@aandrusiak Thanks. I pronounce /iu/ as [y:] ("the German ü"), but plain /u/ is either [u:] when long or [ʊ] when short. /iu/ may also be [ɪu], but I have reason to believe it (eventually, maybe or maybe not by Wulfilas' time) became [y:].
@giorgioxyzb True enough. That's partially why I'm carefully categorizing all of my artificially created vocabulary on the companion website in case it ever does rise from the dead, hebrew zombie style! I think it would be fun, but it will take a lot of work to fill in some pretty massive gaps across the centuries. Both hebrew and icelandic are pretty useful resources for how to bring an ancient language into the modern age.
@giorgioxyzb True, Iceland never actually disappeared, but it barely changed a lick for 1000 years and then suddenly had to make it's way in the 20th century - they very carefully constructed a lot of terms to avoid a lot of borrowing of foreign words (like simi for phone) in some fairly ingenious ways.
@giorgioxyzb Precisely! And just like english has an overabundance of latin loans (mostly via french), gothic as far as we know it has the same from greek... although it's unknown if your average Goth would have understood them.
@giorgioxyzb I agree, I wouldn't change the grammar. The hard part, really, is determining what the grammar actually was, because so much of what we have is translated verbatim from greek, so it's really using greek grammar, not gothic. But we can extrapolate most of it pretty effectively from the evidence we have from old english, old norse, old high german, old saxon, and old frisian; and, of course, where it deviates from the greek.
@benjaminpauljohnson I'd like I'd knew enough about all these languages (including Greek) to recognize the Greek influence in Gothic texts. At the moment I am trying to learn some Gothic and I can read it a bit (very slowly). Having had a Christian education makes the text pretty familiar and easier to me. :-) But I am far from knowing it at a level that I can write it or speak it. Ik kann nih maþljan nih meljan (how to translate: in Gothic ?).
@giorgioxyzb Of course, since I can't post URLs in comments, you should google the wulfila project - it's a parallel translation of the bible in greek, gothic, and english. I't s very helpful for seeing where the gothic has taken the same grammar as the greek, and more importantly where it deviates.
@giorgioxyzb Indeed. I'm doing something similar with my other constructed language, northeadish (it's on the same website with the gothic), like oxygen (sȳrvestþ) and hydrogen (vatʀvestþ)... Even "-stoff" is latin, so i picked "-vestþ" for elemental sorts of things, related to "wisan" and "gewesen."
@giorgioxyzb Youtube won't let me post a URL here, but it's on my channel page. It's got the scripts and vocab from the lessons as well as a lexicon in which I'm keeping track of "real" words, extrapolated words, and the words I just plain made up.
@giorgioxyzb On a similar note, though, I have a bit of a side-project I've been working on, a sort of constructed east germanic language that's sort of a "what if gothic survived into the modern age" depiction of one of its descendants. Still too early to really say much about it, other than it has little-to-nothing to do with crimean gothic.
Gothic would be like? I mean, a language can undergo deep change due to influences from other languages (see e.g. Scandinavian and French influence on English). How do you reconstruct this hypothetical language without knowing its history? An interesting and fascinating idea, though.
@giorgioxyzb Well, it's tricky, of course, but i haven't proposed any sort of cross-linguistic influence yet (like crimean gothic had with neighboring languages)... instead i'm just following a lot of the regular laws of linguistic change, adding a few of my own that i think are plausible and/or create a desired effect, and importing a lot of areal changes that happened to many or all of the other germanic languages.
Great job!
(Except it's so weird to listen to your American accent pronouncing the Gothic U as the German Ü. Can't you say a plain U?)
aandrusiak 1 year ago
@aandrusiak Thanks. I pronounce /iu/ as [y:] ("the German ü"), but plain /u/ is either [u:] when long or [ʊ] when short. /iu/ may also be [ɪu], but I have reason to believe it (eventually, maybe or maybe not by Wulfilas' time) became [y:].
benjaminpauljohnson 1 year ago
Great video! It is amazing to hear how Gothic sounded like!
Do you know if there is any Gothic speaking community? I mean some people who
meet and try to speak Gothic to each other?
giorgioxyzb 1 year ago
@giorgioxyzb Thanks! Unfortunately there just isn't really enough gothic vocabulary left to speak it, as such. Not yet, anyway... Mwahaha!
benjaminpauljohnson 1 year ago
@benjaminpauljohnson Yes, we could invent the vocabulary as we need new
words, like you did in some of your videos. We would retain the grammar and try
to keep the pronounciation as faithful as possible. We will call this language Neo-Gothic (niujis gutiska razda?).
As far as I know a similar experiment worked for Hebrew, so why shouldn't it work
for Gothic? :-)
giorgioxyzb 1 year ago
@giorgioxyzb True enough. That's partially why I'm carefully categorizing all of my artificially created vocabulary on the companion website in case it ever does rise from the dead, hebrew zombie style! I think it would be fun, but it will take a lot of work to fill in some pretty massive gaps across the centuries. Both hebrew and icelandic are pretty useful resources for how to bring an ancient language into the modern age.
benjaminpauljohnson 1 year ago
@benjaminpauljohnson Where is this web site? I would like to take a look at it if it is possible.
I do not understand the comparison with Icelandic. Icenlandic is still a living language, even though it did not change much due to isolation.
giorgioxyzb 1 year ago
@giorgioxyzb True, Iceland never actually disappeared, but it barely changed a lick for 1000 years and then suddenly had to make it's way in the 20th century - they very carefully constructed a lot of terms to avoid a lot of borrowing of foreign words (like simi for phone) in some fairly ingenious ways.
benjaminpauljohnson 1 year ago
@benjaminpauljohnson er, Icelandic, I should say, though Iceland never disappeared either :P
benjaminpauljohnson 1 year ago
@benjaminpauljohnson Ah, ok. I understand.
German and Dutch can give quite a few ideas too.
Unlike in English, in German many words are created using German elements.
So in English you say "depend" while in German you say ab-hängen (to hang off, to hang from). Dutch has afhangen.
By using a similar system, I guess you could get very far with Gothic too!
Fascinating, I would like to start working on this straight away.
giorgioxyzb 1 year ago
@giorgioxyzb Precisely! And just like english has an overabundance of latin loans (mostly via french), gothic as far as we know it has the same from greek... although it's unknown if your average Goth would have understood them.
benjaminpauljohnson 1 year ago
@benjaminpauljohnson I read that Gothic has not only loans, but also calques from
Greek. Bottomline, I would see no problem using the same procedure to adapt
Gothic to our times.
On the other hand, I would try not to change the grammar.
giorgioxyzb 1 year ago
@giorgioxyzb I agree, I wouldn't change the grammar. The hard part, really, is determining what the grammar actually was, because so much of what we have is translated verbatim from greek, so it's really using greek grammar, not gothic. But we can extrapolate most of it pretty effectively from the evidence we have from old english, old norse, old high german, old saxon, and old frisian; and, of course, where it deviates from the greek.
benjaminpauljohnson 1 year ago
@benjaminpauljohnson I'd like I'd knew enough about all these languages (including Greek) to recognize the Greek influence in Gothic texts. At the moment I am trying to learn some Gothic and I can read it a bit (very slowly). Having had a Christian education makes the text pretty familiar and easier to me. :-) But I am far from knowing it at a level that I can write it or speak it. Ik kann nih maþljan nih meljan (how to translate: in Gothic ?).
giorgioxyzb 1 year ago
@giorgioxyzb Of course, since I can't post URLs in comments, you should google the wulfila project - it's a parallel translation of the bible in greek, gothic, and english. I't s very helpful for seeing where the gothic has taken the same grammar as the greek, and more importantly where it deviates.
benjaminpauljohnson 1 year ago
@giorgioxyzb Other example: oxygen is Sauerstoff (stuff you need to produce acids),
hydrogen is Wasserstoff.
Then you have words like herstellen, even though I hear also produzieren very often.
So you probably know all this already, but I wanted to give a few suggestions anyway.
giorgioxyzb 1 year ago
@giorgioxyzb Indeed. I'm doing something similar with my other constructed language, northeadish (it's on the same website with the gothic), like oxygen (sȳrvestþ) and hydrogen (vatʀvestþ)... Even "-stoff" is latin, so i picked "-vestþ" for elemental sorts of things, related to "wisan" and "gewesen."
benjaminpauljohnson 1 year ago
@giorgioxyzb Youtube won't let me post a URL here, but it's on my channel page. It's got the scripts and vocab from the lessons as well as a lexicon in which I'm keeping track of "real" words, extrapolated words, and the words I just plain made up.
benjaminpauljohnson 1 year ago
@giorgioxyzb On a similar note, though, I have a bit of a side-project I've been working on, a sort of constructed east germanic language that's sort of a "what if gothic survived into the modern age" depiction of one of its descendants. Still too early to really say much about it, other than it has little-to-nothing to do with crimean gothic.
benjaminpauljohnson 1 year ago
@benjaminpauljohnson Interesting exercise, but how do you proceed to guess how
Gothic would be like? I mean, a language can undergo deep change due to influences from other languages (see e.g. Scandinavian and French influence on English). How do you reconstruct this hypothetical language without knowing its history? An interesting and fascinating idea, though.
giorgioxyzb 1 year ago
@giorgioxyzb Well, it's tricky, of course, but i haven't proposed any sort of cross-linguistic influence yet (like crimean gothic had with neighboring languages)... instead i'm just following a lot of the regular laws of linguistic change, adding a few of my own that i think are plausible and/or create a desired effect, and importing a lot of areal changes that happened to many or all of the other germanic languages.
benjaminpauljohnson 1 year ago