Welcome!
Welcome to the course to learn the Gothic Language or Gutiska Razda. Before we will start with the course we will first learn something about the Goths and their old language.
So let's go further!
The Gothic Language
History
The Gothic language was an old Germanic language from the 4th century A.C. which was spoken by the Goths in Italy and Spain. The Goths originally came from Scandinavia and lived in Eastern Europe, they went south when they were expelled by the huns. It is the only ancient Germanic language of which we have a lot of knowledge because the Bible is translated in the Gothic language, according to some this was done for the Ostrogothic king Theodoric the Great.
Other manuscripts in gothic
Not only the Bible of Wulfila is a Gothic remnant. We also have a Gothic calendar, the Skeireins (which is an explanation of parts of the Gothic bible, most likely written for Goths and probably the only writing in native Gothic), and the Naple Deeds, signatures in Gothic which were translations from Latin.
An example of the Calendar at the 23th of October:
Gothic syntax
The syntax of the Gothic language is mostly unknown to us. We can't be sure, but the syntax of the Skeireins might possibly be native Gothic syntax. If we consider the Gothic Bible it is mostly a word-for-word translation of the Greek original, though there are a few phrases which aren't word-for-word translations. Those phrases can shed light on native Gothic syntax.
The word order in Gothic was just as in other Germanic languages SOV (subject - object - verb).
Gothic morphology
Although we don't know a lot of the Gothic syntax, we know a lot of the morphology, most grammar of Gothic which we have is about the morphology and verbs. Examples of morphology are the case endings of nouns, which we will learn in this course. The declination of the a-stem for example is:
dags (day)
singular plural
nom. dags dagos
gen. dagis dage
dat. daga dagam
acc. dag dagans
gothic words
What we know most about are Gothic words. Most words are similar to modern Germanic languages, though, some words like aljis (other) are words which aren't present in other Germanic language anymore. Knowing English will be a big help though in learning Gothic!
Modern use of Gothic
Nowadays Gothic isn't spoken anymore. There are however attempts to use it. The most famous one is the poem Bagme Bloma by J.R.R. Tolkien, the poem can be read here:
http://bitterscroll.blogspot.nl/2005/10/bagme-bloma-verse-translation.html
More recently there is founded a Gothic wikipedia, though, a lot of contributors use a modern English syntax which isn't correct. Another modern Gothic reconstruction is the 1st chapter of the Communist Manifesto: http://archive.today/HlmV
learning Gothic
Now we are ready to learn the Gothic language. The course doesn't cover everything, but we will learn a lot of important words, cases and grammar and learn how to read small parts of the Gothic Bible!
To speak as a Goth, I can say in reconstructed Gothic:
Wenja ei magum laisjan Gutiska razda!
I hope that we can learn the Gothic language
http://www.memrise.com/course/329747/the-gothic-language-gutiska-razda/2/
The Gothic Language
By gothicspeaker
The Gothic Language
- 5,408