode enabled, you can read them at the Gothic wikipedia, here you can see the alphabet:



The Gothic language isn't spoken anymore and it probably went extinct around the 10th century. What we have of Gothic are:

- The Gothic Bible, written by Wulfila
- A Gothic Calendar
- The Naple Deeds, some short writings from Italy which were translated from Latin in Gothic
- The Skeireins, a valuable explanation of the Gothic Bible, written to clarify it. It is maybe the only extensive native Gothic writing which we have, although linguists don't agree on the nature of the writing, although it is based on a Greek book originally it isn't a word-for-word translation like the Bible of Wulfila.

It is recommended to have good knowledge of German to do this course, as you will see that a lot of aspects of Gothic are actually similar to German and German can be a good reminder.

Lesson 1

The articles are the most important aspect. Native Gothic didn't use definitive or undefinite articles and where the Greek uses definitive articles the Gothic text uses the demonstrative pronouns:

sa (male), so (female), þata (neutral)

These are all the nominative singular, which mean "the". Gothic uses more forms, but we will learn them later and when we have more knowledge of the cases it will become easy, because they actually are quite similar in the way in which they decline! But first you have to know these words and forms.

Native Gothic didn't use personal pronouns often, just like Spanish, but in the Gothic bible they occur. The personal pronouns we will learn in this lesson are:

ik - I
þu - you
is/si/ita - he/she/it
weis - we
jus - you (plural)
eis - they

Gothic was a Germanic language where the s still was used a lot, but in other Germanic languages it often shifted to r. If you know German, it will help you to remember that:
is = er
weis = wir

There are also personal pronouns to say that 2 persons are concerned, so we are (we two) and you are (you two), but we will come back later at this!

The dative form occurs often, they aren't difficult to learn, these are:

mis - me
þus - you
imma/imma/izái - him/it/her
unsis - us
izwar - you
im - them

Remember the s to r rule? mis = mir in German, just as þus = dir (the u shifted too) in German. Imma can be remembered by looking at English 'him', but you need to past a after it. The plural form of imma can be formed by just omitting the a.
Unsis and izwar need to be learnt by heart.


Let's start with a simple sentence:

jah qaþ du im

jah = and
qaþ = said
du = to
im = them

jah is a word which you will see often. Qaþ is the preterite, or past time of qiþan. You have different verbs in Gothic, the ones with a regular conjugation are: -jan and -on verbs. This verb is irregular, but used a lot, this is why we deal with it in lesson 1. This verb belongs to the Va class, which consists of more verbs with -an. For the conjugations of verbs I use the website Verbix, which can be found here http://www.verbix.com/languages/gothic.shtml, it's really useful to conjugate verbs in Gothic and it also reconstructs verbs of which we don't know all forms anymore based on regular forms of the class it belongs to.

The conjugation of the present tense of qiþan (to say) is:

ik qiþa - I say
þu qiþis - you say
is qiþiþ - he says
weis qiþam - we say
jus qiþiþ - you say (plural)
eis qiþand - they say

These are often how you form the verbs:
-a, -is, -iþ, -am, -iþ, -and.

We will learn the dual form (2 persons) later, but remember these, they are the most important ones!

The past tense is:

ik qaþ - I said
þu qast - you said
is qaþ - he said
weis qêþum - we said
eis qêþun - they said

Usually, the ik and is form are exactly the same, so you need to only learn one form to use both. Usually with -an verbs, you will see that the you form has this ending: -st
This is also used in the present tense of modern German: du machst, du laufst, du schickst
The -an verbs also use weis -um and eis -un. This can be remembered by the present tense: qiþam and qiþand. The a changes to u.

Let's try to read the sentence again:

jah qaþ du im

qaþ = said (is qaþ)
im = them (the dative of they)

We see the word du, this word gives the dative case when it is used for nouns or personal pronouns. Examples: du imma, du þus
The word means to in English.

A word-by-word translation is: and said to him
The sentence can be translated as: and he said to him



Let's take another sentence which you can partly read now:

jah þata izwis taikns Luke 2:12

jah, do you remember it? And. þata is the article or demonstrative pronoun which we saw earlier. Maybe you remember the gender of the word: neutral. Izwis is a word which you might remember from the list of dative forms of personal pronouns. izwis means to you (plural).

Now there is one word left: taikns. Taikns means 'sign' in Gothic.

Now we can translate the phrase:

and - that - to you - sign

The biblical translation is: And this shall be a sign unto you

Congratulations! You read your first Gothic phrases.

Now let's do some exercises, try to do your exercises in a text editor or on paper, after you are finished, open the spoiler and look if your answers are correct:

Try to translate these words:

jah
þu
du
taikns
qaþ
qiþa
is
eis

and
you
to
sign
said
I say
he
they


Here are some word reminders for the next exercise without their English meaning:
jah, is, qaþ, þu

Try to say:

1. He said to you
2. I and you
3. A sign to you
4. He said that
5. He said it

The answers:

1. Qaþ du þus
2. Ik jah þu
3. Taikns du þus
4. Qaþ þata
5. Qaþ ita

[GothicSp]

Lesson 2

If you want to introduce yourself, it's rather difficult if you don't know how to say who you are, let's look at the conjugations of 'to be':

ik im - I am
þu is - you are
is/si/ita ist - he is
weis sijum - we are
jus sijuþ - you are
eis sind - they are

Im corresponds to English 'am' and is related to it.

Some plural forms correspond to the preterite (past tense) of verbs:

weis sijum - weis qêþum
jus sijuþ - jus qêþuþ

þu and is correspond to the endings of present tenses:

þu qiþis - þu is
eis qiþand - eis sind


Luke 2:23

ist in witoda

ist - is
in - in
witoda - law (dative)

Witoda is a word with the a-stem. The singular form is witoþ and all declensions let the þ change to d, because it makes pronouncing the word much easier. Like you can see, the dative is -a
witoþ - law (nominative)
witoda - law (dative)



[b]Counting from 1 to 5

áins - one
twái - two
þreis - three
fidwor - four
fimf - five

It isn't easy as that though! There are other forms:

Masculine:

Case	Masculine	Neutral	Feminine
Nominative	twái	twa	twos
Genitive	twaddje	twaddje	-
Dative	twáim	twáim	twáim
Accusative	twans	twa	twos

As you can see, the accusative and singular of the neutral and feminine look the same:
feminine: twos, neutral: twa
Masculine has 'twái' as nominative and 'twans' as accusative.

Let's look at the a-stem when it's masculine (don't worry, there is little difference with the other genders!):

Case	Masculine of dags (day)	Plural
Nominative	dags	dagos
Genitive	dagis	dage
Dative	daga	dagam
Accusative	dag	dagans

The accusative plural has -ns, just as two has -ns in accusative, this is logical, because two is always in plural. If you take the dative of two, it is twáim, while the dative plural of dags is dagam, do you see the similarities? Look at the genitive of two: daggje and the genitive of the plural of dags, which is dage.

Try to remember this list, if the last letter is s you need to replace the last letter of a word with these letters, the list lists the case endings as: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative singular and nominative, genitive, dative and accusative plural:

• (nothing happens in the nominative)
• is
• a
• - (the last letter is omitted)
• os
• e
• am
• ans

Let's do a small exercise:

What's the dative singular of (dags)?
dagA

What's the accusative plural of (dags)?
dagANS

What's the dative plural of witoþ? Remember that þ is replaced by d!
witoDAM

Let's read some other words:

in andwairþja Luke 2:31

This translates as 'before the face', in this verse.
IN makes this word change in a dative, because in shows us that something is in the noun, literally or not literally.

This word has a -ja stem, which is just the a-stem with the letter j added before it.
Do you see how to declension works?

Nominative: andwairþi

Remove the last letter:

andwairþ

now add the dative:

andwairþa

But it's a -ja stem, so add a j before the a

andwairþja

That's it, we declined another noun!

Now how do we decline the other genders?
This is the difference:

neutral a-stems:

The nominative and accusative in singular are the same
The nominative and accusative plural is -a.

That's it. Two examples, wein (wine) and waúrd (word):

Case	Masculine of wein (wine)	Plural
Nominative	wein	weina
Genitive	weinis	weine
Dative	weina	weinam
Accusative	wein	weina

[/tr]

Case	Masculine of waúrd (word)	Plural
Nominative	waúrd	waúrda
Genitive	waúrdis	waúrde
Dative	waúrda	waúrdam
Accusative	waúrd	waúrda

Exercise:

Try to decline these words, they are all a-stems, check if you did it right by hovering your mouse over the answer.

wulfs, MASCULINE (dative sing.)
wulfa
wein, NEUTRAL (accusative sing.)
wein
waúrd, NEUTRAL (dative plural)
waúrdam
waúrd, NEUTRAL (accusative plural)


Let's go to our last phrase, words which we have already learnt won't be translated:

John 8:31
jabai jus gastandiþ in waurda

jabai - if
gastandan - to continue, to stay

Like we have learned, jus usually has the verb-ending: iþ. Just like the verb qiþan: qiþiþ.
With gastandan it's the same, because it's an an-verb. gastandan becomes gastandiþ.

in, like we know, get's a dative, so the noun will become dative too, and the noun is
waúrd.

We learned that if the noun is neutral and an a-stem, you can decline it by adding a.

exercise, translate these words:

weina
dagans
jabai
gastanda
andwairþi

wine (dative)
days (accusative)
if
I continue, stay
face

Exercise 2, translate these words:

fimf
fidwor
dagos
ik im
is

five
four
days (nominative)
I am
(you) are

The word for in the room is in heþjon:

Now translate these short phrases:
1. In the day
2. If I am
3. Two wines are in the room (in the room = in heþjon) (look back at the declensions of number two for the right way to say two!)
4. You are the wine, and I am the word (use personal pronouns)

1. in daga
2. jabai (ik) im
3. twa weina sind in heþjon
4. þu Is (þata) wein jah ik im (þata) waúrd

Congratulations with finishing lesson 2! You will be able to recognize some words now if you take a look in the Gothic Bible. There was a lot in this lesson though. Try to read the lesson again a few times until you understand it completely.

[Lauren]

I hear a lot about how the Gothic used in the Ulfilas bible isn't native syntax. Could you give me an example of this Greek-based syntax, and how it might look with native syntax? Thanks!

[GothicSp]

I hear a lot about how the Gothic used in the Ulfilas bible isn't native syntax. Could you give me an example of this Greek-based syntax, and how it might look with native syntax? Thanks!

Hello Lowena,

Actually we aren't sure about the native syntax. There are however a few phrases in the Gothic Bible which actually don't contain Greek syntax and are actually independent translations. This is a text from a Dutch language magazine, this feature which is mentioned here is also present in Old English so that can assure us even more that it is native Gothic:

De woordorde van het gotisch staat in alle opzichten sterk onder de invloed van het grieksche voorbeeld. Dat echter de in 't grieksch zéér veelvuldige volgorde praedicaat - subject zoo trouw wordt bewaard wijst er m.i. wel op, dat ze niet al te zeer tegen het taalgevoel der Goten zal hebben ingedruischt. In de Skeireins staan alleen de hulpww.-vormen was en skulum aan 't begin van een zelfstandige mededeelende zin

Translated:

The word order of Gothic was heavily influenced by the Greek model. However, the fact that in the Greek text the predicate - subject order is retained so carefully suggests that this was probably natural for the Goths. In the Skeireins only the auxiliary forms 'was' and 'skulum' can be found at the start of an independent declarative sentence.

I looked up a lot of information about the independent parts from the Gothic Bible and some differences are:

- Gothic always places the adjective after the noun
- Greek sometimes places the adjective before a noun
- Gothic is the Germanic language which uses personal pronouns the least, if they are used it is more often a way to refer to another thing in a sentence, (there is probably some term for this, but I 'm not a linguist)
iþ eis qeþunuh du imma Judaieis (Jn 18: 31) <== in this sentence eis can be replaced by Judaieis.
- There are Greek sentences with a lot of personal pronouns where the Gothic translation uses very few personal pronouns
- Gothic itself didn't use definite articles, but the demonstrative pronoun is used the render the definite article from Greek

Furthermore we have the auxiliary forms at the beginning and a negation in verbs always precedes the noun.

This implies that a sentence like:

You have to do that!

Would turn in something like:

Skalt taujan þata!

As 'skalt' is another form of 'skulum'

Or:

Skalt þata taujan!

We can be more sure that:

You shouldn't do!

is:

Ni skalt taujan!

Now your question, how would a sentence from the Greek syntax look like?
Probably something like this:

aþþan ik qiþa izwis:

==>

aþþan qiþa izwis

To take a very simple example. As the Goths omitted the pronouns we know that it was more likely to use this, but they weren't forced to use this form.

What the right word order would be? No idea, since I haven't studied the differences in word order in the sentences which differ greatly from the Greek yet.

It might seem impossible, but with all the current papers from students and academics which researched it, you can find out quite a lot about what native Gothic syntax was like likely and it definitely isn't completely unknown.

But it might be more reliable to look at the Skeireins, it is written in SOV word-order, which is also the word order of Germanic languages, it isn't sure unfortunately but we know that it isn't a direct translation and according to some it represents native Gothic (what a sentence would look like in Gothic with Skeireins syntax? I 'm currently studying the Gothic bible and I can read it quite well with a dictionary, but I haven't started with the Skeireins yet so I can't till you until I start studying it):

That it is not a translation, at least not a slavish translation, from the Greek seems probable from the order of words. One feature of the Skeireins is the citation of biblical passages upon which the comments are made. These * passages are probably taken from Wulfila, and the word-order is, of course, that of Wulfila. The statistics for the word-order in these passages cited agrees essentially with those gathered by Friedrichs from Wulfila direct, if we make allowance for the fact that Friedrichs considers only clauses with pronominal subject. Friedrichs's statistics are as follows :

NORMAL.

PART. TRANSP.

TRANSP.

Principal Clauses Subordinate Clauses 115 60

The statistics that I have gathered for the citations in the Skeireins are: NORMAL.

PART. TRANSP.

TRANSP.

Principal Subordinate Each of these sets of statistics represents Greek order. Note now the difference in the statistics for the independent part of the Skeireins : NORMAL.

PART. TRANSP.

TRANSP.

Principal Subordinate 1 Marold, Die Schriftcitate dtr Skeireins, Progr. Konigsberg, 1892.

No. 2]

Primitive Teutonic Order of Words The order of words, then, in the Skeireins proper, effectually dispels any idea that the Skeireins is a slavish translation, from the Greek at least.

That the Skeireins is not a translation from the Latin is by no means certain. In certain peculiar features the word-order resembles that of Latin. For instance note the frequent separation of adjective and substantive by verb, e.g. : bo ahmeinon anafilhands daupeins, III. b; bana laist skeiris bruk jands waurdis, V. b; bosei ustauhana habaida wairban fram fraufm garehsn, I. b.

But in other respects the work shows idioms which seem to be peculiar to itself. For a list, vid. Bernhardt, Wulfila, p. 6 1 2. On the whole, in default of any further evidence to the contrary, we will assume that word-order in the Skeireins proper represents the Gothic word-order of that time (probably the fifth century).

You can read more here: http://www.google.nl/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=& ... 0081,d.ZWU

[Lauren]

Thank you for the very informative post! It's good to know that Gothic syntax isn't completely unknown. I wonder why the translator of the bible used Greek-based syntax in the first place...

[Viridzen]

I kind of skimmed over this just now; it looks quite interesting. Are you going to continue it? I think learning Gothic would be fun for me, as well as useful: I'm reconstructing/recreating Vandalic (only attested in names and a few fragments), and, since nothing is known of the syntax or morphology except what little can be found in names, I have to make it close to Gothic (its closest relative aside from Burgundian). I'm actually reconstructing the old form attested in the names and fragments as well as a more modernised form, which draws from the evolutions of other Germanic languages, but still looks close to the older one. (Should I make a course like this for my neo-Vandalic? I like that form rather than old Vandalic.) I bring this up because I'd like to share ideas with people who have an interest in Gothic and other Eastern Germanic languages.

I wonder why the translator of the bible used Greek-based syntax in the first place...

I have two ideas:

*Wulfila might have shared the view of most at the time that Greek was a very noble, prestigious language, and you were lesser if you didn't speak either Greek or Latin, so he tried to either give a "noble" flavour to Gothic, or introduce people to this language somehow.
*The Greek was right in front of him, so it would just be easier to follow that.

[GothicSp]

I kind of skimmed over this just now; it looks quite interesting. Are you going to continue it? I think learning Gothic would be fun for me, as well as useful: I'm reconstructing/recreating Vandalic (only attested in names and a few fragments), and, since nothing is known of the syntax or morphology except what little can be found in names, I have to make it close to Gothic (its closest relative aside from Burgundian). I'm actually reconstructing the old form attested in the names and fragments as well as a more modernised form, which draws from the evolutions of other Germanic languages, but still looks close to the older one. (Should I make a course like this for my neo-Vandalic? I like that form rather than old Vandalic.) I bring this up because I'd like to share ideas with people who have an interest in Gothic and other Eastern Germanic languages.

I wonder why the translator of the bible used Greek-based syntax in the first place...

I have two ideas:

*Wulfila might have shared the view of most at the time that Greek was a very noble, prestigious language, and you were lesser if you didn't speak either Greek or Latin, so he tried to either give a "noble" flavour to Gothic, or introduce people to this language somehow.
*The Greek was right in front of him, so it would just be easier to follow that.

Hello Viridzin, thank you for looking at my course!

I will give you a very honest reply at your attempt to revive the Vandalic language.

I found this article about the Vandalic language, I think this is the best resource you can use as the resources are very few: https://www.academia.edu/691311/Tracing ... he_Vandals
Everything in this paper however is mostly reconstructed. My reply relates to what is sure about the Vandalic language.

What I know of the Vandals is that they were a Germanic tribe which entered North Africa and settled in modern day Tunesia, where they conquered Carthage in a quite funny way, the Romans didn't even see them conquering it and maybe it's one of the most peaceful conquerings in history.

The only thing which we really know of Vandalic are some names as you say, but how do you want to build a language around that? I really like how you want to start a revival project for an old Germanic language, but we know too little of Vandalic. You need at least 1000 words to be able to create something decent, but with only names I wonder if you can achieve that. For example, can you write a short phrase in pure Vandalic without loanwords? I have ideas to revive Gothic and it's possible because you can write complete phrases without borrowing. For example: They are eating and drinking. You can write that in Gothic without borrowings, but can you write this phrase in Vandalic?

Let's see which words are known:

This one is 100% sure, it's 2 words left from a religious phrase:

froia arme

Which means: "Lord have mercy" and in Latin: “Domine Miserere”
It originates from this Latin phrase:

si enim licet dicere non solum Barbaris lingua sua, sed etiam Romanis .froia . arme . quod interpraetatur ‘Domine miserere’.

From what my self-taught Latin has brought me, this means something like:
"if the enemy however doesn't only speak his Barbaric tongue (language), but also the Roman .froia . arme . which is understood as 'Domine miserere'."

-riks
ruler, king (in compounds only. Found in given names such as Geiseric)

matzia and drincan already become problematic. Was this a citation from original Gothic or was this Vandalic? I think it was original Gothic and no Vandalic, so we don't know these words.

Your certain words are: froia, arme and -riks. Now you need to know all the morphology and how to conjugate the words and you need to have substantives in all names, or it will become very hard.

Furthermore there are 140 names. Well, the people which want to revive Prussian also have about 300 words.

If you want you can try it, but the problem is that except for Gothic our knowledge of all other East Germanic language is almost nothing.

The reason why I might revive Gothic is because we have relatively a lot of material. The only problem is the syntax.

[GothicSp]

lesson 3

In this lesson I want to introduce a new stem which you will see more often.

o-stems

Let's look at the o-stems:

Case	Feminine word giba (gift)	Feminine plural of giba
Nominative	giba	gibos
Genitive	gibos	gibo
Dative	gibái	gibom
Accusative	giba	gibos

Note that with words as: þiwi you need to look at -wi and for the declension of the feminine change it to: -ujos, so it becomes þiujōs.

Like you can see, the nominative and accusative are exactly the same, no matter if the word is plural or singular. That's easy, you just need to remember one form! Do you still remember the rule of plural dative? Here we have an o-stem so we get: o + m = -om.
The genitive plural simply has the same vowel as the stem, o. Remember that all nouns in plural genitive have some vowel. dags has e (dage) and waúrd has e too.
For the genitive singular you simply add -s to the plural genitive.

In order to be able to deal with most Gothic texts, we will also look at another often reoccuring stem, the i-stem.

Case	Male gasts (guest, foreigner)	Male plural of gasts
Nominative	gasts	gasteis
Genitive	gastis	gaste
Dative	gasta	gastim
Accusative	gast	gastins

The difference with female words in the i-stem is not very big:

Case	Male gasts (guest, foreigner)	Male plural of gasts
Nominative	qens	qeneis
Genitive	qenÁIS	qene
Dative	qenÁI	qenim
Accusative	qen	qenins

The difference are in capitals. Basically the only difference is the -a changing to -ái and the -is changing to -áis.

Female words usually use ái in the dative.

The singular of masculine i-stem words is, like you can see, the same as a-stem words:

Case	i-stem, gasts	a-stem, dags
Nominative	gasts	dags
Genitive	gastis	dagis
Dative	gasta	daga
Accusative	gast-	dag-

A new thing to learn in this lesson is the present tense of haban:

ik haba
þu habais
is habaiþ
weis habam
jus habaiþ
eis haband


Let's try to read a short Gothic text:

I recommend to open an extra window with the tables with o- and i-stems to understand the texts correctly. In the first text I have included explanations. The first text is a text which I have written myself and is thus reconstructed Gothic.

Vocabulary:

- filu ( + genitive), much
- sa manna root-stem (not discussed yet), the man
- so anda-hafts i-stem, answer or reply
- so bōka o-stem, letter
- bōkōs o-stem, book
- bōkōm, dative of book
- her, here
- sa gards i-stem, house

In bōkōm filu waurde sind.
So bōkōs ist her jah ik haba bōkōs.
Sa manna ni habaiþ bōkōs, is habaiþ wein.
So anda-hafts ist in bōkōm jah so bōkōs ist in garda

-m = dative plural
-e = genitive plural


The articles in singular:

Case	masculine	neutral	female
Nominative	sa	þata	so
Genitive	þis	þis	þizos
Dative	þamma	þamma	þizái
Accusative	þana	þata	þo

All the words which are the same in a row are in bold, use them as a memorization-trick. The underlined vowels also are supposed to help you to remember it.


Let's learn how to say what you have or what someone else has:

Possessive pronouns now will be easier to learn, as they become easy if you know the articles. In bold you can see the similarities with the articles singular in the same case. We will first start with a small part, how to say 'my':

case	mein (male)	meinata (neutral)	mein (female)
Nominative	meins	mein(ata)	meina
Genitive	meinis	meinis	meináizos
Dative	meinamma	meinamma	meinái
Accusative	meinana	meinamma	meina

The masculine and neutral have the exact same endings as the article singular. The feminine however doesn't correspond to it and needs to be learnt by heart.

Finally, we learn the past tense of 'to be':

ik was
wast
is was
weis wêsum
jus wêsuþ
eis wêsun

Let's read a text from the Gothic bible:

þata samo taujand? (Matthew 5:46)

þata = that (also the, neutral)
samo = same
taujand = they do, derived from the verb taujan


iþ is andhafjands qaþ du im (Mark 7:6)

iþ = and or but

andhafjands is the present participle of andhafjan (to answer), andhafjan is a verb which is related to the noun anda-hafts, which we learned and means reply or answer.
andhafjands means: answering. There are more words like this, for example: taujands, which means doing or wisands which means: being.

The rest we know.

In lesson 1 we learned the following list:

ik qiþa - I say
þu qiþis - you say
is qiþiþ - he says
weis qiþam - we say
jus qiþiþ - you say (plural)
eis qiþand - they say

Now look at this phrase:

iþ jus qiþiþ (Mark 7:11)

iþ = but
jus = you (plural)


Exercise:

Try to translate these Gothic sentences from the Gothic Bible yourself:

gagg = go! (imperative)

jah qaþ du im (Mark 7:18)
in þis waurdis gagg (Mark 7:29)
was in dagam Herodes (Luke 1:5)
in þamma garda. (Matthew 5:15)

Answers:

and he said to them (Mark 7:18)
go there for/in these words (Mark 7:29)
there was in the days of Herodes (Luke 1:5)
in the house (Matthew 5:15)

Exercises:

Try to add the right declination, hold your mouse over the black part to see the answer:

þamma garda
þis weinis
þana dag-
sa dags
filu waurde

Now try to fill in the right article:

þamma daga
þizái gibái
þizosgibos
þo giba (accusative)
þata waúrd

Last exercises, try to fill in the missing words and translate the sentences to Gothic, the answers are in the spoiler:

Choose from: þamma, weina, bokos, waúrd, manna

Ik haba twa (neutral) ........
Ik im in ......... garda
Ik haba so ....... jah þu ni habais þo.
Her ist ....... þizos gibos.
Þata ist ........ in bokom.

weina
þamma
bokos
manna
waúrd
faúr = for

in the house, there is a book
The man has wine
I say to them
I am in the house
Here is the wine for the guest

in þamma garda bokos ist / in þamma garda ist bokos
Sa manna habeiþ wein
Þiþa du im
ik im in þamma garda
Her ist þata wein faúr þana gast

We are finished with lesson 3! I hope you learned a lot again.

[Viridzen]

I found this article about the Vandalic language, I think this is the best resource you can use as the resources are very few: https://www.academia.edu/691311/Tracing ... he_Vandals

This actually is the paper I used to discover the sound changes between Proto-Germanic and Vandalic. Though we don’t have many words, I can reconstruct them from Proto-Germanic with these sound changes and phonological developments. I can’t be 100% sure that the words I reconstruct are the exact, authentic ones they spoke back then, but it’s as close as we’ll probably ever get.

For example, can you write a short phrase in pure Vandalic without loanwords? I have ideas to revive Gothic and it's possible because you can write complete phrases without borrowing. For example: They are eating and drinking. You can write that in Gothic without borrowings, but can you write this phrase in Vandalic?

Not with what was handed down to us, but with my reconstruction (and in my neo-Vandalic, which features further sound changes reminiscent of all other Germanic languages), I can. That sentence would be “ís matsjand ja drincand” (in both Old and neo-Vandalic). (See my note on “matsia” and “drincan” below.)

matzia and drincan already become problematic. Was this a citation from original Gothic or was this Vandalic? I think it was original Gothic and no Vandalic, so we don't know these words.

There are actually problems with thinking these are Gothic words, and not Vandalic:
-They were recorded in the Latin Anthology, which also features literature written by Vandals (albeit in Latin). This book was a big part of Vandal literature.
-It was composed in North Africa referring to the Germanic population there; the Vandals certainly lived there, but the Goths never did.
-Though the line says they are Gothic words (the full line reads, with Vandalic words in italics: “Inter eils gothicum scapia matzia ia drincan…”), Roman and Greek writers always called the Vandals Goths, along with the Gepids. To the Romans and Greeks, “Gothic” meant “Gothic, Vandalic, and Gepid”. It does not tell the language of the words, as it is ambiguous.
-It shows sound changes that occurred in Vandalic and not Gothic—“matjaną” becomes “matsia” (matjan in Gothic) and “hailaz” becomes “eils” (the greeting “hail!”); in Gothic, it is “hails”.

Now you need to know all the morphology and how to conjugate the words and you need to have substantives in all names, or it will become very hard.

We have very little; with what is left to us, we have:
-the infinitive of both a strong and weak verb.
-the imperative or subjunctive of a weak verb.
-the imperative second person of a verb.
-the nominative, genitive, and possibly dative forms of singular masculine nouns (in names).
-the genitive plural of a masculine noun.
-nominative forms of feminine nouns, as well as perhaps genitives and/or datives.
-some forms of neuter nouns.
-the declension of masculine and feminine adjectives in the nominative singular.
-hypocoristic and/or vocative forms of masculine nouns and feminine nouns.
-the diminutive form of nouns, which is represented in the forms “-ila” and “-it(t)a”.
So, we have most things we need; masculine and neuter endings are usually similar, and I’m still deciding on whether to merge masculine and feminine into a common gender, or take gender away from neo-Vandalic altogether. (Old Vandalic has all three.)

Furthermore there are 140 names. Well, the people which want to revive Prussian also have about 300 words.

The Prussians, too, are reconstructing Prussian. They have extant texts (I never knew they had up to 300 words, though), which makes their job so much easier.

If you want you can try it, but the problem is that except for Gothic our knowledge of all other East Germanic language is almost nothing.

Which is why I’m relying on Gothic for this project. It will help immensely. (I really do appreciate this course; it will help so much.

The reason why I might revive Gothic is because we have relatively a lot of material. The only problem is the syntax.

But what about the Skeireins, etc.?

[GothicSp]

I found this article about the Vandalic language, I think this is the best resource you can use as the resources are very few: https://www.academia.edu/691311/Tracing ... he_Vandals

This actually is the paper I used to discover the sound changes between Proto-Germanic and Vandalic. Though we don’t have many words, I can reconstruct them from Proto-Germanic with these sound changes and phonological developments. I can’t be 100% sure that the words I reconstruct are the exact, authentic ones they spoke back then, but it’s as close as we’ll probably ever get.

For example, can you write a short phrase in pure Vandalic without loanwords? I have ideas to revive Gothic and it's possible because you can write complete phrases without borrowing. For example: They are eating and drinking. You can write that in Gothic without borrowings, but can you write this phrase in Vandalic?

Not with what was handed down to us, but with my reconstruction (and in my neo-Vandalic, which features further sound changes reminiscent of all other Germanic languages), I can. That sentence would be “ís matsjand ja drincand” (in both Old and neo-Vandalic). (See my note on “matsia” and “drincan” below.)

matzia and drincan already become problematic. Was this a citation from original Gothic or was this Vandalic? I think it was original Gothic and no Vandalic, so we don't know these words.

There are actually problems with thinking these are Gothic words, and not Vandalic:
-They were recorded in the Latin Anthology, which also features literature written by Vandals (albeit in Latin). This book was a big part of Vandal literature.
-It was composed in North Africa referring to the Germanic population there; the Vandals certainly lived there, but the Goths never did.
-Though the line says they are Gothic words (the full line reads, with Vandalic words in italics: “Inter eils gothicum scapia matzia ia drincan…”), Roman and Greek writers always called the Vandals Goths, along with the Gepids. To the Romans and Greeks, “Gothic” meant “Gothic, Vandalic, and Gepid”. It does not tell the language of the words, as it is ambiguous.
-It shows sound changes that occurred in Vandalic and not Gothic—“matjaną” becomes “matsia” (matjan in Gothic) and “hailaz” becomes “eils” (the greeting “hail!”); in Gothic, it is “hails”.

Now you need to know all the morphology and how to conjugate the words and you need to have substantives in all names, or it will become very hard.

We have very little; with what is left to us, we have:
-the infinitive of both a strong and weak verb.
-the imperative or subjunctive of a weak verb.
-the imperative second person of a verb.
-the nominative, genitive, and possibly dative forms of singular masculine nouns (in names).
-the genitive plural of a masculine noun.
-nominative forms of feminine nouns, as well as perhaps genitives and/or datives.
-some forms of neuter nouns.
-the declension of masculine and feminine adjectives in the nominative singular.
-hypocoristic and/or vocative forms of masculine nouns and feminine nouns.
-the diminutive form of nouns, which is represented in the forms “-ila” and “-it(t)a”.
So, we have most things we need; masculine and neuter endings are usually similar, and I’m still deciding on whether to merge masculine and feminine into a common gender, or take gender away from neo-Vandalic altogether. (Old Vandalic has all three.)

Furthermore there are 140 names. Well, the people which want to revive Prussian also have about 300 words.

The Prussians, too, are reconstructing Prussian. They have extant texts (I never knew they had up to 300 words, though), which makes their job so much easier.

If you want you can try it, but the problem is that except for Gothic our knowledge of all other East Germanic language is almost nothing.

Which is why I’m relying on Gothic for this project. It will help immensely. (I really do appreciate this course; it will help so much.

The reason why I might revive Gothic is because we have relatively a lot of material. The only problem is the syntax.

But what about the Skeireins, etc.?

I 'm happy that my course is useful for you! There are people and academics which assume that the Skeireins is written in native Gothic, it definitely isn't Greek but it is possible that it is Latin, as it's SOV, there are however some peculiar idioms in the Skeireins which are neither Greek nor Latin, so probably native. I intended to try to use the Skeireins for a revival yes, as Gothic word order is free and SOV I think that we might be safe with using the word order of the Skeireins, but I want to keep the word order free in modern Gothic too, which doesn't mean that you can use English word order.


I have some questions though:

- What do you want to do once you have modern Vandalic? Do you want to revive it, and where? In modern Tunesia Arabic is spoken and as it is Semitic and not Germanic, the population would have huge trouble to learn it if they would even want to. I intended to revive Gothic, but I 'm now discussing with some other Gothic revivers how many people they know which want to learn Gothic as I could set up a big professional website for Gothic, but if we don't get visitors I will simply not do it, as it costs me money to pay for a domain to host the website.
- Wouldn't it be better if you would focus on a Germanic language which we know more about, like Old English, Gothic, Old Norse, Yiddish (which I see you learn) or Gautnish?

I was wrong about Prussian. There exists a dictionary with 802 words. In order for a language to be revived in a reasonable way, you need at least 1000 words. For Gothic, we have enough words to write short texts and we have at least 1000 words, mostly thanks to Wulfila. With Vandalic however it's really difficult to revive it, almost impossible and what you are about to do will be more like a con-lang than a language revival. Of course a modern form of Gothic or Latin would be a conlang for a part, but we would have a big basis of existing words to start from which aren't constructed, for Vandalic however you need to, except for about 5 words construct everything. 5 words is not a lot words to have 100% sure original words in a language.

- My second question is where you do know the morphology from? How is the dative form of a noun left in a name?

- Are you intending to write texts or translations in Vandalic? In order for a new language to become a real language, you first need to write writings down into it.

I agree with you that Gothic was used for more people, I have seen a documentary about the Romans and how they considered Barbarians and Goths and this is simply correct.

What may be interesting to you is the theory that Yiddish contained certain Gothic words, you might use them for Vandalic too. There was someone who wrote about this on the internet, here is the page: http://www.gothicyiddish.blogspot.nl/, though I read this page and it debunks the theory: http://languagehat.com/gothic-yiddish/

I don't know about the possibility of contact between the Khazars and the Crimean Goths.

[Viridzen]

- What do you want to do once you have modern Vandalic? Do you want to revive it, and where? In modern Tunesia Arabic is spoken and as it is Semitic and not Germanic, the population would have huge trouble to learn it if they would even want to.

I used to want to revive Vandalic culture (again, in a modernised form), and I still do, but it certainly wouldn't take off. If people want to learn it and live it, they can--I'm opening the option up to those who want it.

- Wouldn't it be better if you would focus on a Germanic language which we know more about, like Old English, Gothic, Old Norse, Yiddish (which I see you learn) or Gautnish?

Definitely, I promote learning these languages, too. But, Vandalic is just out of pure interest, though I want it to be revived, too. I mourn the loss of the East Germanic language family, so I’d like to see it come back again, another reason why I’m grateful for this course.

I was wrong about Prussian. There exists a dictionary with 802 words. In order for a language to be revived in a reasonable way, you need at least 1000 words. For Gothic, we have enough words to write short texts and we have at least 1000 words, mostly thanks to Wulfila. With Vandalic however it's really difficult to revive it, almost impossible and what you are about to do will be more like a con-lang than a language revival. Of course a modern form of Gothic or Latin would be a conlang for a part, but we would have a big basis of existing words to start from which aren't constructed, for Vandalic however you need to, except for about 5 words construct everything. 5 words is not a lot words to have 100% sure original words in a language.

The point that it would be a conlang is something I’ve thought about. But, in the worst, it would be very convincing and perhaps close; like I said, we also have loads of personal names. These show the same sound changes as the other words, so I use these.

- My second question is where you do know the morphology from? How is the dative form of a noun left in a name?

Germanic names often take the dative or genitive as the form for the first element: Beremut uses the genitive of bers (neo-Vandalic ber) to make “courage of a bear”; Euageis (n.-V. Øegís) uses the genitive of ews (n.-V. ø) for “horse’s spear” (eua may be a typo, though in Proto-Germanic, -as and –is were both interchangeable forms of the genitive of –az nouns).

- Are you intending to write texts or translations in Vandalic? In order for a new language to become a real language, you first need to write writings down into it.

Yes, in fact; I had the idea to make a Vandalic religious text, for Germanic paganism, mostly about cosmology and nature (but also creatures, gods, etc.) , called “Ƀalkusiaseiwes” in OV and “Valkusjasy” in nV (both meaning “sea of the Valkyrie”, or a poetic term I made up for “sky” based on Old Norse and Old English kennings.) I’m also going to write many other things as well, certainly, and I’ll also translate things, too, which is something I love doing.

What may be interesting to you is the theory that Yiddish contained certain Gothic words, you might use them for Vandalic too. There was someone who wrote about this on the internet, here is the page: http://www.gothicyiddish.blogspot.nl/, though I read this page and it debunks the theory: http://languagehat.com/gothic-yiddish/
I don't know about the possibility of contact between the Khazars and the Crimean Goths.

I don’t believe in the “Yiddish is Gothic” theory at all. History shows no proof of this. Same with the “Ashkenazi Jews are Khazars” theory; saying that there’s 0% possibility of the Ashkenazi Jews being Khazars is an overstatement. There’s no possible way.

[GothicSp]

- What do you want to do once you have modern Vandalic? Do you want to revive it, and where? In modern Tunesia Arabic is spoken and as it is Semitic and not Germanic, the population would have huge trouble to learn it if they would even want to.

I used to want to revive Vandalic culture (again, in a modernised form), and I still do, but it certainly wouldn't take off. If people want to learn it and live it, they can--I'm opening the option up to those who want it.

There's nothing wrong with that.

- Wouldn't it be better if you would focus on a Germanic language which we know more about, like Old English, Gothic, Old Norse, Yiddish (which I see you learn) or Gautnish?

Definitely, I promote learning these languages, too. But, Vandalic is just out of pure interest, though I want it to be revived, too. I mourn the loss of the East Germanic language family, so I’d like to see it come back again, another reason why I’m grateful for this course.

Wouldn't it be better if you would help me to revive Gothic? As I 'm currently trying to gather people which want to help me in translating the most important writings. I intend to translate the Visigothic laws in Gothic and a few writings of philosophers and the human rights, to turn it in a modern usable language just like they do with Irish which used to be a language mostly for agriculture but is heavily modernized now. This is why I don't want Gothic to have paganism as a primary intention, I would rather see Gothic to be used, not only for paganism (but I wouldn't mind if people did as long as they don't associate paganism with political ideologies) but also for modern language.

I was wrong about Prussian. There exists a dictionary with 802 words. In order for a language to be revived in a reasonable way, you need at least 1000 words. For Gothic, we have enough words to write short texts and we have at least 1000 words, mostly thanks to Wulfila. With Vandalic however it's really difficult to revive it, almost impossible and what you are about to do will be more like a con-lang than a language revival. Of course a modern form of Gothic or Latin would be a conlang for a part, but we would have a big basis of existing words to start from which aren't constructed, for Vandalic however you need to, except for about 5 words construct everything. 5 words is not a lot words to have 100% sure original words in a language.

The point that it would be a conlang is something I’ve thought about. But, in the worst, it would be very convincing and perhaps close; like I said, we also have loads of personal names. These show the same sound changes as the other words, so I use these.

You could get somewhere if you are sure about the meanings of the names, so you need the Latin equivalent of all the names you use too to be 100% sure that you have the right Vandalic word. If you would do that, it would be more convincing to me.

- My second question is where you do know the morphology from? How is the dative form of a noun left in a name?

Germanic names often take the dative or genitive as the form for the first element: Beremut uses the genitive of bers (neo-Vandalic ber) to make “courage of a bear”; Euageis (n.-V. Øegís) uses the genitive of ews (n.-V. ø) for “horse’s spear” (eua may be a typo, though in Proto-Germanic, -as and –is were both interchangeable forms of the genitive of –az nouns).

I didn't know that, interesting.

- Are you intending to write texts or translations in Vandalic? In order for a new language to become a real language, you first need to write writings down into it.

Yes, in fact; I had the idea to make a Vandalic religious text, for Germanic paganism, mostly about cosmology and nature (but also creatures, gods, etc.) , called “Ƀalkusiaseiwes” in OV and “Valkusjasy” in nV (both meaning “sea of the Valkyrie”, or a poetic term I made up for “sky” based on Old Norse and Old English kennings.) I’m also going to write many other things as well, certainly, and I’ll also translate things, too, which is something I love doing.

Interesting, but I don't think that a lot of people will join, as not many people know about Vandalic, even less people than people which know Gothic. I encourage you to continue this though.

What may be interesting to you is the theory that Yiddish contained certain Gothic words, you might use them for Vandalic too. There was someone who wrote about this on the internet, here is the page: http://www.gothicyiddish.blogspot.nl/, though I read this page and it debunks the theory: http://languagehat.com/gothic-yiddish/
I don't know about the possibility of contact between the Khazars and the Crimean Goths.
I don’t believe in the “Yiddish is Gothic” theory at all. History shows no proof of this. Same with the “Ashkenazi Jews are Khazars” theory; saying that there’s 0% possibility of the Ashkenazi Jews being Khazars is an overstatement. There’s no possible way.

There are a lot of bullshit theories about Ashkenazi Jews and the Khazars. I prefer to look at the objective data we have, and according to that I think you are right. I believe too that it's nonsense to claim that Ashkenazi Jews are Khazars, Wikipedia says:

Eran Elhaik argued in 2012 for a significant Khazar component in the paternal line based on the study of Y-DNA of Ashkenazi Jews, using Caucasian populations, Georgians, Armenians and Azerbaijani Jews as proxies.[263]

According to Nadia Abu El-Haj, the issues of origins are generally complicated by the difficulties of writing history via genome studies and the biases of emotional investments in different narratives, depending on whether the emphasis lies on direct descent or on conversion within Jewish history. The lack of Khazar DNA samples that might allow verification also present difficulties.[285]

According to Wikipedia there is also an Israeli linguist who has proposed the theory that Yiddish is influenced by the Khazar language, we know that there lived Goths in Eastern Europe in the same time as the Khazars so there is a possible influence, but it would be small I think:

One thesis, held that the Khazar Jewish population went into a northern diaspora and had a significant impact on the rise of Ashkenazi Jews. Connected to this thesis is the theory, expounded by Paul Wexler, that the grammar of Yiddish contains a Khazar substrate.[229]

I 'm not sure.
Anyway, we simply aren't sure. There is a Dutch historian, von Straten which had an alternative theory and he claimed that if the Ashkenazi Jews were originally from Germany, that their number should be very low at the end of the middle ages, he says that a low number in 1500 should have the consequence that there was a huge increase between 1500 and 1900. His theory is not that the Ashkenazi jews aren't jews but Khazars, but that the Ashkenazi jews were jews which lived before the year 0 in Southern Russia and Ukraine, they would have mixed a lot with the Slavs and South-Russians in the area and up to a lesser extent with the Khazars, but as we can't genetically identify the descendants of the Khazars we know nothing about the number of Khazars among Ashkenazi Jews. So you are right about there being 0% proof, there are only theories. Anyway, I think that this theory is with regards to Hebrew very interesting as some people claim that those people actually kept speaking Hebrew as a daily language in Southern Russia, I don't know about the proof for that though, but if there would be remains of it we might get some insight of spoken Hebrew as a conversational daily language after 0 AD.

[Viridzen]

I'm continuing this conversation here; meanwhile, when will you post the next lesson? It's been a while.

[linguoboy]

- My second question is where you do know the morphology from? How is the dative form of a noun left in a name?

Germanic names often take the dative or genitive as the form for the first element: Beremut uses the genitive of bers (neo-Vandalic ber) to make “courage of a bear”; Euageis (n.-V. Øegís) uses the genitive of ews (n.-V. ø) for “horse’s spear” (eua may be a typo, though in Proto-Germanic, -as and –is were both interchangeable forms of the genitive of –az nouns).

Except that Proto-Germanic *berô is an an-stem, so the genitive should be a reflex of *biriniz. Cf. OHG bero, gen. berin/beren (e.g. berinwurz "fennel" [lit. "bear's root"]). Similarly, the genitive of *ehwaz is, as you say, *ehwas or *ehwis. So if, as you say, the name incorporates the genitive, why is it Euageis rather than *Euasgeis?

These elements don't look like "genitives" or "datives" to me; they look like stem forms.

[Viridzen]

- My second question is where you do know the morphology from? How is the dative form of a noun left in a name?

Germanic names often take the dative or genitive as the form for the first element: Beremut uses the genitive of bers (neo-Vandalic ber) to make “courage of a bear”; Euageis (n.-V. Øegís) uses the genitive of ews (n.-V. ø) for “horse’s spear” (eua may be a typo, though in Proto-Germanic, -as and –is were both interchangeable forms of the genitive of –az nouns).

Except that Proto-Germanic *berô is an an-stem, so the genitive should be a reflex of *biriniz. Cf. OHG bero, gen. berin/beren (e.g. berinwurz "fennel" [lit. "bear's root"]). Similarly, the genitive of *ehwaz is, as you say, *ehwas or *ehwis. So if, as you say, the name incorporates the genitive, why is it Euageis rather than *Euasgeis?

These elements don't look like "genitives" or "datives" to me; they look like stem forms.

Shoot, you're right... I always figured the forms deteriorated to simply -a, -e, and -i. Yeah, it seems pretty unlikely that they're genitives now that I think of it, but I'll consider them datives; maybe they turned into -e (like in German or Old English) and -i (like in Old Norse and Icelandic). So then, we don't have genitives (though the genitive of "Arifridus" was recorded as "Arifridos"). Maybe the two cases merged, like in Romanian. in n.-V., I'll merge them. (Any further discussion on Vandalic should please be directed at the thread "Vandalic", started by me.)