Gothic language


Gothic is an extinct East Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from the Codex Argenteus, a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic language with a sizeable text corpus. All others, including Burgundian and Vandalic, are known, if at all, only from proper names that survived in historical accounts, and from loanwords in other, mainly Romance, languages.
As a Germanic language, Gothic is a part of the Indo-European language family. It is the earliest Germanic language that is attested in any sizable texts, but it lacks any modern descendants. The oldest documents in Gothic date back to the fourth century. The language was in decline by the mid-sixth century, partly because of the military defeat of the Goths at the hands of the Franks, the elimination of the Goths in Italy, and geographic isolation.
The language survived as a domestic language in the Iberian Peninsula as late as the eighth century. Gothic-seeming terms are found in manuscripts subsequent to this date, but these may or may not belong to the same language.
A language known as Crimean Gothic survived in isolated mountain regions in Crimea as late as the second half of the 18th century. Lacking certain sound changes characteristic of Gothic, however, Crimean Gothic cannot be a lineal descendant of the language attested in the Codex Argenteus.
The existence of such early attested texts makes Gothic a language of considerable interest in comparative linguistics.

History and evidence

Only a few documents in Gothic have survived – not enough for a complete reconstruction of the language. Most Gothic-language sources are translations or glosses of other languages, so foreign linguistic elements most certainly influenced the texts. These are the primary sources:
  • The largest body of surviving documentation consists of various codices, mostly from the sixth century, copying the Bible translation that was commissioned by the Arian bishop Ulfilas, leader of a community of Visigothic Christians in the Roman province of Moesia. He commissioned a translation into the Gothic language of the Greek Bible, of which translation roughly three-quarters of the New Testament and some fragments of the Old Testament have survived. The extant translated texts, produced by several scholars, are collected in the following codices and in one inscription:
  • * Codex Argenteus, including the Speyer fragment: 188 leaves. The best-preserved Gothic manuscript, dating from the sixth century, it was preserved and transmitted by northern Ostrogoths in modern-day Italy. It contains a large portion of the four gospels. Since it is a translation from Greek, the language of the Codex Argenteus is replete with borrowed Greek words and Greek usages. The syntax in particular is often copied directly from the Greek.
  • * Codex Ambrosianus and the Codex Taurinensis : Five parts, totaling 193 leaves. It contains scattered passages from the New Testament, from the Old Testament, and some commentaries known as Skeireins. The text likely had been somewhat modified by copyists.
  • * Codex Gissensis : One leaf with fragments of Luke 23–24 was found in an excavation in Arsinoë in Egypt in 1907 and was destroyed by water damage in 1945, after copies had already been made by researchers.
  • * Codex Carolinus : Four leaves, fragments of Romans 11–15.
  • * Codex Vaticanus Latinus 5750 : Three leaves, pages 57–58, 59–60, and 61–62 of the Skeireins. This is a fragment of Codex Ambrosianus E.
  • * Gothica Bononiensia, a palimpsest fragment, discovered in 2009, of two folios with what appears to be a sermon, containing besides non-biblical text a number of direct Bible quotes and allusions, both from previously attested parts of the Gothic Bible and from previously unattested ones.
  • * Fragmenta Pannonica, which consist of fragments of a 1 mm thick lead plate with remnants of verses from the Gospels.
  • * The Mangup Graffiti: five inscriptions written in the Gothic alphabet discovered in 2015 from the basilica church of Mangup, Crimea. The graffiti all date from the mid-9th century, making this perhaps the youngest attestation of the Gothic alphabet. The five texts include a quotation from the otherwise unattested Psalm 76 and some prayers; the language is not noticeably different from Wulfila's and only contains words known from other parts of the Gothic Bible.
  • A scattering of minor fragments: two deeds, two Carolingian-era Gothic alphabets recorded in otherwise non-Gothic manuscripts, a calendar, glosses found in a number of manuscripts and a few runic inscriptions that are known or suspected to be Gothic: some scholars believe that these inscriptions are not at all Gothic. Krause thought that several names in an Indian inscription were possibly Gothic.
Reports of the discovery of other parts of Ulfilas's Bible have not been substantiated. Heinrich May in 1968 claimed to have found in England twelve leaves of a palimpsest containing parts of the Gospel of Matthew.
Only fragments of the Gothic translation of the Bible have been preserved. The translation was apparently done in the Balkans region by people in close contact with Greek Christian culture. The Gothic Bible was apparently used by the Visigoths in Occitania until the [Battle of Vouillé|loss of Visigothic Occitania] at the start of the 6th century, in Visigothic Iberia until about 700, and perhaps for a time in Italy, the Balkans, and Ukraine until at least the mid-9th century. During the extermination of Arianism, Trinitarian Christians probably overwrote many texts in Gothic as palimpsests, or, alternatively, collected and burned Gothic documents. Apart from biblical texts, the only substantial Gothic document that still exists – and the only lengthy text known to have been composed originally in the Gothic language – is the Skeireins, a few pages of commentary on the Gospel of John.
Very few medieval secondary sources make reference to the Gothic language after about 800. In De incrementis ecclesiae Christianae, Walafrid Strabo, a Frankish monk who lived in Swabia, writes of a group of monks who reported that even then certain peoples in Scythia, especially around Tomis, spoke a sermo Theotiscus, the language of the Gothic translation of the Bible, and that they used such a liturgy.
Many writers of the medieval texts that mention the Goths used the word Goths to mean any Germanic people in eastern Europe, many of whom certainly did not use the Gothic language as known from the Gothic Bible. Some writers even referred to Slavic-speaking people as "Goths". However, it is clear from Ulfilas's translation that the Gothic language belongs with the Germanic language group, not with Slavic.
Generally, the term "Gothic language" refers to the language of Ulfilas, but the attestations themselves date largely from the 6th century, long after Ulfilas had died.

Alphabet and transliteration

A few Gothic runic inscriptions were found across Europe, but due to early Christianization of the Goths, the Runic writing was quickly replaced by the newly invented Gothic alphabet.
Ulfilas's Gothic, as well as that of the Skeireins and various other manuscripts, was written using an alphabet that was most likely invented by Ulfilas himself for his translation. Some scholars claim that it was derived from the Greek alphabet only, while others maintain that there are some Gothic letters of Runic or Latin origin.
Gothic words can be transliterated into the Latin script. Transliteration mirrors the conventions of the native alphabet, such as writing long as. There are two variant transliteration systems: a "raw" one that directly represents the original Gothic script and a "normalized" one that adds diacritics to certain vowels to clarify the pronunciation or, in certain cases, to indicate the Proto-Germanic origin of the vowel in question. The latter system is usually used in the academic literature.

Vowels

The following table shows the correspondence between spelling and sound for vowels:
Gothic letter
or digraph		Roman
equivalent		"Normalised"
transliteration		SoundNormal environment of occurrence
Paradigmatically alternating sound
in other environments		Proto-Germanic origin
?aAnywhere—
?aBefore, Does not occur
??aiBefore,, ,
??aiBefore vowels ,
??aiNot before vowels
??auBefore,,
??auBefore vowels
??auNot before vowels
?eNot before vowels ,
??eiEverywhere—;
?iEverywhere except before,, ,
??iuNot before vowels
?oNot before vowels
?uEverywhere except before,,
?uEverywhere—;

Notes:
  • The Gothic letters ?, ?, transliterated,, were used only for long close-mid vowels. The digraphs ??, ??, transliterated,, were used for open-mid vowels.
  • The "normal environment of occurrence" refers to native words. In foreign words, these environments are often greatly disturbed. For example, the short sounds and alternate in native words in a nearly allophonic way, with occurring in native words only before the consonants,, while occurs everywhere else. In foreign borrowings, however, and occur freely in all environments, reflecting the corresponding vowel quality in the source language.
  • Paradigmatic alterations can occur either intra-paradigm or cross-paradigm. Examples of intra-paradigm alternation are vs. ; vs. ; vs. ; vs. ; vs. ; ?? vs. ; vs. ; vs. . Examples of cross-paradigm alternation are Class IV verbs vs. , vs. ; Class VIIb verbs vs. . A combination of intra- and cross-paradigm alternation occurs in Class V vs. .
  • The carefully maintained alternations between iu and iw suggest that ?? may have been something other than. Various possibilities have been suggested ; under these theories, the spelling of is derived from the fact that the sound alternates with iw before a vowel, based on the similar alternations au and aw. The most common theory, however, simply posits as the pronunciation of.
The following diacritics, not used in the original writing system, are sometimes added to vowel letters in transliterations:
  • The acute accent may be added to the digraphs ai, au to indicate their etymological origin in Common Germanic, following a system devised by Jacob Grimm:
  • * is used for the sound derived from the Proto-Germanic short vowels *e and *i before and.
  • * is used for the sound derived from the Proto-Germanic diphthong *ai. Some scholars assume this sound remained a diphthong in Gothic. However, Ulfilas was highly consistent in other spelling inventions, which makes it unlikely that he assigned two different sounds to the same digraph. Furthermore, he consistently used the digraph to represent Greek αι, which was then certainly a monophthong. A monophthongal value is accepted by Eduard Prokosch in his influential A Common Germanic Grammar. It had earlier been accepted by Joseph Wright but only in an appendix to his Grammar of the Gothic Language.
  • * is used for the sound derived from the Common Germanic long vowel *ē before a vowel.
  • * is used for the sound derived from Common Germanic diphthong *au. It cannot be related to a Greek digraph, since αυ then represented a sequence of a vowel and a spirant consonant, which Ulfilas transcribed as in representing Greek words. Nevertheless, the argument based on simplicity is accepted by some influential scholars.
  • The macron may be added to the letters a and u to represent originally long vowels ā and ū.. Macrons are often also used in the case of ē and ō; however, they are sometimes omitted since these vowels are always long. Long ā occurs only before the consonants, and represents Proto-Germanic nasalized < earlier ; non-nasal did not occur in Proto-Germanic. It is possible that the Gothic vowel still preserved the nasalization, or else that the nasalization was lost but the length distinction kept, as has happened with. Non-nasal and occurred in Proto-Germanic, however, and so long ei and ū occur in all contexts. Before and, long ei and ū could stem from either non-nasal or nasal long vowels in Proto-Germanic; it is possible that the nasalization was still preserved in Gothic but not written.

Consonants

The following table shows the correspondence between spelling and sound for consonants:
Gothic LetterRomanSound Sound Environment of occurrenceParadigmatically alternating sound, in other environmentsProto-Germanic origin
?Word-initially; after a consonant–
?After a vowel, before a voiced sound
?Word-initially; after a consonant–
?After a vowel, before a voiced sound
?Everywhere except before a voiced consonant ;
?Word-initially; after a consonant–
?After a vowel, before a voiced sound
?After a vowel, not before a voiced sound
?Before k, g, gw
–
?After g –
?Everywhere except before a voiced consonant
?Everywhere except before a voiced consonant–
?Everywhere–
?Everywhere except before a voiced consonant–
?Everywhere–
?Everywhere–
?Everywhere–
?Everywhere except before a voiced consonant–
?Everywhere except before a voiced consonant–
?Everywhere–
?Everywhere except before a voiced consonant;
?Everywhere except before a voiced consonant–
?Everywhere except before a voiced consonant ;
?Everywhere–
?After a vowel, before a voiced sound

Notes:
  • is written in the native alphabet with the single letter ?. It is transliterated by the symbol, which is used only in transliterating Gothic.
  • is written in the native alphabet with the single letter ?. It is transliterated as, with no following u.
  • , however, is written with two letters in the native alphabet, ??, and hence is transliterated. The lack of a single letter to represent this sound may result from its restricted distribution and its rarity.
  • is transliterated as.
  • Although the velar nasal functions as an allophone of before and, it is written in the native alphabet as ?, following the usage of the corresponding Greek letter gamma. The transliteration of as leads to ambiguity in the context of the sequence : for example, but .

Phonology

Gothic phonology is reconstructed based on data such as comparison with other Germanic languages, analysis of the transcription of Greek and non-Greek terms and names in Gothic, and analysis of spelling alternations and variations in Gothic texts.

Vowels

  • , and can be either long or short. Gothic writing distinguishes between long and short vowels only for by writing for the short form and for the long, in an imitation of Greek usage. Single vowels are sometimes long where a historically present nasal consonant has been dropped in front of an . Thus, the preterite of the verb becomes , from Proto-Germanic *branhtē. In detailed transliteration, when the intent is more phonetic transcription, length is noted by a macron :,. This is the only context in which appears natively whereas, like, is found often enough in other contexts: bruik, German .
  • and are long close-mid vowels. They are written as and : ; .
  • and are short open-mid vowels. They are noted using the digraphs ai and au: , . In transliterating Gothic, accents are placed on the second vowel of these digraphs aí and aú to distinguish them from the original diphthongs ái and áu:,. In most cases short and are allophones of before. Furthermore, the reduplication syllable of the reduplicating preterites has ai as well, which was probably pronounced as a short. Finally, short and occur in loan words from Greek and Latin.
  • The Germanic diphthongs and appear as digraphs written and in Gothic. Researchers have disagreed over whether they were still pronounced as diphthongs and in Ulfilas's time or had become long open-mid vowels: and : , . It is most likely that the latter view is correct, as it is indisputable that the digraphs and represent the sounds and in some circumstances, and and were available to unambiguously represent the sounds and. The digraph is in fact used to represent in foreign words, and alternations between / and / are scrupulously maintained in paradigms where both variants occur. Evidence from transcriptions of Gothic names into Latin suggests that the sound change had occurred very recently when Gothic spelling was standardized: Gothic names with Germanic au are rendered with au in Latin until the 4th century and o later on. The digraphs and are normally written with an accent on the first vowel when they correspond to Proto-Germanic and.
  • Long and also occur as allophones of and respectively before a following vowel: , , also in Greek words . In detailed transcription these are notated ai, au.
  • The existence of a vowel in Gothic is unclear. It is derived from the use of ? to transcribe Greek υ or the diphthong οι, both of which were pronounced in the Greek of the time. is otherwise used to denote the consonant ). It may have been pronounced.
  • is usually reconstructed as a falling diphthong, though this has been disputed.
  • Greek diphthongs: In Ulfilas's era, all the diphthongs of Classical Greek had become simple vowels in speech, except for αυ and ευ, which were probably pronounced and In words borrowed from Greek, αυ and ευ are transcribed in extant Gothic manuscripts as, probably pronounced : , .
  • All vowels can be followed by a, which was likely pronounced as the second element of a diphthong with roughly the sound of. It seems likely that this is more of an instance of phonetic juxtaposition than of true diphthongs : , , .

Consonants

Gothic distinguished single or short consonants from long or geminated consonants: the latter were written double, as in , . Gothic is rich in fricative consonants originating from Grimm's law and Verner's law. Gothic retained Proto-Germanic *z as, unlike North Germanic languages and West Germanic languages, which turned this sound into through rhotacization. Voiced fricative consonants were devoiced at the ends of words.

Stops

  • The voiceless stops, and are regularly noted by, and respectively: , , .
  • The letter probably represented a voiceless labiovelar stop,, comparable to Latin : . In later Germanic languages, this phoneme has become either a consonant cluster of a voiceless velar stop + a labio-velar approximant or a simple voiceless velar stop . Proto-Germanic replaced with but this surface filter was no longer active by the time Ulfilas first wrote the Codex Argenteus. The sequence could occur in Gothic as the result of analogy: for example, the Gothic verb had the past participle , rather than *, which would be the regular outcome of the Proto-Germanic form *kumanaz.
  • The voiced stops, and are noted by the letters, and. They occurred after a nasal and apparently also after other consonants: , . It is generally assumed that b d g were also pronounced as stops in word-initial position or when geminate. However, gives word-initial b d as stops, but word-initial g as a voiced fricative, and assumes geminate gg had merged with the identically spelled. Geminate bb, dd, gg did not occur in native Gothic words outside of the sequences ggw and ddj, but they could be found in borrowed words.
  • There was probably also a voiced labiovelar stop,, which was written with the digraph. It occurred after a nasal, e.g. , or long as a regular outcome of Germanic *ww: . The existence of a long separate from, however, is not universally accepted.
  • The letters represented the regular outcome of Germanic *jj. Its pronunciation has been variously proposed to be, or.

Fricatives

  • and are usually written and. The latter corresponds to Germanic *z ; at the end of a word, it is regularly devoiced to s: e.g. , versus .
  • and, written and, are voiceless bilabial and voiceless dental fricatives respectively. It is likely that the relatively unstable sound became. The cluster became in some words but not others: from Germanic *flugiz; from Germanic *fleuhaną. This sound change is unique among Germanic languages.
  • , and are allophones of, and respectively, and are not distinguished from them in writing. The voiced fricative allophones were used when came between vowels, as in , , . When preceded by a vowel and followed by a voiceless consonant or by the end of a word, were devoiced to and spelled as, : e.g. but genitive ; but infinitive ; . The velar consonant was probably also phonetically devoiced in the same position, becoming the voiceless velar fricative, but this is less certain; it remained spelled as g and apparently did not merge with any other phoneme. It is possible that developed phonetically to labiodental.
  • is written as : . It could occur in the coda of syllables and unlike and, it did not merge at the end of a word or before a voiceless consonant with its etymologically paired voiced consonant: remained written as, e.g. . There are conflicting interpretations of what this data means in terms of phonetics. Some linguists interpret it as a sign that failed to be devoiced in this context, but given that the other voiced fricatives were subject to devoicing in this position, argues it is more likely that was pronounced with devoicing as and coda was pronounced as something other than a voiceless velar fricative. Two phonetic values that have been proposed for syllable-final are uvular and glottal.
  • In some borrowed Greek words there is a special letter, which represents the Greek letter χ : .
  • is the labiovelar equivalent of, derived from Proto-Indo-European *kʷ. It was probably pronounced , as wh is pronounced in certain dialects of English and in Scots: , , .

Sonorants

  • Gothic has three nasal consonants,. The first two are phonemes, and ; the third,, is an allophone found only in complementary distribution with the other two.
  • * The bilabial nasal, transcribed, can be found in any position in a syllable: e.g. , .
  • * The coronal nasal, transcribed, can be found in any position in a syllable. It assimilates to the place of articulation of an immediately following stop consonant: before a bilabial consonant, it becomes and before a velar stop, it becomes. Thus, clusters like or are not possible.
  • * The velar nasal, transcribed, is not a phoneme and cannot appear freely in Gothic. It occurs only before a velar stop as the result of nasal place assimilation, and so is in complementary distribution with and. Following Greek conventions, it is normally written as g : , ~ . The cluster ggw may have denoted two different spoken sounds and .
  • is transliterated as before a vowel: , .
  • is written as : , .
  • and occur as in other European languages: , : , .
  • ,, and may occur either between two other consonants of lower sonority or word-finally after a consonant of lower sonority. It is probable that the sounds are pronounced partly or completely as syllabic consonants in such circumstances : or , or , or and or .

Accentuation and intonation

Accentuation in Gothic can be reconstructed through phonetic comparison, Grimm's law, and Verner's law. Gothic used a stress accent rather than the pitch accent of Proto-Indo-European. This is indicated by the shortening of long vowels and to and the loss of short vowels and in unstressed final syllables.
Just as in other Germanic languages, the free moving Proto-Indo-European accent was replaced with one fixed on the first syllable of simple words. Accents do not shift when words are inflected. In most compound words, the location of the stress depends on the type of compound:
  • In compounds in which the second word is a noun, the accent is on the first syllable of the first word of the compound.
  • In compounds in which the second word is a verb, the accent falls on the first syllable of the verbal component. Elements prefixed to verbs are otherwise unstressed except in the context of separable words. In those cases, the prefix is stressed.
For example, with comparable words from modern Germanic languages:
  • Non-compound words: ; ; .
  • Compound words:
  • * Noun first element: .
  • * Verb second element: .

Grammar

Morphology

Nouns and adjectives

Gothic preserves many archaic Indo-European features that are not always present in modern Germanic languages, in particular the rich Indo-European declension system. Gothic had nominative, accusative, genitive and dative cases, as well as vestiges of a vocative case that was sometimes identical to the nominative and sometimes to the accusative. The three genders of Indo-European were all present. Nouns and adjectives were inflected according to one of two grammatical numbers: the singular and the plural.
Nouns can be divided into numerous declensions according to the form of the stem: a, ō, i, u, an, ōn, ein, r, etc. Adjectives have two variants, indefinite and definite, with definite adjectives normally used in combination with the definite determiners while indefinite adjectives are used in other circumstances. Indefinite adjectives generally use a combination of a-stem and ō-stem endings, and definite adjectives use a combination of an-stem and ōn-stem endings. The concept of "strong" and "weak" declensions that is prevalent in the grammar of many other Germanic languages is less significant in Gothic because of its conservative nature: the so-called "weak" declensions are, in fact, no weaker in Gothic than the "strong" declensions, and the "strong" declensions do not form a coherent class that can be clearly distinguished from the "weak" declensions.
Although descriptive adjectives in Gothic and the past participle may take both definite and indefinite forms, some adjectival words are restricted to one variant. Some pronouns take only definite forms: for example, , adjectives like , comparative adjective and present participles. Others, such as , take only the indefinite forms.
The table below displays the declension of the Gothic adjective , compared with the an-stem noun and the a-stem noun :
This table is, of course, not exhaustive as there are secondary inflexions of various sorts not described here. An exhaustive table of only the types of endings that Gothic took is presented below.
  • vowel declensions:
  • * roots ending in -a, -ja, -wa : equivalent to the Latin and Greek second declension in ‑us / ‑ī and ‑ος / ‑ου;
  • * roots ending in -ō, -jō and -wō : equivalent to the Latin and Greek first declension in ‑a / ‑ae and ‑α / ‑ας ;
  • * roots ending in -i : equivalent to the Latin and Greek third declension in ‑is / ‑is and ‑ις / ‑εως;
  • * roots ending in -u : equivalent to the Latin fourth declension in ‑us / ‑ūs and the Greek third declension in ‑υς / ‑εως;
  • n-stem declensions, equivalent to the Latin and Greek third declension in ‑ō / ‑inis/ōnis and ‑ων / ‑ονος or ‑ην / ‑ενος:
  • * roots ending in -an, -jan, -wan ;
  • * roots ending in -ōn and -ein ;
  • * roots ending in -n : equivalent to the Latin and Greek third declension in ‑men / ‑minis and ‑μα / ‑ματος;
  • minor declensions: roots ending in -r, -nd and vestigial endings in other consonants, equivalent to other third declensions in Greek and Latin.
Gothic adjectives follow noun declensions closely; they take same types of inflection.

Pronouns

Gothic inherited the full set of Indo-European pronouns: personal pronouns, possessive pronouns, both simple and compound demonstratives, relative pronouns, interrogatives and indefinite pronouns. Each follows a particular pattern of inflection, much like other Indo-European languages. One particularly noteworthy characteristic is the preservation of the dual number, referring to two people or things; the plural was used only for quantities greater than two. Thus, "the two of us" and "we" for numbers greater than two were expressed as and respectively. While Proto-Indo-European used the dual for all grammatical categories that took a number, most Old Germanic languages are unusual in that they preserved it only for pronouns. Gothic preserves an older system with dual marking on both pronouns and verbs.
The simple demonstrative pronoun can be used as an article, allowing constructions of the type definite article + weak adjective + noun.
The interrogative pronouns begin with, which derives from the Proto-Indo-European consonant *kʷ that was present at the beginning of all interrogatives in proto-Indo-European, cognate with the wh- at the beginning of many English interrogative, which, as in Gothic, are pronounced with in some dialects. The same etymology is present in the interrogatives of many other Indo-European languages: w- in German, hv- in Danish, the Latin qu-, the Greek τ- or π-, the Slavic and Indic k- as well as many others.

Verbs

The bulk of Gothic verbs follow the type of Indo-European conjugation called 'thematic' because they insert a vowel derived from the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European phonemes *e or *o between roots and inflexional suffixes. The pattern is also present in Greek and Latin:
  • Latin – leg-i-mus : root leg- + thematic vowel -i- + suffix -mus.
  • Greek – λύ-ο-μεν : root λυ- + thematic vowel -ο- + suffix -μεν.
  • Gothic – nim-a-m : root nim- + thematic vowel -a- + suffix -m.
The other conjugation, called "athematic", in which suffixes are added directly to roots, exists only in unproductive vestigial forms in Gothic, just like in Latin. The most important such instance is the verb "to be", which is athematic in Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, and many other Indo-European languages.
Gothic verbs are, like nouns and adjectives, divided into strong verbs and weak verbs. Weak verbs are characterised by preterites formed by appending the suffixes or, parallel to past participles formed with /. Strong verbs form preterites by ablaut or by reduplication but without adding a suffix in either case. This parallels the Greek and Sanskrit perfects. The dichotomy is still present in modern Germanic languages:
  • weak verbs :
  • * Gothic: haban, preterite: habáida, past participle: habáiþ's;
  • * English: have, preterite: had, past participle: had;
  • * German: haben, preterite: hatte, past participle: gehabt;
  • * Icelandic: hafa, preterite: hafði, past participle: haft;
  • * Dutch: hebben, preterite: had, past participle: gehad;
  • * Swedish: ha, preterite: hade, supine: haft;
  • strong verbs :
  • * Gothic: infinitive: gi'ban, preterite: gaf;
  • * English: infinitive: give, preterite: gave;
  • * German: infinitive: geben, preterite: gab;
  • * Icelandic: infinitive: gefa, preterite: gaf;
  • * Dutch: infinitive: geven, preterite: gaf;
  • * Swedish: infinitive: giva, preterite: gav.
Verbal conjugation in Gothic have two grammatical voices: the active and the medial; three numbers: singular, dual and plural; two tenses: present and preterite ; three grammatical moods: indicative, subjunctive and imperative as well as three kinds of nominal forms: a present infinitive, a present participle, and a past passive. Not all tenses and persons are represented in all moods and voices, as some conjugations use auxiliary forms.
Finally, there are forms called 'preterite-present': the old Indo-European perfect was reinterpreted as present tense. The Gothic word, from the Proto-Indo-European *woid-h2e, corresponds exactly to its Sanskrit cognate véda and in Greek to ϝοἶδα. Both etymologically should mean "I have seen" but mean "I know". Latin follows the same rule with nōuī. The preterite-present verbs include and among others.

Syntax

Word order

The word order of Gothic is fairly free as is typical of other inflected languages. The natural word order of Gothic is assumed to have been like that of the other old Germanic languages; however, nearly all extant Gothic texts are translations of Greek originals and have been heavily influenced by Greek syntax.
Sometimes what can be expressed in one word in the original Greek will require a verb and a complement in the Gothic translation; for example, διωχθήσονται is rendered:
Likewise Gothic translations of Greek noun phrases may feature a verb and a complement. In both cases, the verb follows the complement, giving weight to the theory that basic word order in Gothic is object–verb. This aligns with what is known of other early Germanic languages.
However, this pattern is reversed in imperatives and negations:
And in a wh-question the verb directly follows the question word:

Clitics

Gothic has two clitic particles placed in the second position in a sentence, in accordance with Wackernagel's Law.
One such clitic particle is, indicating a yes–no question or an indirect question, like Latin -ne:
The prepositional phrase without the clitic appears as : the clitic causes the reversion of originally voiced fricatives, unvoiced at the end of a word, to their voiced form; another such example is from . If the first word has a preverb attached, the clitic actually splits the preverb from the verb: from .
Another such clitic is , appearing as after a vowel: from , from the imperative form . After or any indefinite besides and , cannot be placed; in the latter category, this is only because indefinite determiner phrases cannot move to the front of a clause. Unlike, for example, Latin -que, can only join two or more main clauses. In all other cases, the word is used, which can also join main clauses.
More than one such clitics can occur in one word: from , from .

Comparison to other Germanic languages

For the most part, Gothic is known to be significantly closer to Proto-Germanic than any other Germanic language except for that of the Ancient Nordic runic inscriptions, which has made it invaluable in the reconstruction of Proto-Germanic. In fact, Gothic tends to serve as the primary foundation for reconstructing Proto-Germanic. The reconstructed Proto-Germanic conflicts with Gothic only when there is clearly identifiable evidence from other branches that the Gothic form is a secondary development.

Distinctive features

Gothic fails to display a number of innovations shared by all Germanic languages attested later:
The language also preserved many features that were mostly lost in other early Germanic languages:
  • dual inflections on verbs,
  • morphological passive voice for verbs,
  • reduplication in the past tense of Class VII strong verbs,
  • clitic conjunctions that appear in second position of a sentence in accordance with Wackernagel's Law, splitting verbs from pre-verbs.

Lack of umlaut

Most conspicuously, Gothic shows no sign of morphological umlaut. Gothic, , can be contrasted with English foot–''feet'', –Füße, –fœtr, –fødder. These forms contain the characteristic change > , > , > due to i-umlaut; the Gothic form shows no such change.

Lack of rhotacism

Proto-Germanic *z remains in Gothic as or is devoiced to. In North and West Germanic, *z changes to r by rhotacism:

Passive voice

Gothic retains a morphological passive voice inherited from Indo-European but unattested in all other Germanic languages except for the single fossilised form preserved in, for example, Old English hātte or Runic Norse haitē, derived from Proto-Germanic *haitaną.
The morphological passive in North Germanic languages originates from the Old Norse middle voice, which is an innovation not inherited from Indo-European.

Dual number

Unlike other Germanic languages, which retained dual numbering only in some pronoun forms, Gothic has dual forms both in pronouns and in verbs. Dual verb forms exist only in the first and second person and only in the active voice; in all other cases, the corresponding plural forms are used. In pronouns, Gothic has first and second person dual pronouns: Gothic and Old English wit, Old Norse vit .

Reduplication

Gothic possesses a number of verbs which form their preterite by reduplication, another archaic feature inherited from Indo-European. While traces of this category survived elsewhere in Germanic, the phenomenon is largely obscured in these other languages by later sound changes and analogy. In the following examples the infinitive is compared to the third person singular preterite indicative:
  • to sow: PGmc *sēaną–*sezō
  • * Gothic saian–saiso
  • * Old Norse sá–seri
  • to play: PGmc *laikaną–*lelaik
  • * Gothic laikan–lailaik
  • * Old English lācan–leolc, ''lēc''

Classification

The standard theory of the origin of the Germanic languages divides the languages into three groups: East Germanic, North Germanic and West Germanic. Sometimes, a further grouping, that of the Northwest Germanic languages, is posited as containing the North Germanic and West Germanic languages, reflecting the hypothesis that Gothic was the first attested language to branch off.
A minority opinion instead groups North Germanic and East Germanic together. It is based partly on historical claims: for example, Jordanes, writing in the 6th century, ascribes to the Goths a Scandinavian origin. There are a few linguistically significant areas in which Gothic and Old Norse agree against the West Germanic languages.
Perhaps the most obvious is the evolution of the Proto-Germanic *-jj- and *-ww- into Gothic and, and Old Norse ggj and ggv, in contrast to West Germanic where they remained as semivowels. Compare Modern English true, German treu, with Gothic triggws, Old Norse tryggr.
However, it has been suggested that these are, in fact, two separate and unrelated changes. A number of other posited similarities exist. However, for the most part these represent shared retentions, which are not valid means of grouping languages. That is, if a parent language splits into three daughters A, B and C, and C innovates in a particular area but A and B do not change, A and B will appear to agree against C. That shared retention in A and B is not necessarily indicative of any special relationship between the two.
Similar claims of similarities between Old Gutnish and Old Icelandic are also based on shared retentions rather than shared innovations.
Another commonly-given example involves Gothic and Old Norse verbs with the ending -t in the 2nd person singular preterite indicative, and the West Germanic languages have -i. The ending -t can regularly descend from the Proto-Indo-European perfect ending *-th₂e, while the origin of the West Germanic ending -i is unclear, suggesting that it is an innovation of some kind, possibly an import from the optative. Another possibility is that this is an example of independent choices made from a doublet existing in the proto-language. That is, Proto-Germanic may have allowed either -t or -i to be used as the ending, either in free variation or perhaps depending on dialects within Proto-Germanic or the particular verb in question. Each of the three daughters independently standardized on one of the two endings and, by chance, Gothic and Old Norse ended up with the same ending.
Other isoglosses have led scholars to propose an early split between East and Northwest Germanic. Furthermore, features shared by any two branches of Germanic do not necessarily require the postulation of a proto-language excluding the third, as the early Germanic languages were all part of a dialect continuum in the early stages of their development, and contact between the three branches of Germanic was extensive.
Polish linguist Witold Mańczak argued that Gothic is closer to German than to Scandinavian and suggested that their ancestral homeland was located in the southernmost part of the Germanic territories, close to present-day Austria, rather than in Scandinavia. Frederik Kortlandt has agreed with Mańczak's hypothesis, stating: "I think that his argument is correct and that it is time to abandon Iordanes' classic view that the Goths came from Scandinavia."

Influence

The reconstructed Proto-Slavic language features several apparent borrowed words from East Germanic, such as *xlěbъ,, vs. Gothic ??????.
The Romance languages also preserve several loanwords from Gothic, such as Portuguese agasalho, from Gothic ??????? ; ganso, from Gothic ???? ; luva, from Gothic ???? ; and trégua, from Gothic ???????. Other examples include the French broder, from Gothic ??????? ; gaffe, from Gothic ????? ; and the Italian bega, from Gothic ????.

Use in Romanticism and the Modern Age

J. R. R. Tolkien

Several linguists have made use of Gothic as a creative language. The most famous example is "" by J. R. R. Tolkien, part of Songs for the Philologists. It was published privately in 1936 for Tolkien and his colleague E. V. Gordon.
Tolkien's use of Gothic is also known from a letter from 1965 to Zillah Sherring. When Sherring bought a copy of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War in Salisbury, she found strange inscriptions in it; after she found his name in it, she wrote him a letter and asked him if the inscriptions were his, including the longest one on the back, which was in Gothic. In his reply to her he corrected some of the mistakes in the text; he wrote for example that should be and , which he suggested should be . A semantic inaccuracy of the text which he mentioned himself is the use of for read, while this was. Tolkien also made a calque of his own name in Gothic in the letter, which according to him should be.
Gothic is also known to have served as the primary inspiration for Tolkien's invented language, Taliska which, in his legendarium, was the language spoken by the race of Men during the First Age before being displaced by another of his invented languages, Adûnaic., Tolkien's Taliska grammar has not been published.

Others

On 10 February 1841, the Bayerische Akademie für Wissenschaften published a reconstruction in Gothic of the Creed of Ulfilas.
The Thorvaldsen museum also has an alliterative poem from 1841 by Massmann, the first publisher of the, written in the Gothic language. It was read at a great feast dedicated to Thorvaldsen in the in Munich on July 15, 1841. This event is mentioned by Ludwig von Schorn in the magazine Kunstblatt from the 19th of July, 1841. Massmann also translated the academic commercium song Gaudeamus into Gothic in 1837.
In 2012, professor Bjarne Simmelkjær Hansen of the University of Copenhagen published a translation into Gothic of Adeste Fideles for Roots of Europe.
In Fleurs du Mal, an online magazine for art and literature, the poem Overvloed of Dutch poet Bert Bevers appeared in a Gothic translation.
Alice in Wonderland has been translated into Gothic by David Carlton in 2015 and is published by Michael Everson.

Examples

The Lord's Prayer in Gothic:

General references

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