Revival of the Gothic Language

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Danguy97
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Revival of the Gothic Language

Postby Danguy97 » Sun Aug 22, 2021 10:19 am

Hi everyone!

I am new here and have a huge passion for languages!

I was wondering about establishing a forum for everything related to the now extinct Gothic language, and possibly reviving it.

Thank you!
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Iversen
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Re: Revival of the Gothic Language

Postby Iversen » Sun Aug 22, 2021 5:21 pm

Good luck, but I think it will be hard to find enough people for such a project.
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Re: Revival of the Gothic Language

Postby urubu » Sun Aug 22, 2021 5:30 pm

I remember being on such a forum/mailing list ages ago.
I think it was called 'GOTHIC-L' but I can't find any info on it.

Edit:
Found it. It seems to have ceased to be in 2015.
See: http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/gothic-l/

Apparently they even produced a translation of the Communist Manifesto into Gothic.

Similar initiatives exist:
https://www.reddit.com/r/germanic/comme ... e_revival/
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Re: Revival of the Gothic Language

Postby tungemål » Thu Aug 26, 2021 7:41 pm

Gothic is fascinating, and I would love to hear how it would have sounded. (But I'm not interested myself in learning or reviving it). Wonder how similar it would have been to Old English and Old Norse. I don't know how much exists of the language - apparantly mostly some fragments of the bible.

So why are you interested in Gothic?
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Re: Revival of the Gothic Language

Postby Iversen » Fri Aug 27, 2021 1:27 am

I once had a peek at Gothic because of a question in HTLAL, and here I compared some bits from the Gothic Wulfila bible with the corresponding parts of a Greek Bible, and there were so many parallels that I'm inclined to believe those scholars who claim that the syntax and maybe even the idomatics of the Wulfila's text have been heavily influenced by Greek. In other words it may not fully represent the language as it was spoken by the Goths, but because it is the only sizeable text we have we have to live with its peculiarities.
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Re: Revival of the Gothic Language

Postby luke » Fri Aug 27, 2021 1:48 am

Danguy97 wrote:I was wondering about establishing a forum for everything related to the now extinct Gothic language, and possibly reviving it.

The first step is to get a cool avatar.
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Re: Revival of the Gothic Language

Postby sfuqua » Mon Aug 30, 2021 1:21 pm

Gothic has a cool alphabet.
I actually played around with trying to learn how to pronounce it.
I really wish they had written sagas or something..
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Re: Revival of the Gothic Language

Postby IronMike » Tue Aug 31, 2021 12:18 pm

tungemål wrote:Gothic is fascinating, and I would love to hear how it would have sounded. (But I'm not interested myself in learning or reviving it). Wonder how similar it would have been to Old English and Old Norse. I don't know how much exists of the language - apparantly mostly some fragments of the bible.

If you can get your hands on a copy of Robinson's Old English and its Closest Relatives, it's fun to peruse. (I have it in a box somewhere.) Here's a small clip from the Look Inside function from the book's page on Amazon:
Image
Last edited by IronMike on Mon Sep 06, 2021 12:54 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Revival of the Gothic Language

Postby Blue Saka » Sat Sep 04, 2021 10:08 pm

I think it's a really interesting language. I'm going to keep track of your thread, even though I don't plan on studying it yet.
Good luck on this venture!
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Re: Revival of the Gothic Language

Postby sfuqua » Sat Sep 11, 2021 11:33 pm

It looks to me like there are some decent Gothic courses on memrise.com https://app.memrise.com/course/329747/gothic-language-complete-audio/.
There is an addon to anki which will allow you to add a memrise course to anki. Make sure to do the editing on the add-on to make it work. It is very easy, and don't forget to sign into memrise.com. There is even audio with some of the memrise courses.
I made an anki deck from one of these courses. I did quite a bit of massaging to change to material I downloaded into the form where I might study it. This deck has about 1000 cards, so it wouldn't take you far, but it would be a start.
Nobody has made an espeak ng tts voice for gothic yet. I keep planning on doing (or rather modifying an old voice from espeak) a voice for Gothic. Maybe I can get my act together and do a couple of these.
Don't hold your breath. I'm better and planning than at completing.
Pronynciatuon looks easy, at least the reconstructed pronunciation that everyone seems to be using. Of course we are using a reconstructed pronunciation, it is sort of rare to find a native speaker for a dead language these days. I would recommend that you check out the fonts from Peter Baker's github site https://github.com/psb1558 and/or the fonts at Pfeffer's site http://robert-pfeffer.net/schriftarten/englisch/nachgeladener_rahmen.html?pfeffer_mediaeval.html. These fonts will make working with Gothic much easier.
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荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川

the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
Basho[1689]

Sometimes Japanese is just too much...


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