Gothic language

Gothic
The Codex Argenteus, a 6th-century Gothic manuscript
Region	Oium, Dacia, Pannonia, Dalmatia, Italy, Gallia Narbonensis, Gallia Aquitania, Hispania, Crimea, North Caucasus
Era	attested 3rd–10th century; related dialects survived until 18th century in Crimea
Language family	Indo-European Germanic East Germanic Gothic
Dialects	Crimean Gothic † Gepidian? † Ostrogothic † Visigothic †
Writing system	Gothic alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-2	Template:ISO 639-2
ISO 639-3	got
Glottolog	goth1244
ELP	Template:Endangered Languages Project
Linguasphere	Template:Infobox language/lingualist
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File:Germanic tribes (750BC-1AD).png

Expansion of early Germanic tribes into previously mostly Celtic Central Europe:

   Settlements before 750 BC

   New settlements by 500 BC

   New settlements by 250 BC

   New settlements by AD 1

Some sources also give a date of 750 BC for the earliest expansion out of southern Scandinavia and northern Germany along the North Sea coast towards the mouth of the Rhine.

Gothic is an extinct East Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from the Codex Argenteus, a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic language with a sizeable text corpus.

It is the earliest Germanic language that is attested in any sizable texts, but it lacks any modern descendants. The oldest documents in Gothic date back to the fourth century. The language was in decline by the mid-sixth century, partly because of the military defeat of the Goths at the hands of the Franks, the elimination of the Goths in Italy, and geographic isolation (in Spain, the Gothic language lost its last and probably already declining function as a church language when the Visigoths converted from Arianism to Nicene Christianity in 589). The language survived as a domestic language in the Iberian Peninsula (modern-day Spain and Portugal) as late as the eighth century. Gothic-seeming terms are found in manuscripts subsequent to this date, but these may or may not belong to the same language.

A language known as Crimean Gothic survived in isolated mountain regions in Crimea as late as the second half of the 18th century. Lacking certain sound changes characteristic of Gothic, however, Crimean Gothic cannot be a lineal descendant of the language attested in the Codex Argenteus.

The existence of such early attested texts makes Gothic a language of considerable interest in comparative linguistics.

History and evidence

File:Ambrosianus.jpg

A leaf of the Codex Ambrosianus B

Only a few documents in Gothic have survived – not enough for a complete reconstruction of the language. Most Gothic-language sources are translations or glosses of other languages (namely, Greek), so foreign linguistic elements most certainly influenced the texts. These are the primary sources:

• The largest body of surviving documentation consists of various codices, mostly from the sixth century, copying the Bible translation that was commissioned by the Arian bishop Ulfilas (Wulfila, 311–382), leader of a community of Visigothic Christians in the Roman province of Moesia (modern-day Serbia, Bulgaria/Romania). He commissioned a translation into the Gothic language of the Greek Bible, of which translation roughly three-quarters of the New Testament and some fragments of the Old Testament have survived. The extant translated texts, produced by several scholars, are collected in the following codices and in one inscription:
  • Codex Argenteus (Uppsala), including the Speyer fragment: 188 leaves. The best-preserved Gothic manuscript, dating from the sixth century, it was preserved and transmitted by northern Ostrogoths in modern-day Italy. It contains a large portion of the four gospels. Since it is a translation from Greek, the language of the Codex Argenteus is replete with borrowed Greek words and Greek usages. The syntax in particular is often copied directly from the Greek.
  • Codex Ambrosianus (Milan) and the Codex Taurinensis (Turin): Five parts, totaling 193 leaves. It contains scattered passages from the New Testament (including parts of the gospels and the Epistles), from the Old Testament (Nehemiah), and some commentaries known as Skeireins. The text likely had been somewhat modified by copyists.
  • Codex Gissensis (Gießen): One leaf with fragments of Luke 23–24 (apparently a Gothic-Latin diglot) was found in an excavation in Arsinoë in Egypt in 1907 and was destroyed by water damage in 1945, after copies had already been made by researchers.
  • Codex Carolinus (Wolfenbüttel): Four leaves, fragments of Romans 11–15 (a Gothic-Latin diglot).
  • Codex Vaticanus Latinus 5750 (Vatican City): Three leaves, pages 57–58, 59–60, and 61–62 of the Skeireins. This is a fragment of Codex Ambrosianus E.
  • Gothica Bononiensia (also known as the Codex Bononiensis or "Bologna fragment"), a palimpsest fragment, discovered in 2009, of two folios with what appears to be a sermon, containing besides non-biblical text a number of direct Bible quotes and allusions, both from previously attested parts of the Gothic Bible (the text is clearly taken from Ulfilas's translation) and from previously unattested ones (e.g., Psalms, Genesis).
  • Fragmenta Pannonica (also known as the Hács-Béndekpuszta fragments or Tabella Hungarica), which consist of fragments of a 1 mm thick lead plate with remnants of verses from the Gospels.
  • The Mangup Graffiti: five inscriptions written in the Gothic alphabet discovered in 2015 from the basilica church of Mangup, Crimea. The graffiti all date from the mid-9th century, making this perhaps the youngest attestation of the Gothic alphabet (being seemingly slightly more recent than the two Carolingian alphabets listed below). The five texts include a quotation from the otherwise unattested Psalm 76 and some prayers; the language is not noticeably different from Wulfila's and only contains words known from other parts of the Gothic Bible.
• A scattering of minor fragments: two deeds (the Naples and Arezzo deeds, on papyri), two Carolingian-era Gothic alphabets recorded in otherwise non-Gothic manuscripts (respectively the late eighth to early ninth century Gothica Vindobonensia and the ninth-century Gothica Parisina), a calendar (in the Codex Ambrosianus A), glosses found in a number of manuscripts and a few runic inscriptions (between three and 13) that are known or suspected to be Gothic: some scholars believe that these inscriptions are not at all Gothic. Krause thought that several names in an Indian inscription were possibly Gothic.

Reports of the discovery of other parts of Ulfilas's Bible have not been substantiated. Heinrich May in 1968 claimed to have found in England twelve leaves of a palimpsest containing parts of the Gospel of Matthew.

Only fragments of the Gothic translation of the Bible have been preserved. The translation was apparently done in the Balkans region by people in close contact with Greek Christian culture. The Gothic Bible was apparently used by the Visigoths in Occitania until the loss of Visigothic Occitania at the start of the 6th century, in Visigothic Iberia until about 700, and perhaps for a time in Italy, the Balkans, and Ukraine until at least the mid-9th century. During the extermination of Arianism, Trinitarian Christians probably overwrote many texts in Gothic as palimpsests, or, alternatively, collected and burned Gothic documents. Apart from biblical texts, the only substantial Gothic document that still exists – and the only lengthy text known to have been composed originally in the Gothic language – is the Skeireins, a few pages of commentary on the Gospel of John.

Very few medieval secondary sources make reference to the Gothic language after about 800. In De incrementis ecclesiae Christianae (840–842), Walafrid Strabo, a Frankish monk who lived in Swabia, writes of a group of monks who reported that even then certain peoples in Scythia (Dobruja), especially around Tomis, spoke a ('Germanic language'), the language of the Gothic translation of the Bible, and that they used such a liturgy.

Many writers of the medieval texts that mention the Goths used the word Goths to mean any Germanic people in eastern Europe (such as the Varangians), many of whom certainly did not use the Gothic language as known from the Gothic Bible. Some writers even referred to Slavic-speaking people as "Goths". However, it is clear from Ulfilas's translation that the Gothic language belongs with the Germanic language group, not with Slavic.

Generally, the term "Gothic language" refers to the language of Ulfilas, but the attestations themselves date largely from the 6th century, long after Ulfilas had died.

Alphabet and transliteration

A few Gothic runic inscriptions were found across Europe, but due to early Christianization of the Goths, the runic writing was quickly replaced by the newly invented Gothic alphabet.

Ulfilas's Gothic, as well as that of the Skeireins and various other manuscripts, was written using an alphabet that was most likely invented by Ulfilas himself for his translation. Some scholars (such as Braune) claim that it was derived from the Greek alphabet only, while others maintain that there are some Gothic letters of runic or Latin origin.

Gothic words can be transliterated into the Latin script. Transliteration mirrors the conventions of the native alphabet, such as writing long as . There are two variant transliteration systems: a "raw" one that directly represents the original Gothic script and a "normalized" one that adds diacritics (macrons and acute accents) to certain vowels to clarify the pronunciation or, in certain cases, to indicate the Proto-Germanic origin of the vowel in question. The latter system is usually used in the academic literature.

Vowels

The following table shows the correspondence between spelling and sound for vowels:

Gothic letter or digraph	Roman equivalent	"Normalised" transliteration	Sound	Normal environment of occurrence (in native words)	Paradigmatically alternating sound in other environments	Proto-Germanic origin
	a			Anywhere	—
				Before ,	Does not occur	(before )
	ai			Before , ,		,
				Before vowels		,
				Not before vowels
	au			Before , ,
				Before vowels
				Not before vowels
	e			Not before vowels		,
	ei			Everywhere	—	; (before )
	i			Everywhere except before , ,		,
	iu			Not before vowels		(and its allophone )
	o			Not before vowels
	u			Everywhere except before , ,
				Everywhere	—	; (before )

Notes:

• The Gothic letters , , transliterated , , were used only for long close-mid vowels (). The digraphs , , transliterated , , were used for open-mid vowels (short and long ).
• The "normal environment of occurrence" refers to native words. In foreign words, these environments are often greatly disturbed. For example, the short sounds and alternate in native words in a nearly allophonic way, with occurring in native words only before the consonants , , while occurs everywhere else (nevertheless, there are a few exceptions such as before in , consistently in the reduplicating syllable of certain past-tense verbs regardless of the following consonant, which indicate that these sounds had become phonemicized). In foreign borrowings, however, and occur freely in all environments, reflecting the corresponding vowel quality in the source language.
• Paradigmatic alterations can occur either intra-paradigm (between two different forms within a specific paradigm) or cross-paradigm (between the same form in two different paradigms of the same class). Examples of intra-paradigm alternation are 'district (nom.)' vs. 'district (gen.)'; 'maiden (nom.)' vs. 'maiden (gen.)'; 'maiden (nom.)' vs. 'maiden (gen.)'; 'deed (nom.)' vs. 'deed (gen.)'; 'corpse (nom.)' vs. 'corpses (nom.)'; ?? 'tree (nom.)' vs. 'tree (gen.)'; 'to do' vs. 'I/he did'; 'to judge' vs. 'I/he judged'. Examples of cross-paradigm alternation are Class IV verbs 'to come' vs. 'to carry, to bear', '(having) come' vs. '(having) carried'; Class VIIb verbs 'to let' vs. 'to sow' (note similar preterites 'I/he let', 'I/he sowed'). A combination of intra- and cross-paradigm alternation occurs in Class V 'to hasten' vs. 'I/he hastened' (expected *, compare 'to come', 'I/he came').
• The carefully maintained alternations between Template:Tlit and Template:Tlit suggest that may have been something other than . Various possibilities have been suggested (for example, high central or high back unrounded vowels, such as ); under these theories, the spelling of is derived from the fact that the sound alternates with Template:Tlit before a vowel, based on the similar alternations Template:Tlit and Template:Tlit. The most common theory, however, simply posits as the pronunciation of .

The following diacritics, not used in the original writing system, are sometimes added to vowel letters in transliterations:

• The acute accent Template:Char may be added to the digraphs Template:Tlit, Template:Tlit (written , in Ufilas's alphabet) to indicate their etymological origin in Common Germanic, following a system devised by Jacob Grimm:
  • is used for the sound derived from the Proto-Germanic short vowels *e and *i before and .
  • is used for the sound derived from the Proto-Germanic diphthong *ai. Some scholars assume this sound remained a diphthong in Gothic. However, Ulfilas was highly consistent in other spelling inventions, which makes it unlikely that he assigned two different sounds to the same digraph. Furthermore, he consistently used the digraph to represent Greek , which was then certainly a monophthong. A monophthongal value is accepted by Eduard Prokosch in his influential A Common Germanic Grammar. It had earlier been accepted by Joseph Wright but only in an appendix to his Grammar of the Gothic Language.
  • is used for the sound derived from the Common Germanic long vowel *ē before a vowel.
  • is used for the sound derived from Common Germanic diphthong *au. It cannot be related to a Greek digraph, since then represented a sequence of a vowel and a spirant (fricative) consonant, which Ulfilas transcribed as in representing Greek words. Nevertheless, the argument based on simplicity is accepted by some influential scholars.
• The macron Template:Char may be added to the letters Template:Tlit and Template:Tlit (written , in Ufilas's alphabet) to represent originally long vowels Template:Tlit and Template:Tlit . (Long is transcribed as Template:Tlit, following the spelling used in the native alphabet). Macrons are often also used in the case of Template:Tlit and Template:Tlit; however, they are sometimes omitted since these vowels are always long. Long Template:Tlit occurs only before the consonants , and represents Proto-Germanic nasalized < earlier ; non-nasal did not occur in Proto-Germanic. It is possible that the Gothic vowel still preserved the nasalization, or else that the nasalization was lost but the length distinction kept, as has happened with Template:Langx. Non-nasal and occurred in Proto-Germanic, however, and so long Template:Tlit Template:Tlit occur in all contexts. Before and , long Template:Tlit and Template:Tlit could stem from either non-nasal or nasal long vowels in Proto-Germanic; it is possible that the nasalization was still preserved in Gothic but not written.

Consonants

The following table shows the correspondence between spelling and sound for consonants:

Gothic Letter	Roman	Sound (phoneme)	Sound (allophone)	Environment of occurrence	Paradigmatically alternating sound, in other environments	Proto-Germanic origin
	⟨b⟩	/b/	[b]	Word-initially; after a consonant	–
			[β]	After a vowel, before a voiced sound	(after a vowel, before an unvoiced sound)
	⟨d⟩	/d/	[d]	Word-initially; after a consonant	–
			[ð]	After a vowel, before a voiced sound	(after a vowel, before an unvoiced sound)
	⟨f⟩	/ɸ/	[ɸ]	Everywhere except before a voiced consonant	(Verner alternant)	;
	⟨g⟩	/ɡ/	[ɡ]	Word-initially; after a consonant	–
			[ɣ]	After a vowel, before a voiced sound	(after a vowel, not before a voiced sound)
			[x]	After a vowel, not before a voiced sound	(after a vowel, before a voiced sound)
		/n/	[ŋ]	Before Template:Tlit , Template:Tlit , Template:Tlit (such usage influenced by Greek, compare gamma)	–
	⟨gw⟩	/ɡʷ/	[ɡʷ]	After Template:Tlit	–
	⟨h⟩	/h/	[h]	Everywhere except before a voiced consonant	(Verner alternant)
	⟨ƕ⟩	/hʷ/	[hʷ]	Everywhere except before a voiced consonant	–
	⟨j⟩	/j/	[j]	Everywhere	–
	⟨k⟩	/k/	[k]	Everywhere except before a voiced consonant	–
	⟨l⟩	/l/	[l]	Everywhere	–
	⟨m⟩	/m/	[m]	Everywhere	–
	⟨n⟩	/n/	[n]	Everywhere	–
	⟨p⟩	/p/	[p]	Everywhere except before a voiced consonant	–
	⟨q⟩	/kʷ/	[kʷ]	Everywhere except before a voiced consonant	–
	⟨r⟩	/r/	[r]	Everywhere	–
	⟨s⟩	/s/	[s]	Everywhere except before a voiced consonant		;
	⟨t⟩	/t/	[t]	Everywhere except before a voiced consonant	–
	⟨þ⟩	/θ/	[θ]	Everywhere except before a voiced consonant	(Verner alternant)	;
	⟨w⟩	/w/	[w]	Everywhere	–
	⟨z⟩	/z/	[z]	After a vowel, before a voiced sound

Notes:

• is written in the native alphabet with the single letter . It is transliterated by the symbol ⟨ƕ⟩, which is used only in transliterating Gothic.
• is written in the native alphabet with the single letter . It is transliterated as ⟨q⟩, with no following Template:Tlit.
• , however, is written with two letters in the native alphabet, , and hence is transliterated . The lack of a single letter to represent this sound may result from its restricted distribution (only after ) and its rarity.
• is transliterated as .
• Although the velar nasal functions as an allophone of before and , it is written in the native alphabet as (), following the usage of the corresponding Greek letter gamma. The transliteration of as leads to ambiguity in the context of the sequence ⟨ggw⟩: for example, 'song' but 'faithful' (compare English 'true').

Phonology

Gothic phonology is reconstructed based on data such as comparison with other Germanic languages, analysis of the transcription of Greek and non-Greek terms and names in Gothic, and analysis of spelling alternations and variations in Gothic texts.

Vowels

Short vowels Front Back Close Close-mid Open-mid Open

Long vowels Front Back Close Close-mid Open-mid Open

• , and can be either long or short. Gothic writing distinguishes between long and short vowels only for by writing ⟨i⟩ for the short form and ⟨ei⟩ for the long (a digraph or false diphthong), in an imitation of Greek usage ( = ). Single vowels are sometimes long where a historically present nasal consonant has been dropped in front of an (a case of compensatory lengthening). Thus, the preterite of the verb 'to bring' (Dutch , German ) becomes (English brought, Dutch , German ), from Proto-Germanic *branhtē. In detailed transliteration, when the intent is more phonetic transcription, length is noted by a macron (or failing that, often a circumflex): , . This is the only context in which appears natively whereas , like , is found often enough in other contexts: 'useful' (Dutch , German , Icelandic 'use').
• and are long close-mid vowels. They are written as ⟨e⟩ and ⟨o⟩: 'near' (English nigh, Dutch , German ); 'to feed'.
• and are short open-mid vowels. They are noted using the digraphs Template:Tlit and Template:Tlit: 'ten' (Dutch , German , Icelandic ), 'daughter' (Dutch , German , Icelandic ). In transliterating Gothic, accents are placed on the second vowel of these digraphs Template:Tlit and Template:Tlit to distinguish them from the original diphthongs Template:Tlit and Template:Tlit: , . In most cases short and are allophones of before . Furthermore, the reduplication syllable of the reduplicating preterites has Template:Tlit as well, which was probably pronounced as a short . Finally, short and occur in loan words from Greek and Latin ( = 'bishop', = 'lection', = ).
• The Germanic diphthongs and appear as digraphs written ⟨ai⟩ and ⟨au⟩ in Gothic. Researchers have disagreed over whether they were still pronounced as diphthongs and in Ulfilas's time (4th century) or had become long open-mid vowels: and : 'one' (German , Icelandic ), 'eye' (German , Icelandic ). It is most likely that the latter view is correct, as it is indisputable that the digraphs ⟨ai⟩ and ⟨au⟩ represent the sounds and in some circumstances (see below), and ⟨aj⟩ and ⟨aw⟩ were available to unambiguously represent the sounds and . The digraph ⟨aw⟩ is in fact used to represent in foreign words (such as 'Paul'), and alternations between ⟨ai⟩/⟨aj⟩ and ⟨au⟩/⟨aw⟩ are scrupulously maintained in paradigms where both variants occur (e.g. 'to do' vs. past tense 'did'). Evidence from transcriptions of Gothic names into Latin suggests that the sound change had occurred very recently when Gothic spelling was standardized: Gothic names with Germanic Template:Tlit are rendered with in Latin until the 4th century and later on ( > ). The digraphs ⟨ai⟩ and ⟨au⟩ are normally written with an accent on the first vowel (Template:Tlit) when they correspond to Proto-Germanic and .
• Long and also occur as allophones of and respectively before a following vowel: 'to blow' (Dutch , German ), 'to build' (Dutch , German ; Icelandic 'to live, reside'), also in Greek words 'Troad' (Gk. ). In detailed transcription these are notated Template:Tlit.
• The existence of a vowel in Gothic is unclear. It is derived from the use of () to transcribe Greek () or the diphthong (), both of which were pronounced in the Greek of the time. is otherwise used to denote the consonant ). It may have been pronounced .
• is usually reconstructed as a falling diphthong (: 'deep' (Dutch , German , Icelandic ), though this has been disputed (see alphabet and transliteration section above).
• Greek diphthongs: In Ulfilas's era, all the diphthongs of Classical Greek had become simple vowels in speech (monophthongization), except for () and (), which were probably pronounced and (they evolved into and in Modern Greek.) In words borrowed from Greek, and are transcribed in extant Gothic manuscripts as , probably pronounced : 'Paul' (Gk. ), 'evangelist' (Gk. , via the Latin ).
• All vowels (including diphthongs) can be followed by a , which was likely pronounced as the second element of a diphthong with roughly the sound of . It seems likely that this is more of an instance of phonetic juxtaposition than of true diphthongs (such as, for example, the sound in the French word 'straw', which is not the diphthong but rather a vowel followed by an approximant): 'olive oil' ( < Latin ), 'snow', 'tired' (English lazy).

Consonants

	Labial		Coronal				Palatal		Velar		Labiovelar		Glottal
Nasal	Template:Tlit		Template:Tlit						Template:Tlit [ŋ]
Stop	Template:Tlit	Template:Tlit [b]~[β]	Template:Tlit	Template:Tlit [d]~[ð]			Template:Tlit ? (or )		Template:Tlit	Template:Tlit [ɡ]~[ɣ](~[x])	Template:Tlit	Template:Tlit
Fricative	Template:Tlit		Template:Tlit		Template:Tlit	Template:Tlit							Template:Tlit
Approximant			Template:Tlit				Template:Tlit				Template:Tlit	Template:Tlit
Trill			Template:Tlit

Gothic distinguished single or short consonants from long or geminated consonants: the latter were written double, as in 'dad', 'to know' (Dutch , German , Icelandic ). Gothic is rich in fricative consonants (although many of them may have been approximants; it is hard to separate the two) originating from Grimm's law and Verner's law. Gothic retained Proto-Germanic *z as , unlike North Germanic languages and West Germanic languages, which turned this sound into through rhotacization. Voiced fricative consonants were devoiced at the ends of words.

Stops

• The voiceless stops , and are regularly noted by ⟨p⟩, ⟨t⟩ and ⟨k⟩ respectively: 'Easter' (from the Greek ), 'tongue', 'calf'.
• The letter ⟨q⟩ probably represented a voiceless labiovelar stop, , comparable to Latin ⟨qu⟩: 'to come'. In later Germanic languages, this phoneme has become either a consonant cluster of a voiceless velar stop + a labio-velar approximant (English qu) or a simple voiceless velar stop (English c, k). Proto-Germanic replaced with (a continuation of the Proto-Indo-European Boukólos rule) but this surface filter was no longer active by the time Ulfilas first wrote the Codex Argenteus. The sequence could occur in Gothic as the result of analogy: for example, the Gothic verb (from Proto-Germanic *kwemaną ) had the past participle , rather than * , which would be the regular outcome of the Proto-Germanic form *kumanaz .
• The voiced stops , and are noted by the letters ⟨b⟩, ⟨d⟩ and ⟨g⟩. They occurred after a nasal (as in other Germanic languages) and apparently also after other consonants: 'inheritance', 'treasure'. (This is inferred from their behavior at the end of a word, where they do not change into voiceless fricatives, unlike when they occur after a vowel.) It is generally assumed that Template:Tlit were also pronounced as stops in word-initial position or when geminate. However, Template:Harvcoltxt gives word-initial Template:Tlit as stops, but word-initial Template:Tlit as a voiced fricative, and assumes geminate Template:Tlit had merged with the identically spelled . Geminate Template:Tlit did not occur in native Gothic words outside of the sequences Template:Tlit and Template:Tlit, but they could be found in borrowed words (such as 'Thaddaeus' or 'sabbath').
• There was probably also a voiced labiovelar stop, , which was written with the digraph ⟨gw⟩. It occurred after a nasal, e.g. 'song', or long as a regular outcome of Germanic *ww: 'faithful' (English true, German , Icelandic ). The existence of a long separate from , however, is not universally accepted.
• The letters ⟨ddj⟩ represented the regular outcome of Germanic *jj. Its pronunciation has been variously proposed to be , or .

Fricatives

• and are usually written ⟨s⟩ and ⟨z⟩. The latter corresponds to Germanic *z (which has rhotacised r or silent in the other Germanic languages); at the end of a word, it is regularly devoiced to Template:Tlit: e.g. 'six', 'greater' (English more, Dutch , German , Icelandic ) versus 'more, rather'.
• and , written ⟨f⟩ and ⟨þ⟩, are voiceless bilabial and voiceless dental fricatives respectively. It is likely that the relatively unstable sound became . The cluster became in some words but not others: 'flight' from Germanic *flugiz; 'flee' from Germanic *fleuhaną (but see 'river', 'braid'). This sound change is unique among Germanic languages.
• , and are allophones of , and respectively, and are not distinguished from them in writing. The voiced fricative allophones were used when came between vowels, as in 'to have', 'people', 'eye'. When preceded by a vowel and followed by a voiceless consonant or by the end of a word, were devoiced to and spelled as ⟨f⟩, ⟨þ⟩: e.g. 'loaf' but genitive 'of a loaf'; 'give (imperative)' but infinitive 'to give'; 'with' (Old English mid, Old Norse ). The velar consonant was probably also phonetically devoiced in the same position, becoming the voiceless velar fricative , but this is less certain; it remained spelled as Template:Tlit and apparently did not merge with any other phoneme. It is possible that developed phonetically to labiodental .
• (from Proto-Germanic *h ) is written as ⟨h⟩: 'to have'. It could occur in the coda of syllables (e.g. 'and' (Dutch, German, Scandinavian 'yes') and unlike and , it did not merge at the end of a word or before a voiceless consonant with its etymologically paired voiced consonant: remained written as ⟨g⟩, e.g. 'day' (German ). There are conflicting interpretations of what this data means in terms of phonetics. Some linguists interpret it as a sign that failed to be devoiced in this context, but given that the other voiced fricatives were subject to devoicing in this position, argues it is more likely that was pronounced with devoicing as and coda was pronounced as something other than a voiceless velar fricative. Two phonetic values that have been proposed for syllable-final are uvular and glottal .
• In some borrowed Greek words there is a special letter ⟨x⟩, which represents the Greek letter (): 'Christ' (Gk. ).
• ⟨ƕ⟩ (also transcribed Template:Tlit) is the labiovelar equivalent of , derived from Proto-Indo-European *kʷ. It was probably pronounced (a voiceless ), as wh is pronounced in certain dialects of English and in Scots: 'when', 'where', 'white'.

Sonorants

• Gothic has three nasal consonants, . The first two are phonemes, and ; the third, , is an allophone found only in complementary distribution with the other two.
  • The bilabial nasal , transcribed ⟨m⟩, can be found in any position in a syllable: e.g. 'man', 'tree'.
  • The coronal nasal , transcribed ⟨n⟩, can be found in any position in a syllable. It assimilates to the place of articulation of an immediately following stop consonant: before a bilabial consonant, it becomes and before a velar stop, it becomes . Thus, clusters like or are not possible.
  • The velar nasal , transcribed ⟨g⟩, is not a phoneme and cannot appear freely in Gothic. It occurs only before a velar stop as the result of nasal place assimilation, and so is in complementary distribution with and . Following Greek conventions, it is normally written as Template:Tlit (sometimes Template:Tlit): 'to think', 'to sink' ~ 'thinks'. The cluster Template:Tlit may have denoted two different spoken sounds and (see above).
• is transliterated as ⟨w⟩ before a vowel: 'we', 'two' (German ).
• is written as ⟨j⟩: 'year', 'strife'.
• and occur as in other European languages: (possibly , or ) 'long', 'hour' (English meal, Dutch , German , Icelandic ). The exact pronunciation of is unknown, but it is usually assumed to be a trill or a flap ): 'right', 'after'.
• , , and may occur either between two other consonants of lower sonority or word-finally after a consonant of lower sonority. It is probable that the sounds are pronounced partly or completely as syllabic consonants in such circumstances (as in English "bottle" or "bottom"): or 'hair' (English tail, Icelandic ), or 'gift', or 'sign' (English token, Dutch , German , Icelandic ) and or 'tear (as in crying)'.

Accentuation and intonation

Accentuation in Gothic can be reconstructed through phonetic comparison, Grimm's law, and Verner's law. Gothic used a stress accent rather than the pitch accent of Proto-Indo-European. This is indicated by the shortening of long vowels and to [a] and the loss of short vowels and in unstressed final syllables.

Just as in other Germanic languages, the free moving Proto-Indo-European accent was replaced with one fixed on the first syllable of simple words. Accents do not shift when words are inflected. In most compound words, the location of the stress depends on the type of compound:

• In compounds in which the second word is a noun, the accent is on the first syllable of the first word of the compound.
• In compounds in which the second word is a verb, the accent falls on the first syllable of the verbal component. Elements prefixed to verbs are otherwise unstressed except in the context of separable words (words that can be broken in two parts and separated in regular usage such as separable verbs in German and Dutch). In those cases, the prefix is stressed.

For example, with comparable words from modern Germanic languages:

• Non-compound words: 'border, borderlands' (English march, Dutch ); 'after'; 'pray' (Dutch , German , Icelandic , English bid).
• Compound words:
  • Noun first element: 'godless'.
  • Verb second element: 'believe' (Dutch , German < Old High German by syncope of the unaccented i).

Grammar

Morphology

Nouns and adjectives

Gothic preserves many archaic Indo-European features that are not always present in modern Germanic languages, in particular the rich Indo-European declension system. Gothic had nominative, accusative, genitive and dative cases, as well as vestiges of a vocative case that was sometimes identical to the nominative and sometimes to the accusative. The three genders of Indo-European were all present. Nouns and adjectives were inflected according to one of two grammatical numbers: the singular and the plural.

Nouns can be divided into numerous declensions according to the form of the stem: a, ō, i, u, an, ōn, ein, r, etc. Adjectives have two variants, indefinite and definite (sometimes indeterminate and determinate), with definite adjectives normally used in combination with the definite determiners (such as the definite article ) while indefinite adjectives are used in other circumstances. Indefinite adjectives generally use a combination of a-stem and ō-stem endings, and definite adjectives use a combination of an-stem and ōn-stem endings. The concept of "strong" and "weak" declensions that is prevalent in the grammar of many other Germanic languages is less significant in Gothic because of its conservative nature: the so-called "weak" declensions (those ending in n) are, in fact, no weaker in Gothic (in terms of having fewer endings) than the "strong" declensions (those ending in a vowel), and the "strong" declensions do not form a coherent class that can be clearly distinguished from the "weak" declensions.

Although descriptive adjectives in Gothic (as well as superlatives ending in ) and the past participle may take both definite and indefinite forms, some adjectival words are restricted to one variant. Some pronouns take only definite forms: for example, 'same', adjectives like ('constantly', from the root , 'time'; compare to the English "while"), comparative adjective and present participles. Others, such as 'some', take only the indefinite forms.

The table below displays the declension of the Gothic adjective 'blind', compared with the an-stem noun 'man, human' and the a-stem noun 'day':

Number	Case	Definite/an-stem					Indefinite/a-stem
		Noun	Adjective				Noun	Adjective
			root	masc.	neut.	fem.		root	masc.	neut.	fem.
Singular	nom.	guma	blind-	-a	-o		dags	blind-	-s	— / -ata	-a
	acc.	guman		-an	-o	-on	dag		-ana
	dat.	gumin		-in			daga		-amma		-ái
	gen.	gumins		-ins		-ons	dagis		-is		áizos
Plural	nom.	gumans		-ans	-ona		dagos		-ái	-a	-os
	acc.						dagans		-ans
	dat.	gumam		-am		-om	dagam		-áim
	gen.	gumane		-ane		-ono	dage		-áize		-áizo

This table is, of course, not exhaustive as there are secondary inflexions of various sorts not described here. An exhaustive table of only the types of endings that Gothic took is presented below.

• vowel declensions:
  • roots ending in -a, -ja, -wa (masculine and neuter): equivalent to the Latin and Greek second declension in ‑us / ‑ī and ‑ος / ‑ου;
  • roots ending in -ō, -jō and -wō (feminine): equivalent to the Latin and Greek first declension in ‑a / ‑ae and ‑α / ‑ας (‑η / ‑ης);
  • roots ending in -i (masculine and feminine): equivalent to the Latin and Greek third declension in ‑is / ‑is (abl. sg. ‑ī, gen. pl. -ium) and ‑ις / ‑εως;
  • roots ending in -u (all three genders): equivalent to the Latin fourth declension in ‑us / ‑ūs and the Greek third declension in ‑υς / ‑εως;
• n-stem declensions, equivalent to the Latin and Greek third declension in ‑ō / ‑inis/ōnis and ‑ων / ‑ονος or ‑ην / ‑ενος:
  • roots ending in -an, -jan, -wan (masculine);
  • roots ending in -ōn and -ein (feminine);
  • roots ending in -n (neuter): equivalent to the Latin and Greek third declension in ‑men / ‑minis and ‑μα / ‑ματος;
• minor declensions: roots ending in -r, -nd and vestigial endings in other consonants, equivalent to other third declensions in Greek and Latin.

Gothic adjectives follow noun declensions closely; they take same types of inflection.

Pronouns

Gothic inherited the full set of Indo-European pronouns: personal pronouns (including reflexive pronouns for each of the three grammatical persons), possessive pronouns, both simple and compound demonstratives, relative pronouns, interrogatives and indefinite pronouns. Each follows a particular pattern of inflection (partially mirroring the noun declension), much like other Indo-European languages. One particularly noteworthy characteristic is the preservation of the dual number, referring to two people or things; the plural was used only for quantities greater than two. Thus, "the two of us" and "we" for numbers greater than two were expressed as and respectively. While Proto-Indo-European used the dual for all grammatical categories that took a number (as did Classical Greek and Sanskrit), most Old Germanic languages are unusual in that they preserved it only for pronouns. Gothic preserves an older system with dual marking on both pronouns and verbs (but not nouns or adjectives).

The simple demonstrative pronoun (neuter: , feminine: , from the Indo-European root *so, *seh₂, *tod; cognate to the Greek article ὁ, ἡ, τό and the Latin istud) can be used as an article, allowing constructions of the type definite article + weak adjective + noun.

The interrogative pronouns begin with , which derives from the Proto-Indo-European consonant *kʷ that was present at the beginning of all interrogatives in proto-Indo-European, cognate with the wh- at the beginning of many English interrogative, which, as in Gothic, are pronounced with in some dialects. The same etymology is present in the interrogatives of many other Indo-European languages: w- in German, hv- in Danish, the Latin qu- (which persists in modern Romance languages), the Greek τ- or π-, the Slavic and Indic k- as well as many others.

Verbs

The bulk of Gothic verbs follow the type of Indo-European conjugation called 'thematic' because they insert a vowel derived from the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European phonemes *e or *o between roots and inflexional suffixes. The pattern is also present in Greek and Latin:

• Latin – leg-i-mus 'we read': root leg- + thematic vowel -i- (from *o) + suffix -mus.
• Greek – λύ-ο-μεν 'we untie': root λυ- + thematic vowel -ο- + suffix -μεν.
• Gothic – nim-a-m 'we take': root nim- + thematic vowel -a- (from *o) + suffix -m.

The other conjugation, called "athematic", in which suffixes are added directly to roots, exists only in unproductive vestigial forms in Gothic, just like in Latin. The most important such instance is the verb "to be", which is athematic in Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, and many other Indo-European languages.

Gothic verbs are, like nouns and adjectives, divided into strong verbs and weak verbs. Weak verbs are characterised by preterites formed by appending the suffixes or , parallel to past participles formed with / . Strong verbs form preterites by ablaut (the alternating of vowels in their root forms) or by reduplication (prefixing the root with the first consonant in the root plus ) but without adding a suffix in either case. This parallels the Greek and Sanskrit perfects. The dichotomy is still present in modern Germanic languages:

• weak verbs 'to have':
  • Gothic: haban, preterite: habáida, past participle: habáiþs;
  • English: (to) have, preterite: had, past participle: had;
  • German: haben, preterite: hatte, past participle: gehabt;
  • Icelandic: hafa, preterite: hafði, past participle: haft;
  • Dutch: hebben, preterite: had, past participle: gehad;
  • Swedish: ha(va), preterite: hade, supine: haft;
• strong verbs 'to give':
  • Gothic: infinitive: giban, preterite: gaf;
  • English: infinitive: (to) give, preterite: gave;
  • German: infinitive: geben, preterite: gab;
  • Icelandic: infinitive: gefa, preterite: gaf;
  • Dutch: infinitive: geven, preterite: gaf;
  • Swedish: infinitive: giva (ge), preterite: gav.

Verbal conjugation in Gothic have two grammatical voices: the active and the medial; three numbers: singular, dual (except in the third person) and plural; two tenses: present and preterite (derived from a former perfect); three grammatical moods: indicative, subjunctive (from an old optative form) and imperative as well as three kinds of nominal forms: a present infinitive, a present participle, and a past passive. Not all tenses and persons are represented in all moods and voices, as some conjugations use auxiliary forms.

Finally, there are forms called 'preterite-present': the old Indo-European perfect was reinterpreted as present tense. The Gothic word , from the Proto-Indo-European *woid-h₂e 'to see (pft.)', corresponds exactly to its Sanskrit cognate véda and in Greek to ϝοἶδα. Both etymologically should mean "I have seen" (in the perfect sense) but mean "I know" (in the preterite-present meaning). Latin follows the same rule with nōuī 'I have learned /I know'. The preterite-present verbs include 'to possess' and 'to know' among others.

Syntax

Word order

The word order of Gothic is fairly free as is typical of other inflected languages. The natural word order of Gothic is assumed to have been like that of the other old Germanic languages; however, nearly all extant Gothic texts are translations of Greek originals and have been heavily influenced by Greek syntax.

Sometimes what can be expressed in one word in the original Greek will require a verb and a complement in the Gothic translation; for example, διωχθήσονται ', they will be persecuted' is rendered:

wrakos	winnand	(2 Timothy 3:12)
persecution-pl-acc	suffer-3pl
"they will suffer persecution"

Likewise Gothic translations of Greek noun phrases may feature a verb and a complement. In both cases, the verb follows the complement, giving weight to the theory that basic word order in Gothic is object–verb. This aligns with what is known of other early Germanic languages.

However, this pattern is reversed in imperatives and negations:

waírþ	hráins	(Matthew 8:3, Mark 1:42, Luke 5:13)
become-imp	clean
"become clean!"

ni	nimiþ	arbi	(Galatians 4:30)
not	take-3sg	inheritance
"he shall not become heir"

And in a wh-question the verb directly follows the question word:

ƕa	skuli	þata	barn	waírþan	(Luke 1:66)
what	shall-3sg-opt	the-neut	child	become-inf
"What shall the child become?"

Clitics

Gothic has two clitic particles placed in the second position in a sentence, in accordance with Wackernagel's Law.

One such clitic particle is , indicating a yes–no question or an indirect question, like Latin -ne:

ni-u	taíhun	þái	gahráinidái	waúrþun?	(Luke 17:17)
not-q	ten	that-masc-pl	cleanse-pp-masc-pl	become-3pl-pst
"Were there not ten that were cleansed?"

ei	saíƕam	qimái-u	Helias	nasjan	ina	(Matthew 27:49)
that	see-1pl	come-3sg-opt-q	Elias	save-inf	he-acc
"that we see whether or not Elias will come to save him"

ab-u	þus	silbin	þu	þata	qiþis	(John 18:34)
of-q	you-dat	self-masc-dat-sg	you-nom	that-neut-acc-sg	say-2sg
"sayest thou this thing of thyself?"

The prepositional phrase without the clitic appears as : the clitic causes the reversion of originally voiced fricatives, unvoiced at the end of a word, to their voiced form; another such example is 'do you (pl.) want' from 'you (pl.) want'. If the first word has a preverb attached, the clitic actually splits the preverb from the verb: 'do you both believe...?' from 'you both believe'.

Another such clitic is 'and', appearing as after a vowel: 'and he wrote' from 'he wrote', 'arise and take!' from the imperative form 'take'. After or any indefinite besides 'some' and 'another', cannot be placed; in the latter category, this is only because indefinite determiner phrases cannot move to the front of a clause. Unlike, for example, Latin -que, can only join two or more main clauses. In all other cases, the word 'and' is used, which can also join main clauses.

More than one such clitics can occur in one word: 'and then he seized them (fem.)' from 'he seized' (notice again the voicing of ), 'whether he saw anything' from 'he saw'.

Comparison to other Germanic languages

For the most part, Gothic is known to be significantly closer to Proto-Germanic than any other Germanic language except for that of the (scantily attested) Ancient Nordic runic inscriptions, which has made it invaluable in the reconstruction of Proto-Germanic. In fact, Gothic tends to serve as the primary foundation for reconstructing Proto-Germanic. The reconstructed Proto-Germanic conflicts with Gothic only when there is clearly identifiable evidence from other branches that the Gothic form is a secondary development.

Distinctive features

Gothic fails to display a number of innovations shared by all Germanic languages attested later:

• It lacks Germanic umlaut.
• It lacks rhotacism.

The language also preserved many features that were mostly lost in other early Germanic languages:

• dual inflections on verbs,
• morphological passive voice for verbs,
• reduplication in the past tense of Class VII strong verbs,
• clitic conjunctions that appear in second position of a sentence in accordance with Wackernagel's Law, splitting verbs from pre-verbs.

Lack of umlaut

Most conspicuously, Gothic shows no sign of morphological umlaut. Gothic , pl. , can be contrasted with English foot–feet, Template:Langx–, Template:Langx–, Template:Langx–. These forms contain the characteristic change > (English), > (German), > (ON and Danish) due to i-umlaut; the Gothic form shows no such change.

Lack of rhotacism

Proto-Germanic *z remains in Gothic as or is devoiced to . In North and West Germanic, *z changes to r by rhotacism:

• Gothic , gen. sg. ≠
• Old English , gen. sg. 'wild animal' (Modern English deer).

Passive voice

Gothic retains a morphological passive voice inherited from Indo-European but unattested in all other Germanic languages except for the single fossilised form preserved in, for example, Old English hātte or Runic Norse (c. 400) haitē 'am called', derived from Proto-Germanic *haitaną 'to call, command'.

The morphological passive in North Germanic languages (Swedish gör 'does', görs 'is being done') originates from the Old Norse middle voice, which is an innovation not inherited from Indo-European.

Dual number

Unlike other Germanic languages, which retained dual numbering only in some pronoun forms, Gothic has dual forms both in pronouns and in verbs. Dual verb forms exist only in the first and second person and only in the active voice; in all other cases, the corresponding plural forms are used. In pronouns, Gothic has first and second person dual pronouns: Gothic and Old English wit, Old Norse vit 'we two' (thought to have been in fact derived from *wi-du literally 'we two').

Reduplication

Gothic possesses a number of verbs which form their preterite by reduplication, another archaic feature inherited from Indo-European. While traces of this category survived elsewhere in Germanic, the phenomenon is largely obscured in these other languages by later sound changes and analogy. In the following examples the infinitive is compared to the third person singular preterite indicative:

• to sow: PGmc *sēaną–*sezō
  • Gothic saian–saiso
  • Old Norse sá–seri
• to play: PGmc *laikaną–*lelaik
  • Gothic laikan–lailaik
  • Old English lācan–leolc, lēc

Classification

The standard theory of the origin of the Germanic languages divides the languages into three groups: East Germanic (Gothic and a few other very scantily-attested languages), North Germanic (Old Norse and its derivatives, such as Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese) and West Germanic (all others, including Old English, Old High German, Old Saxon, Old Dutch, Old Frisian and the numerous modern languages derived from these, including English, German, and Dutch). Sometimes, a further grouping, that of the Northwest Germanic languages, is posited as containing the North Germanic and West Germanic languages, reflecting the hypothesis that Gothic was the first attested language to branch off.

A minority opinion (the so-called Gotho-Nordic hypothesis) instead groups North Germanic and East Germanic together. It is based partly on historical claims: for example, Jordanes, writing in the 6th century, ascribes to the Goths a Scandinavian origin. There are a few linguistically significant areas in which Gothic and Old Norse agree against the West Germanic languages.

Perhaps the most obvious is the evolution of the Proto-Germanic *-jj- and *-ww- into Gothic (from Pre-Gothic *ggj?) and , and Old Norse ggj and ggv ("Holtzmann's Law"), in contrast to West Germanic where they remained as semivowels. Compare Modern English true, German treu, with Gothic triggws, Old Norse tryggr.

However, it has been suggested that these are, in fact, two separate and unrelated changes. A number of other posited similarities exist (for example, the existence of numerous inchoative verbs ending in -na, such as Gothic , Old Norse vakna; and the absence of gemination before j, or (in the case of old Norse) only g geminated before j, e.g. Proto-Germanic *kunją 'kin' > Gothic kuni, Old Norse kyn, but Old English cynn, Old High German kunni). However, for the most part these represent shared retentions, which are not valid means of grouping languages. That is, if a parent language splits into three daughters A, B and C, and C innovates in a particular area but A and B do not change, A and B will appear to agree against C. That shared retention in A and B is not necessarily indicative of any special relationship between the two.

Similar claims of similarities between Old Gutnish (Gutniska) and Old Icelandic are also based on shared retentions rather than shared innovations.

Another commonly-given example involves Gothic and Old Norse verbs with the ending -t in the 2nd person singular preterite indicative, and the West Germanic languages have -i. The ending -t can regularly descend from the Proto-Indo-European perfect ending *-th₂e, while the origin of the West Germanic ending -i (which, unlike the -t-ending, unexpectedly combines with the zero-grade of the root as in the plural) is unclear, suggesting that it is an innovation of some kind, possibly an import from the optative. Another possibility is that this is an example of independent choices made from a doublet existing in the proto-language. That is, Proto-Germanic may have allowed either -t or -i to be used as the ending, either in free variation or perhaps depending on dialects within Proto-Germanic or the particular verb in question. Each of the three daughters independently standardized on one of the two endings and, by chance, Gothic and Old Norse ended up with the same ending.

Other isoglosses have led scholars to propose an early split between East and Northwest Germanic. Furthermore, features shared by any two branches of Germanic do not necessarily require the postulation of a proto-language excluding the third, as the early Germanic languages were all part of a dialect continuum in the early stages of their development, and contact between the three branches of Germanic was extensive.

Polish linguist Witold Mańczak argued that Gothic is closer to German (specifically Upper German) than to Scandinavian and suggested that their ancestral homeland was located in the southernmost part of the Germanic territories, close to present-day Austria, rather than in Scandinavia. Frederik Kortlandt has agreed with Mańczak's hypothesis, stating: "I think that his argument is correct and that it is time to abandon Iordanes' classic view that the Goths came from Scandinavia."

Influence

The reconstructed Proto-Slavic language features several apparent borrowed words from East Germanic (presumably Gothic), such as , 'bread', vs. Gothic ().

The Romance languages also preserve several loanwords from Gothic, such as Portuguese 'warm clothing', from Gothic '*, companion, comrade'; 'goose', from Gothic ', goose'; 'glove', from Gothic ', palm of the hand'; and 'truce', from Gothic ', treaty, covenant'. Other examples include the French 'to embroider', from Gothic ', to embroider'; 'gaffe', from Gothic ', catch, something which is caught'; and the Italian 'quarrel, dispute', from Gothic ', quarrel'.

Use in Romanticism and the Modern Age

J. R. R. Tolkien

Several linguists have made use of Gothic as a creative language. The most famous example is "" 'Flower of the Trees' by J. R. R. Tolkien, part of Songs for the Philologists. It was published privately in 1936 for Tolkien and his colleague E. V. Gordon.

Tolkien's use of Gothic is also known from a letter from 1965 to Zillah Sherring. When Sherring bought a copy of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War in Salisbury, she found strange inscriptions in it; after she found his name in it, she wrote him a letter and asked him if the inscriptions were his, including the longest one on the back, which was in Gothic. In his reply to her he corrected some of the mistakes in the text; he wrote for example that should be and 'of those books', which he suggested should be 'of this book'. A semantic inaccuracy of the text which he mentioned himself is the use of for read, while this was . Tolkien also made a calque of his own name in Gothic in the letter, which according to him should be .

Gothic is also known to have served as the primary inspiration for Tolkien's invented language Taliska, which, in his legendarium, was the language spoken by the race of Men during the First Age before being displaced by another of his invented languages, Adûnaic. As of 2022, Tolkien's Taliska grammar has not been published.

Others

On 10 February 1841, the published a reconstruction in Gothic of the Creed of Ulfilas.

The Thorvaldsen museum also has an alliterative poem () from 1841 by Massmann, the first publisher of the , written in the Gothic language. It was read at a great feast dedicated to Thorvaldsen in the Gesellschaft der Zwanglosen in Munich on July 15, 1841. This event is mentioned by Ludwig von Schorn in the magazine from the 19th of July, 1841. Massmann also translated the academic commercium song into Gothic in 1837.

In 2012, professor Bjarne Simmelkjær Hansen of the University of Copenhagen published a translation into Gothic of for Roots of Europe.

In , an online magazine for art and literature, the poem of Dutch poet Bert Bevers appeared in a Gothic translation.

Alice in Wonderland has been translated into Gothic () by David Carlton in 2015 and is published by Michael Everson.

Examples

The Lord's Prayer in Gothic:

See also

• Geats
• Gutes
• Gutnish
• List of Germanic languages
• Name of the Goths
• Thurneysen's law
• Vandalic language

General references

• Balg, Gerhard Hubert (1889). A comparative glossary of the Gothic language with especial reference to English and German. New York: Westermann. Retrieved 16 April 2025.
• Bennett, William H. (1980). An Introduction to the Gothic Language. Introductions to older languages. New York: The Modern Language Association of America. ISBN 978-0-87352-295-3.
• Braune, Wilhelm Theodor (1880). Gotische Grammatik. Sammlung kurzer Grammatiken germanischer Dialekte (in Deutsch).
  •       (1883). A Gothic grammar with selections for reading and a glossary (2nd ed.). Translated by Balg, Gerhard Hubert. New York: Westermann. Retrieved 16 April 2025.
  •       (1966). Ebbinghaus, E. (ed.). " (17th ed.). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.
  •       (1981). Ebbinghaus, E. (ed.). " (19th ed.). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.
  •       (2004). Heidermanns, F. (ed.). " (20th ed.). Berlin/Boston: Max Niemeyer. ISBN 978-3-484-10850-9.
• Kortlandt, F. (2021) [2015]. "Gothic phonology" (PDF). Journal of Indo-European Studies. 49: 381–394.
• Krause, W. (1968) [1953]. Handbuch des Gotischen (3rd ed.). Munich. ISBN 3-406-09536-4.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Lambdin, Thomas O. (2006). An Introduction to the Gothic Language. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock. ISBN 978-1-59752-394-3.
• Marchand, James W. (1973). The Sounds and Phonemes of Wulfila's Gothic. Series Practica. Vol. 25. The Hague/Paris: Mouton. doi:10.1515/9783110828054. LCCN 72-87431.
• Miller, D. Gary (2019). The Oxford Gothic Grammar. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oso/9780198813590.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-881359-0.
• Mossé, F. (1942). Manuel de la langue gotique. Bibliothèque De Philologie Germanique (in français). Vol. II. Paris: Aubier, Editions Montaigne.
• Prokosch, Eduard (1939). A Comparative Germanic Grammar. The Linguistic Society of America for Yale University. Archived from the original on 21 May 2018.
• Rauch, Irmengard (2011). Gothic Language: Grammar, Genetic Provenance and Typology, Readings. Berkeley Models of Grammars. Vol. 5 (2nd Revised ed.). Peter Lang. ISBN 978-1-4331-1075-7.
• Schuhmann, Roland (2023). Einführung in das Bibelgotische.
• Skeat, Walter W. (1868). A Moeso-Gothic glossary. London: Asher & Co.
• Stearns, MacDonald Jr. (1978). Crimean Gothic. Analysis and Etymology of the Corpus. studia linguistica et philologia. Vol. 6. Saratoga, California: Anma Libri. ISBN 0-915838-45-1.
• ——— (1989). "Das Krimgotische". In Beck, Heinrich (ed.). Germanische Rest- und Trümmersprachen (in Deutsch). Berlin/New York. pp. 175–194. doi:10.1515/9783110864717.175. ISBN 978-3-11-011948-0.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Streitberg, Wilhelm (1965). Die gotische Bibel (in Deutsch) (4th ed.). Heidelberg.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Voyles, J. B. (1992). Early Germanic Grammar. San Diego: Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-728270-X.
• Wright, Joseph (1910). Grammar of the Gothic Language. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Retrieved 16 April 2025.

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• Collinge, N.E. (1985). "Holtzmann's Law". The Laws of Indo-European. John Benjamins. ISBN 978-90-272-2102-5.
• Davis, Garry W.; Iverson, Gregory K. (1994). "þl- in Gothic". Historische Sprachforschung. 107 (1): 155–164. doi:10.2307/40849125.
• Dietrich, Claude (1998). "Remarks about Relations Between Visigoths and Hispano-Romans in the Seventh Century". In Pohl, Walter; Reimitz, Helmut (eds.). Strategies of Distinction: Construction of Ethnic Communities, 300–800. Transformation of the Roman World. Vol. 2. Leiden: Brill. pp. 117–130. doi:10.1163/9789004609518_008. ISBN 90-04-10846-7.
• Eythórsson, Thórhallur (2001). "Functional Categories, Cliticization, and Verb Movement in the Early Germanic Languages". In Thráinsson, Höskuldur; Epstein, Samuel David & Peter, Stever (eds.). Studies in Comparative Germanic Syntax. Vol. II. Kluwer Academic. pp. 109–139. ISBN 978-1-402-00294-6.
• Falluomini, Carla (2010). "Zur Schrift der Gotica Vindobonensia". Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur (in Deutsch). 139 (1): 26–35. doi:10.3813/zfda-2010-0002. JSTOR 25738105.
• —— (2017). "Zum gotischen Fragment aus Bologna II: Berichtigungen und neue Lesungen". Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und Literatur (in Deutsch). 146 (3): 284–294. doi:10.3813/zfda-2017-0012. JSTOR 26579916.
• —— (2020). "Traces of Wulfila's Bible Translation in Visigothic Gaul". Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik. 80: 5–24. doi:10.1163/18756719-12340178.
• Holzer, Georg (1990). "Germanische Lehnwörter im Urslavischen: Methodologisches zu ihrer Identifizierung". Croatica, Slavica, Indoeuropaea [Germanic word-borrowings in proto-slavic: towards a methodology of their identification]. Wiener slavistisches Jahrbuch (in Deutsch). Vol. 8 (Ergänzungsband). Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. pp. 59–67. ISBN 978-3-7001-1774-2. Retrieved 7 January 2014.
• Howell, Robert B. (1991). Old English Breaking and its Germanic Analogues. Linguistische Arbeiten. Max Niemeyer. doi:10.1515/9783111356501. ISBN 978-3-484-30253-2.
• Kortlandt, F. (2001). "The origin of the Goths" (PDF). Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik. 55: 21–25. doi:10.1163/18756719-055-01-90000004. Archived (PDF) from the original on 11 March 2025. Retrieved 26 June 2023.
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• ——— (2018b). "This is not the same: the ambiguity of a Gothic adjective". Folia Linguistica Historica. 39 (2): 475–494. doi:10.1515/flih-2018-0017. S2CID 150114192.
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• Shippey, Tom (2003) [1982]. The Road to Middle-Earth (3rd ed.). Houghton Mifflin Company. ISBN 0-618-25760-8.
• Snædal, Magnús (2011). "Gothic ⟨ggw⟩" (PDF). Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis. 128: 145–154. doi:10.2478/v10148-011-0019-z.
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• Tolkien, J.R.R. (2010). Gilson, Christopher (ed.). "Quenya Phonology". Parma Eldalamberon. 19. BookVAULT and Barnes & Noble (print on demand). ISBN 9798317613266.
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External links

• Gotisch im WWW Portal for information on Gothic (in German)
• Germanic Lexicon Project – early (Public Domain) editions of several of the references.
• Texts:
  • The Gothic Bible in Latin alphabet
  • The Gothic Bible in Ulfilan script (Unicode text) from Wikisource
  • Titus has Streitberg's Gotische Bibel and Crimean Gothic material after Busbecq.
  • Wulfila Project
  • Skeireins Project A website with the Skeireins including translations in Latin, German, French, Swedish, English, Dutch, Greek, Italian and Icelandic.
• Gothic Online by Todd B. Krause and Jonathan Slocum, free online lessons at the Linguistics Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin
• Gothic Readings Video clips in Gothic language
• Gothic basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database
• Gotica Bononiensa A page with information about the discovered Bononiensa fragment from 2013
• A video introduction to Gothic at glottothèque – Ancient Indo-European Grammars online, an online collection of introductory videos to Ancient Indo-European languages produced by the University of Göttingen