East Germanic languages
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What are the East Germanic languages?
The East Germanic languages are an extinct group of Germanic languages spoken by tribes located between the middle Oder and Vistula rivers. Gothic is the best-known of these languages, largely from a 4th-century Bible translation by Bishop Ulfilas.
Languages in the East Germanic group include Gothic, and those of the Vandals, Burgundians, and other tribes. Little is known about Gepidic, Rugian, and Burgundian, but Vandalic, Visigothic, and Ostrogothic are known from names recorded in Greek and Latin writings. East and Northwest Germanic split around the 1st–3rd centuries CE. Gothic retained reduplicated verb forms, while Northwest Germanic developed new ablaut alternations.
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Which peoples or tribes spoke East Germanic languages?
The East Germanic languages were spoken by various Germanic tribes located between the middle Oder and Vistula rivers. These tribes included the Goths, Vandals, and Burgundians. Gothic, particularly Visigothic, is the best-known East Germanic language, with extensive information available. Little is known about Gepidic, Rugian, and Burgundian, but some knowledge of Vandalic, Visigothic, and Ostrogothic comes from names recorded in Greek and Latin writings.
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How are East Germanic languages different from North and West Germanic languages?
East, North, and West Germanic languages all stem from Proto-Germanic, but they evolved along distinct paths. The first major division occurred between East and Northwest Germanic.
East Germanic, now extinct, is known primarily from Gothic and the languages of the Vandals and Burgundians. Gothic retained archaic features, such as dual number, reduplication in verbs, vocative case forms, and passive voice, which are rare or absent in later Germanic languages. It also shows no trace of the umlaut found in other Germanic languages. In East Germanic, Proto-Germanic *z was maintained, while in Northwest Germanic, it generally became *r.
North Germanic differs from West Germanic (but not East Germanic) in having ggj and ggv for medial jj and ww, respectively. North Germanic differs from East Germanic (but not West Germanic) in that original ē becomes ǣ and original z becomes r; furthermore, there is a new demonstrative pronoun þessi, back vowels are mutated to front vowels by the influence of a following i or j (“i-umlaut”), and the number of unstressed vowels is reduced to three (a, i, u). North Germanic differs from both West Germanic and East Germanic in several ways, including the rounding of unrounded vowels, the loss of initial j and w, and the loss of final nasals.
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What is the most famous East Germanic language and what are some examples?
The most famous East Germanic language is Gothic, which is especially important for the study of the history of the Germanic language family because its records antedate those of the other Germanic languages by about four centuries. Gothic occurred in two dialects: Ostrogothic and Visigothic.
Examples of words include:
* gasts: 'guest'
* haurn: 'horn'
* dumbs: 'dumb'The East Germanic languages are a group of extinct Germanic languages once spoken by Germanic tribes located between the middle Oder and the Vistula. Little is known of Gepidic, Rugian, and Burgundian. Some knowledge of Vandalic, Visigothic, and Ostrogothic is provided by names recorded in Greek and Latin writings.
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Why are East Germanic languages considered extinct today?
The East Germanic languages, including Gothic and the languages of the Vandals and Burgundians, are considered extinct because the tribes that spoke them either died out, migrated, or assimilated into other cultures, leading to the abandonment of their distinct languages. Gothic, for example, disappeared among the Ostrogoths after their kingdom's fall in Italy in the 6th century, and its survival among the Visigoths in Spain after the Arab conquest in 711 is doubtful.
These languages, once spoken by Germanic tribes between the middle Oder and the Vistula, have no surviving native speakers today. The decline was further hastened by the replacement of German as the official language in the Baltic provinces with Russian in 1889, and the rise of Estonian and Latvian national movements.
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How has the study of the Gothic language helped researchers understand the history of Germanic languages?
The study of the Gothic language is especially important to understanding the history of the Germanic language family. Gothic records predate other Germanic languages by about four centuries, with the earliest extensive text being the Gothic Bible translated by Bishop Ulfilas around 350 CE.
Gothic retains many archaic features lost in later Germanic languages, such as dual number, reduplication in verbs, vocative case forms, and passive voice forms. It also shows no trace of the umlaut found in later Germanic languages. These features provide valuable insights into the evolution of Germanic languages from their Proto-Germanic ancestor.
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East Germanic languages, group of long extinct Germanic languages once spoken by Germanic tribes located between the middle Oder and the Vistula.
History
According to historical tradition, at least some of the Germanic tribes migrated to the mouth of the Vistula from Scandinavia. Little is known of Gepidic, Rugian, and Burgundian; some knowledge of Vandalic, Visigothic, and, especially, Ostrogothic is provided by the names recorded in Greek and Latin writings. The only East Germanic language on which there is extensive information is the Gothic—more specifically, Visigothic—that was spoken along the western shore of the Black Sea about the middle of the 4th century ce.
Knowledge of Gothic is derived primarily from the remains of a Bible translation made for the Visigoths living along the lower Danube by Ulfilas, a Visigothic bishop of the Arian church, who lived during the 4th century. The surviving manuscripts of this translation, which are not originals but later copies thought to have been written in northern Italy during the period of Ostrogothic rule (493–554), include considerable portions of the New Testament. The best-known manuscript is the Codex Argenteus, written in silver and gold letters on purple parchment and containing (in 188 leaves remaining from an original 330 or 336) portions of the four Gospels. Closely related to these biblical manuscripts are eight leaves containing fragments of a commentary (called the Skeireins in Gothic) on the Gospel According to John. Minor nonbiblical texts include a fragment of a calendar, two deeds containing some Gothic sentences, and a 10th-century Salzburg manuscript that gives the Gothic alphabet, a few Gothic words with Latin transliteration, and some phonetic remarks with illustrative examples.
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In the 4th and 5th centuries Gothic (Visigothic and Ostrogothic) must have spread to some degree, along with the conquering Goths, throughout much of southern Europe; but there is no evidence for its survival in Italy after the fall of the Ostrogothic kingdom, and in Spain it is doubtful that the Visigoths retained their language until the Arab conquest. In the 9th century the German monk Walafrid Strabo mentions that Gothic was still being used in some churches near the lower Danube. After that time Gothic seems to have survived only among the Goths of the Crimean Peninsula, who were last mentioned in the middle of the 16th century by a Flemish diplomat named Augier Ghislain de Busbecq, who, while on a mission to Constantinople in 1560–62, collected a number of words and phrases showing that their language was still essentially a form of Gothic.
Characteristics
The Gothic alphabet, said to have been created by Ulfilas, contained 27 symbols, two of which functioned only as numbers, while the remaining 25 were used as both numbers and letters. The shape, numerical value, and ordering of the symbols show clearly that the alphabet was based primarily on that of Greek, though a few symbols seem to have been adapted from the Latin alphabet.
Phonology
The Gothic consonant system seems to have been largely identical with that assumed above for Proto-Germanic: p, t, k, kw (this last sound was probably much like the qu in queen); f, þ, h, hw (this last sound was probably pronounced much like the wh in white); b, d, g; s, z; m, n; l, r; w, j. The nasal n was presumably velar before the velar consonants k, q, and g; in these positions it was usually written (as in Greek) as g or gg. Examples of this spelling include dragk ‘drank,’ igqis ‘you two,’ and briggan ‘bring,’ although n was occasionally used as in Latin (e.g., þank ‘thanks,’ inqis ‘you two,’ and bringiþ ‘bring ye’).
The Gothic alphabet contained the five simple vowel symbols, i, e, a, o, and u, from which four compound symbols, ei, ai, au, and iu, also were made; in addition, w was used to transliterate Greek υ and οι (both of which were pronounced as umlauted u /ü/ in 4th-century Greek). The generally accepted development of the Proto-Germanic vowels in Gothic can be diagrammed as follows:
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Brackets in the Proto-Germanic line indicate that the two linked sounds coalesced into one; brackets in the Gothic line indicate two variants of the same sound that are in different phonetic environments. Proto-Germanic *i and *e apparently first merged as a single vowel and then became Gothic i in most positions but became ai before h, hw, and r. Similarly, Proto-Germanic *u∼o became Gothic u in most positions, but au before h, hw, and r.
Archaic features
Gothic shows a number of archaic features that had been almost or entirely lost by the time the other Germanic languages began to appear in writing; among these are a passive voice and one type of past tense formed with reduplication, a dual number in the first and second persons of its verbs and pronouns, and a special vocative case in one noun class. At the same time, Gothic also shows changes from Proto-Germanic, among which are the shortening of most long vowels in final unstressed syllables and the loss of most short vowels (e.g., Proto-Germanic *erþō ‘earth’ became Gothic airþa, Proto-Germanic *stainaz ‘stone’ became Gothic stains). Finally, voiced fricatives that occurred or came to occur at the end of a word are unvoiced (e.g., nominative *hlaiaz, accusative *hlaian ‘bread, loaf’ changed to hlaifs and hlaif, respectively [but dative hlaiba]).