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Gothic Alphabet

Gothic

Sample text in Gothic script
Sample text in Gothic script

Features
Type Alphabet
Language (s) Gothic
History
Time At 300, declining to 500
System (s)
parent (s)

Mainly Greek , with influences Latin and runic
Gothic

Encoding
ISO 15924 Goth

The Gothic alphabet is an alphabet used exclusively to denote the Gothic language of Wulfila , the and various manuscripts in Gothic language. This is probably an original alphabet invented by Wulfila itself and has nothing to do with what is commonly called the " Gothic ", which are, themselves, the letters of the Latin alphabet as written West in the manuscripts of the twelfth to fourteenth centuries , later became what is referred to in Germany to as Fraktur.

Summary

/ / Certifications

This alphabet has been used mainly in the sixth century AD in two later manuscripts to Wulfila (who lived in the late fourth century ), Codex Ambrosianus and the Codex argenteus. Other documents attest, profane and sacred, and the final texts are dated ninth century (at a time when language was spoken most likely). The Gothic alphabet was not only possible to write this language: there are also some inscriptions in runes Germanic.

Details can be found in the main article.

Letters

History

The Gothic alphabet is mainly an adaptation of the Greek alphabet (in its spelling uncial ), together with three characters of the Latin uncial and five borrowed rune Germanic (based on current interpretation). Transcription / transliteration

We transliterates in the scientific literature and teaching through a part of the transcript of Germanists (that is to say by the Latin alphabet plus two special characters , including the ligature , (h + v) and the letter thorn , , borrowed from Old English ; Wulfila notation is often ambiguous (same digraph can have, for example, note List of graphemes

Shown here the type S in the alphabet .

Glyph Name Transliteration Numerical value Etymon Unicode
Gothic A.svg ahsa has 1 Greek uncial a.png
Gothic b.svg bairkan b 2 Greek uncial B.png
Gothic g.svg Giba g 3 Greek uncial g.png
Gothic d.svg dags d 4 Greek uncial d.png
Gothic e.svg aihvus e 5 Greek uncial e.png
Gothic q.svg qairthra q 6 Greek uncial koppa.png (?)
Gothic z.svg iuja z 7 Greek uncial z.png
Gothic h.svg Hagl h 8 h
Gothic th.svg thiuth (th) 9
Gothic i.svg eis i 10 Greek uncial i.png
Gothic k.svg KUSMI k 20 Greek uncial k.png
Gothic l.svg Lagus l 30 Greek uncial l.png
Gothic m.svg manna m 40 Greek uncial m.png
Gothic n.svg Nauth n 50 Greek uncial n.png
Gothic j.svg jer j 60
Gothic u.svg urus u 70
Gothic p.svg pairthra p 80 Greek uncial p.png
Gothic 90.svg ninety - 90 Greek uncial koppa.png
Gothic r.svg Raida r 100 R
Gothic s.svg sauil s 200 S
Gothic t.svg teiws t 300 Greek uncial t.png
Gothic w.svg Winja w 400 Greek uncial u.png
Gothic f.svg faihu f 500
Gothic x.svg iggws x 600 Greek uncial x.png
Gothic hw.svg hwair (hw) 700 Greek uncial th.png
Gothic o.svg othal o 800
Gothic 900.svg Nine hundred - 900 Greek uncial sampi.png

( picture version )

Notes:

  • gives the etymon said the Greek letter (in its spelling uncial) behind the Gothic letter. Those inherited from the Germanic runes are on a blue background, those that are borrowed from Latin on a purple background.

Difficulties of interpretation

The proposed etymons are only conjectures representing the current interpretation of the origin of Gothic letters: indeed, several possibilities exist regarding the origin of some, like Gothic r.png Which could also come runes, especially since these runes are partly built on the Latin alphabet.

The origin of the letter Gothic q.png raises problems of interpretation. It can be traced back to Koppa Greek spelling in its uncial , Greek uncial koppa.png This does raise a paradox: the numeral sign Gothic 90.png clearly from the uncial Koppa, it is unclear how two different routes could arise from a single etymon. The most efficient seems to be to derive the letter of stigma in the spelling uncial Greek uncial stigma.png (Currently ) (which replaced the digamma ), whose plot is very close Koppa uncial and would explain the striking similarity between the letter Gothic q.png and the sign Gothic 90.png . Both have evolved along the same simplifications (see the article on the Gothic counts for more details on the sign for 90). In this case, Wulfila did not use the letter in respect of any value since the phonetic notes / st / (and replaces an old digamma worth / w /) but used an available slot in the alphabet Greek numeral (Stigma is a ligature, not an abbreviation letter) to add a full letter whose pronunciation was unknown to the Greek Byzantine while maintaining its value numeral. Latin uncial letter Q may also be the cause of this letter, but this hypothesis is less convincing.

On the other hand, the signs for 90 ( Gothic 90.png ) And 900 ( Gothic 900.png ) Are derived from the Greek: they are avatars of letters archaic Greek Kopp and frit preserved in Greek numerals , letters, having lost their status as literal characters, were deformed during the Byzantine era, to the point that the 'we got form the current through Greek uncial koppa.png Which gives Gothic 90.png and that Sampi ionien.png we arrived at through a spelling Greek uncial sampi.png (In fact, the passage of a graph to another is more complex) that explains the letter gothic Gothic 900.png .

Some scholars, including Ernst Hebbinghaus (see bibliography), we can derive consider all letters of the Greek uncial. If this assumption can be checked for Gothic th.png , Which is traditionally derives from the rune but that could be interpreted as adaptation Greek uncial th.png (Derivation phonetically as possible in Byzantine Greek was pronounced Other signs

The Gothic alphabet is unicameral (it does not differentiate between capitals and lowercase) and written in scriptio continued, that is to say that all words are attached, without space between them.

Is placed in the manuscripts an umlaut on the i when the letter is the initial word, the initial of a syllable after vowel (to distinguish it from a diphthong, true or false, indicating that the n i ' not belong to the preceding syllable): ik ('I', cf. German ich) gaddja (ga-iddja, "I passed" of ga-gaggan preterite).

Superscript indicates the line of abbreviations: gth represents Guth ("God", cf. God English).

As for punctuation, manuscripts using the midpoint "` and the colon ":" as indicators of breaks. Sometimes, space plays this role. When letters are used as symbols numerals , they are surrounded midpoints or highlighted and / or underlined.

The Gothic alphabet is now included in the Supplementary Multilingual Plane of Unicode , locations at 10,330 U 1034 U F.

On the other hand, some inscriptions are written using the runes Germanic.

Sample text in Gothic

The following is coded directly, it may be unreadable because it requires that the system supports multilingual Unicode plan and that additional police with gothic characters is installed (for details, see the site Alan Wood ).

These are verses 1 and 2 of Chapter 18 of the Gospel of John.


Thata qiands Iesus usiddja mith

siponjam seinaim UFAR rinnon Tho

Kaidron, arei aurtigards WAS, in

anei galai Iesus jah siponjos IS

wissuh Than jah ina Iudas its galewjands

Thana stad, atei UFTAA gaddja Iesus jainar

mith siponjam seinaim.

(Punctuation and spaces added in the transcript for easy reading)

"When Jesus had said this, he went with his disciples on the banks of Kedron, where there was a garden in which he entered with his disciples. Judas, who betrayed him, knew the place because Jesus and his disciples gathered there often. "

Here is the same text in image:

Example gotique.png

Miscellaneous

  • Bibliography

    Besides the works mentioned in the bibliography of the article on the Gothic , we can also refer to:

    • "The Gothic Alphabet Ernst Ebbinghaus in the World's Writing Systems, edited by Peter T. Daniels and William Bright, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996;
    • illustration 25 of the Vergelijkende taalwetenschap ("Comparative Grammar References

  1. See also Fausto Cercignani , The Development Of The Gothic Alphabet and Orthography, in "Indogermanische Forschungen", 93, 1988, pp. 168-185.
  2. If you do not see the characters, allowing them to install a font display, such as IDG Free Serif.

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