Gothic for Goths - Lesson 02: Gáitsūgja Meins

Lesson 2, updated, corrected, and now digitally remastered for your viewing enjoyment!

Learn about the accusative case, the enclitic -uh, and the interrogative particle while you search for a family pet who's wandered off in Gothic territory.

See the script and vocabulary here: http://ling.everywitchway.net/germanic/east/gothic/gothic-for-goths/lesson-02

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• goth
• gothic
• gothic for goths
• languages
• linguistics
• gothic language
• chupacabra

[petrusson]

Thank you for your work! A question; How to translate "This Gaut kills machines"? I´ve got it down to "thamma gauta fraqistidan vélar" (vélar being the icelandic trancelation of "machines"). Now how wrong am I? :)

[benjaminpauljohnson]

@petrusson Well, your cases are a bit off, and your verb, and there's no V in gothic... but not bad. Vélar is pretty easily ported over to gothic if you know what to look for - it's from PGmc wîlô (st.f.) which would be gothic "weila." Still, I think saying "Sa Gauts fraquistiþ þô weilôn," might imply more that the Gaut was destroying art, not machines. Just my take on it, though.

[petrusson]

@benjaminpauljohnson I see, and "weila" tranliterates to what more specific? How would you translate the sentence? :)

[benjaminpauljohnson]

@petrusson Weila doesn't translate to anything - that's just what "vél(a)" would have become in gothic if the word had survived that long. But the original definition, beyond "machine," was more about anything that was made. "Artifice" might be a good word. There's no extant Gothic word for machine, but if you want to reconstruct one, that's probably the closest you're going to get.

[benjaminpauljohnson]

@GotischOberst I agree! I think I am going to have to buckle down and turn out lessons 7 and 8 that i've been mumbling about for a year now, and maybe start a new basic language series of "Gothic for Gothlings..." Now if only there were a way to make enough money at it to quit my job, I'd make new Gothic videos all the time!

[GotischOberst]

@benjaminpauljohnson I have to say that I agree with Christine. I think we need to push for Gothic curses. How else are we to live as civilized human beings if we can't call each other scruffy nerfherders in other languages. How, I ask you!

[christinesawesome]

@benjaminpauljohnson aha, i guess i'm not too bright, but i love what you're doing with these languages... but i would need to start from a more basic point and i don't have the brains or the botherdness to go looking through medieval archives or whatever figuring it out. i haven't spoken german to any coherent degree, just ye modern english of england, and this is THE ONLY resource of its type i can find on the internet so its still going to be helpful even if a lot goes over my head :)

[benjaminpauljohnson]

@christinesawesome There are lots of words for "happy," but "Ik im [wizneigs/swēgns/fraus/hlas/gl­aþs/fagins]" or "Ik faginō mik." "Ita ist mēnadag hina dag." (Or maybe "His dag ist mēnadag," but that sounds weird to me)... we'll hold off on curses for a future lesson, though.

[benjaminpauljohnson]

@christinesawesome Yes, quite dead. Sorry, sometimes my sarcasm is too subtle. I haven't had a chance to make a new lesson in quite a while, but in case I don't get around to it:

[christinesawesome]

@benjaminpauljohnson ... unless i'm mistaken, its a dead language? how can you be a native speaker of a dead language? and i can't remember did i ask this before, but i'd like to learn some simpler things to say, like, "i am happy today", or "today is monday". also a few good gothic curses would come in handy =P