Talk:Gothic language

ddj
Current version of the article shows IPA value /ɟː/ for ddj with no citation in the phonemic inventory. I'm informed by someone who understands the issue but doesn't edit Wikipedia that linguist Henry Smith Jr wrote in a 1941 article, "The Verschärfung in Germanic", in favour of [ddʒ], that Hjalmar Petersen in 2002, article "Verschärfung in Old Norse and Gothic", argues for a development of [jj] > [(ɣ)ɣj] > [ððj] for it, and that apparently Crimean Gothic shows "d" as a correspondence. I am completely unfamiliar with Gothic, but someone who understands should read the articles and edit this section... For now I've a few "citation needed"s in place. - Ser be etre shi (talk) 01:27, 13 August 2023 (UTC)


 * It would be good to find some more recent research on this. Unfortunately Miller's 2019 "Oxford Gothic Grammar" in his discussion of Verschärfung (p.53 ff.) doesn't give an IPA transcription. Pfold (talk) 09:19, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

"thy"
Shouldn't we be translating "theins" as the modern "your" rather than the archaic "thy"? (This goes for the whole gamut of "thou" related forms too)--Ermenrich (talk) 17:00, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I would keep "thy" to show it is a 2nd person singluar form and not a numberless 2nd person. --Pfold (talk) 18:09, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I understand that reasoning, but I don't think the average reader knows that "thou" is an explicitly singular pronoun.--Ermenrich (talk) 18:12, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Don't feel strongly about it! --Pfold (talk) 10:14, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

IU?
The alphabet section lists the diphthongal pronunciation as a widely-accepted probability, yet the phonology section a few paragraphs down states it as indisputable fact. How loud is the dissenting crowd? Would it be giving undue emphasis to change "/iu/ is a falling diphthong" to something like "/iu/ is probably a falling diphthong (see Alphabet and transliteration section above)"? Wiljahelmaz (talk) 13:04, 2 December 2023 (UTC)


 * If nobody has a problem with it, then I'm going to make the change. Wiljahelmaz (talk) 05:57, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

Wrong transliteration of two diphthongs
The phonetic transliteration of the two diphthongs ái and áu as, respectively, /ɛː/ and /ɔː/ was a too glaring mistake, so I changed them to the correct phonetic sounds /ái/ and /áu/. That is the way I learnt it back in the seventies (Grammar of the Gothic Language, Joseph Wright, and I take that things have not changed at all since then. I would like to refer the author of this article to Wright's unsurpassed book, to be found at: https://jtauber.github.io/gothica/wright-1910-grammar/html/chapter01.html. 111snwi (talk) 11:51, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Well, given the advances in the understanding of phonology since 1910, not to mention 113 years of further research into Gothic -- Wright was an old-fashined neo-grammarian, don't forget -- I don't think it is reasonable to simply "take it that things haven't changed". Sure, the question is still pertinent, but Miller's Oxford Gothic Grammar (2019) explains p.35 why these spellings represent monophthongs, with the introductory statement, "It is generally agreed that". Rauch's 2011 book came to the same conclusion. --Pfold (talk) 13:01, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Note also that our article was already citing Wright (1910), pointing to a note later in that book (here in the online version) where he seems to be accepting the monophthongal interpretation as at least a plausible interpretation. Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:08, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
 * "It is generally assumed that the phonetic value of ai and au in Visigothic was diphthongal if these graphemes go back to PGM ăĭ and ăŭ (which they not always do), but this is not certain. They may have had the phonetic values ē and ō, in which case they had been monophthongized (Van Bree 1987, 25–26).
 * If they were diphthongal, they were in any case monophonematic diphthongs (Van Bree 1987, 100, 105). It is seen as implausible that they were monophthongized, considering the alternations which may occur within a paradigm, e.g., in taujan—tawida ‘make—made’ (Van Loon 1986, 46), but this argument is not totally convincing. There is a lot of evidence from loanwords in Provençal and Spanish that attest to the late survival of diphthongs in Visigothic (Dietz 1999)", Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 77 (2017), 616–636.
 * For the benefit of future readers, it might be proper to add a footnote to the two transliterations to elucidate the underlying problem. 111snwi (talk) 15:23, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, there's also the assumed borrowing of Proto-Slavic *xlě̀bъ (perhaps /xlæ̀ːbu/) from Gothic hláifs~hláibis (implying, perhaps, monophthongal [hl̥ɛːɸs̠~hl̥ɛːβis̠]). Wiljahelmaz (talk) 05:35, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

/ɡ/ vs. /ɣ/ in initial position
Does anyone have a source for the statement that /ɡ/ is stopped initially? The page merely states that it happened "like the other Germanic languages", but which, and when? The date of the /ɣ-/ > /ɡ-/ shift is dated c. 10th century in OE, pre-8th century in OHG, sources aren't clear if it happened yet in 12th-century ON, and it still hasn't happened in 21st-century Dutch. How does this apply to 4th-century Gothic? With no clear reason to think otherwise, wouldn't it be more reasonable to infer the original PGmc condition of initial frication?

Of course, the entire section on consonant phonology has but one source, pertaining only to ⟨ggw⟩, so I haven't been able to do much additional reading. Wiljahelmaz (talk) 07:02, 3 April 2024 (UTC)