Unit 1
Gothic is a language of the East Germanic branch of Indo-European. Spoken around 500 CE in eastern Europe, it retains several
archaic features that set it apart from extant Germanic languages. For this reason, it gives some insights into what the Proto-Germanic
language must have been like, which itself was a sister language to other proto-languages that were the ancestors of Latin, Greek,
Sanskrit, Slavonic, et cetera. Gothic therefore resembles the other classical languages a lot more than, say, English or German
do, yet at the same time demonstrates quite a bit of similarity to these and other related languages spoken today.
The main corpus of extant Gothic literature is a partial copy of a Bible translated from ancient Greek by Goths
under the supervision of the Greek-born bishop Wulfila (also known as Ulfilas).
Make sure to look over the The Sounds of Gothic for information about how to pronounce the words
presented in these lessons.
Here is a simple sentence in Gothic:
| 1. Itiþ sa fugls þata kaúrn. | The bird eats the corn. |
Here the verb itiþ means "eats"; fugls means "bird", and kaúrn means "corn" (in the European sense, as maize was unknown to the Goths).
It so happens that the word itiþ sounds much like eats, and kaúrn sounds almost exactly like corn. Such similarities between Gothic and
English are numerous, because the two languages are related; even fugls is related to "fowl". The words
sa and þata are best translated in this sentence as "the".
Grammatically, itiþ is a third person singular verb; in the dictionary it would be cited in its infinitive form, itan. Fugls is a
masculine noun, while kaúrn is a neuter. Gothic nouns change their endings depending on their function in the sentence, but since fugls
and kaúrn have different genders, they change in different ways. Compare:
| 2. Þata kaúrn ni bi-leibiþ. | The corn doesn't remain. |
| 3. Sa fugls ni bi-leibiþ. | The bird doesn't remain. |
| 4. Itiþ þata dius þata kaúrn. | The wild beast eats the corn. |
| 5. Itiþ þata dius þana fugl. | The wild beast eats the bird. |
In sentence 1, the bird was in the nominative case (fugls) and the corn was in the accusative (kaúrn). Sentences 2 and 3 find each noun
in the nominative, and sentences 4 and 5 find them in the accusative. Because kaúrn is neuter, its nominative and accusative cases look
and sound the same (this is actually a pervasive feature of virtually all Indo-European languages).
Gothic has a total of 5 cases for nouns.
Since this is not a feature of the English language, it can seem confusing and overwhelming for some students.
(If you speak or have studied an inflected language such as German, Greek, Latin, Russian, or Sanskrit, then declensions will already be familiar to you.)
However, English does still have cases for personal pronouns: notice that you cannot substitute "I" for "me" in a sentence, for example, and that a sentence fragment like
"ever him saw she" cannot mean "him" is the one doing the seeing, otherwise the pronouns would be "he" and "her".
Nevertheless, to make cases easier to learn for those encountering them for the first time, and to make Gothic cases easier for those accustomed to other
languages' declension systems, the cases are color coded for the first few lessons and for a while afterwards when introducing a new declension.
Here they are with the definite article:
| Nominative | sa fugls | the bird (subject) |
| Vocative | fugl | hey bird! |
| Accusative | þana fugl | the bird (direct object) |
| Genitive | þis fuglis | of the bird |
| Dative | þamma fugla | for/to the bird |
For kaúrn, the declension is quite similar to fugls:
| Nominative | þata kaúrn | the corn (subject) |
| Vocative | kaúrn | hey corn!* |
| Accusative | þata kaúrn | the corn (direct object) |
| Genitive | þis kaúrnis | of the corn |
| Dative | þamma kaúrna | for/to the corn |
*Included for completeness.
A great many masculine nouns are declined the same as fugls, including:
| aíƕs | horse |
| áiþs | oath |
| áiws | eternity |
| akrs | field |
| asts | branch, twig |
| bagms | tree |
| dags | day |
| fisks | fish |
| himins | sky, heaven |
| hunds | dog |
| ligrs | bed |
| máiþms | gift |
| maúrgins | morning |
| sitls | seat |
| skalks | servant |
| stáins | stone |
| þiudans | king |
| waúrms | serpent, dragon |
| wigs | way |
| winds | wind |
| wulfs | wolf |
The accusative construction ni áiw, used adverbially, means "never".
Himins in the singular can mean either "heaven" or "sky", but for the former meaning, often occurs in the plural.
Neuter nouns declined like kaúrn are also very numerous and include:
| agis | fear (genitive: agisis) |
| akran | fruit |
| barn | child |
| blōþ | blood |
| daúr | door |
| dius | wild animal (genitive: diuzis) |
| eisarn | iron |
| gras | grass (genitive: grasis) |
| gulþ | gold |
| haúrn | horn |
| huzd | treasure |
| jēr | year |
| juk | yoke |
| lamb | sheep, lamb |
| láun | pay, reward |
| leik | body, flesh |
| maúrþr | murder |
| mimz | meat |
| razn | house |
| riqis | darkness (genitive: riqizis) |
| salt | salt |
| silubr | silver |
| skip | ship |
| tagl | hair |
| tagr | teardrop |
| waúrd | word |
| wein | wine |
Here are some more sentences. You can recognize the verbs in these sentences by their -iþ endings,
except for ist (is).
The preposition in is almost the same as the English word "in", and governs either the accusative or the dative:
| 6. Fugls sitiþ in bagma. |
A bird sits in a tree. |
| 7. Sa skalks ni drigkiþ þata wein þis þiudanis. |
The servant doesn't drink the king's wine. |
| 8. Ist eisarn in þamma blōþa. |
There is iron in the blood. |
| 9. Gibiþ sa þiudans silubr þamma skalka. |
The king gives silver to the servant. |
| 10. Aliþ gras in þana akr in þamma daga. |
Grass grows in the field in the daytime. |
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