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Course description:
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In this historical-comparative introduction to Gothic we compare the language to other Indo-European languages. Gothic is the oldest of the Germanic languages. We know it primarily from Bishop Wulfila's Bible translation, which dates from the 4th century AD. In the 5th and 6th century, Gothic was used as an administrative language in Italy. After that, it disappeared everywhere, except on the Crimea peninsula, where Crimean Goths used it until the 17th century.
The first part of the course deals with the Gothic sounds and paradigms. It will be shown how these developed from the Indo-European proto language. During the second half of the course we will read texts from the Gothic bible. |
