Gothic alphabet

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Transcription of the Gothic letters

The Gothic alphabet is an alphabetical script that the Gothic bishop Wulfila developed in the 4th century to translate the New Testament into the Gothic language ( Wulfilabibel ). The Gothic translation of the New Testament was the first book in a Germanic language. It was created in Nicopolis ad Istrum , now in Bulgaria. Nicopolis ad Istrum thus became the birthplace of the Germanic literary tradition.

origin

The whole of the Gothic script is based on the Greek alphabet . This provided not only the basic sequence of letters and the principle of writing numbers with letters, but also most of the character shapes. However, individual letters for sounds that the Greek does not know come from the Latin script and the runic script . The letters have names - usually a word that begins with the appropriate sound.

Lore

The sound value, order and names of the letters are handed down in an Alcuin manuscript from the 9th century . Accordingly, there were 25 letters with a sound value and - just like in Greek - two more that only had a numerical value (90 and 900). The names of the letters show a contamination between late Gothic and more recent West Germanic sounds. From the traditional forms, however, 'classical' Gothic forms can be reconstructed, which in many cases form the exact linguistic-historical correspondence to the otherwise traditional old Germanic rune names . It therefore seems certain that the entire runic alphabet was present as an ideal starting point in the conception of the script. Only the letter names eze, thyth, laaz, quertra, uuaer , possibly also aza , are new creations.

table

In the following table, the Gothic reconstructed according to the run names and the traditional name forms are entered in the first place, and the traditional name forms in the second place.

Letter Unicode value Name
(reconstructed) 		Name
(handed down) 		Meaning of the name Numerical value
? U + 10330 a ans? * ahsa? aza Ase? Axis? 1
? U + 10331 b * baírkan bercna Birch rice 2
? U + 10332 G giba geuua Gift 3
? U + 10333 d dags daaz Day 4th
? U + 10334 e * aíƕs eyz Horse (?) 5
? U + 10335 q * qaírþra (qairthra) cross Bait (?) 6th
? U + 10336 z ? ezec ? 7th
? U + 10337 H * hagl (s) haal hail 8th
? U + 10338 þ, th þiuþ (thiuth) thyth Good 9
? U + 10339 i *ice iiz ice 10
?̈ U + 10339 U + 0308 i (ï) 10
? U + 1033A k * kusma chozma Ulcer (?) 20th
? U + 1033B l * lagus laaz Laugh, water 30th
? U + 1033C m manna manna Man, man 40
? U + 1033D n nauþs (nauths) noicz Need 50
? U + 1033E j jer gaar year 60
? U + 1033F u * urus uraz Ur, aurochs 70
? U + 10340 p * paírþra (pairthra) pertra ? 80
? U + 10341 90
? U + 10342 r * raida reda Dare (?) 100
? U + 10343 s sauil sugil Sun 200
? U + 10344 t * part tyz got. god Tyr 300
? U + 10345 w winja? * wunja? uuinne Pasture (bliss?) 400
? U + 10346 f faíhu fe Cattle, movable property 500
? U + 10347 x * iggws enguz man 600
? U + 10348 ƕ, hv, hw * ƕaír (hvair) uuaer boiler 700
? U + 10349 O * oþal (othal) utal Inheritance 800
? U + 1034A 900

Hints:

  • The symbol * marks those name words that have not been handed down anywhere else in the Gothic texts. Their sound shape has been reconstructed according to the laws of language history, but remains in many cases uncertain.
  • The symbol for w also stood for the second part of diphthongs , called y in Greek . So Paul ( ancient Greek Παῦλος Paũlos ) was rendered as Pawlos in Gothic.

Unicode

The Gothic alphabet is coded in Unicode under U + 10330 to U + 1034F . Because older software often assumes that all Unicode code points can be expressed as 16-bit numbers (less than U + 10000), problems with the representation of the Gothic alphabet can arise.

Remarks

  1. ↑ On the Gothic alphabet see also Fausto Cercignani , The Elaboration of the Gothic Alphabet and Orthography , in “Indogermanische Forschungen”, 93, 1988, pp. 168–185.
  2. ^ Wilhelm Streitberg: Gotisches Elementarbuch (=  Germanische Bibliothek 1st series: Grammatiken . Second volume: Gotisches Elementarbuch). 5th and 6th edition. Carl Winter's, Heidelberg 1920, The Gothic Script. [§18], ​​The I at the beginning of the syllable, p. 42 ( online at Project Wulfila, University of Antwerp, Belgium ).

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Gothic alphabet  - collection of images, videos, and audio files