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Gothic 4

This ought to be a good lesson:

Mt 6:4  ei sijai so armahairtiya yeina in fulhsnja. jah atta yeins saei saiviy in fulhsnja. usgibiy yus in bairhtein.

KJV: That thine alms may be in secret; and thy father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.

ei - we surmised above in lesson 2 that this was somewhat like Latin ut, and this seems to confirm this.  So I am going to conjecture for the moment that sijai is the subjunctive of the verb 'to be' = dass sei, ut sit.

so armahairtiya yeina = the misericordia thine.  Note how neatly I have etymologized a la Junius.  I know a little German, so arm looks like 'poor' (miser) to me (cf. also OE earm), -hairtiya looks like some form of -hairt-, which I take to be the root of the word 'heart', so almsgiving, as in Latin (cf. Mod. Germ. (B)armherzigkeit (Germans are always sticking consonants on, cf. (G)unst 'favor'; (N)atter 'adder' [whoa there!]).

in fulhsnja. What a mouthful!  We know that it is probably in the dative, since we said that in takes the dative.

jah. As an aside, let me note that Junius first spelled this as gah (sounds like Lucy van Pelt) and did not distinguish between j- and g-; Latin having no j- helped him out.

atta has got to be the nominative of the attin (dative) that we saw above. A strange word for father, but cf. Attaturk.  Dare we now propose that Attila (Bavaro-Austrian Etzel) means 'little father'. We adopted the names Medtextl and Gerlingl BTW because we were all Austrians at the time, and could not work in -erl.

yeins must be the possessive adjective, must be masculine.  As Indo- Europeanists (2d Lat. decl.), we figure an -s here is good. Probably the yeina above is feminine.  All sounds so familiar and comfortable.

saei, rel. pronoun, probably masculine, maybe connected with ei above.

saiviy 'seeth'. -iy = -eth, so saiv- is the root for 'to see', as we saw above; thus saivan is the infinitive, also the passive infinitive.

in fulhsnja. Still a mouthful.

usgibiy = outgiveth.  It's alright to twist the English a little now and again. Now we have us- 'out' and gib- 'give'.

yus, as we saw above, this = German dir.

in bairhtein 'openly'.  I opt for metathesis here. It makes no difference, since we are just woofing around, but may as well: 'in brightitude'.

I am beginning to have more sympathy for those who feel they have to make up a new language to be able to translate these old ones (as in the Bibliotheque de la Pleiade Dante).

Gothic 5

Mt 6:5 jah yan bidjaiy ni sijaiy swaswe yai liutans. unte frijond in gaqumyim jah waihstam plapjo tandandans bidjan ei gaumjaindau mannam. amen qiya izwis yatei haband mizdon seina.

And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

jah = and

yan = we have seen this before in lesson 2.

bidjaiy = ye pray.  No problems, probably cognate to our beads and to German bitten.

ni = negative

sijaiy = subjunctive or imperative; cf. German seid.

swaswe = 'like'; we saw it above in lesson 2

yai = 'the'

liutans = must = hypocrites. Connected to German Leute, OE le/ode?

unte = 'for'

frijond = 'they like'.  Probably cognate to our 'friend'.

in gaqumyim = seen above in lesson 2.

waihstam = must = corners.

plapjo = 'of the streets'.  Junius would have asked: 'Error for platjo (loan-word from Latin platea)?'

standandans = we are beginning to see how the present participle (-and-) got declined.

bidjan = infinitive of a word we saw above.

ei = more confirmation that it means ut (in order that).

gaumjaindau = 'they may be seen'.  We put the infinitive down as gaumjan and shake our heads in disbelief at the rest. Junius would have been reminded of MHG goumen 'to gawk'.  Could Gothic have a passive subjunctive?

mannam = dat. pl.  No preposition. = 'by men'.

amen, qiya izwis 'amen, I say unto y'all'. No problems.

yatei = yat 'that' + our old friend -ei.

haband = 'they have'.  Infinitive haban, 3d pl. -and. We ARE moving along.

mizdon 'reward'.  Since we know that Gothic -z- = OE -r-, we (remember, we are Junius) are reminded of Northumbrian meord and Lady Mede.  Junius knew some Greek, so heaven only knows how he may have etymologized.

seina = We thought above that Gothic like our (we are Junius) favorite Scandihoovian language, Swedish, actually had a reflexive possessive.  Here we have confirmation, forcing us Germans to hang our heads that we ever gave up such a fine construction.

Gothic 6

Sorry to have forgotten my devoirs vis a vis Gothic lessons.  Here is no. 6.
I think we are moving along pretty well.  If this were a real class, I would be having you keep 3 x 5s or 5 x 8s, or whatever DIN-Wert was of use. We have quite a bit of grammar already to keep up with.

Mt 6:6 iy yu yan bidjais gagg in heyjon yeina. jah galukands haurdai yeinai. bidei du attin yeinamma yamma in fulhsnja. jah atta yeins saei saiviy in fulhsnja usgibiy yus in bairhtein:

KJV:  But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

iy = and / but.

yu must be the nominative of the 2d pers. sg., so now we have:

        

Case
        
Gothic
        
German
        
English
       
nom:
yu
        
du
        
you
       
gen:
       
yein-
dein
       
yours
         
dat:
         
yus
         
dir
         
to/for you
          
acc:
         
yuk
               
dich
          
you, obj.

For those of you feeling comparative, we have seen that Gothic -s- / -s occasionally comes out as West Germanic -r- / -r, so that we are right in thinking that yus = German dir, cf. Gothic hausjan = Engl. 'hear'.  When we run into auso, it will not surprise us to find out that it = ear; it might even be well (remember, we are Junius) to think that Gothic au = OE ea.

bidjais = 2d sg. subj. (for imperative) of bidjan 'to pray'.

gagg = imperative of 'to go'.  Since we know Greek, we note that gg = ng.

in heyjon, probably in takes the dative and accusative both; this may be accusative because of motion towards the object of the preposition.  A little German goes a long way. yeina must be accusative of yein, poss. adj.

jah = and

galukands = gelocking, that is, 'locking', pres. participle, probably nominative sg. masc. with that -s on it.

haurdai yeinai 'your door'; perhaps not the accusative (?)

bidei = probably imperative.

du attin yeinamma; note that they do not always use du, but we expected that.

We have already translated and worked on the rest.  All seems to be going well.

  Continue to Lesson 7