eftychia: Me in kilt and poofy shirt, facing away, playing acoustic guitar behind head (Default)
posted by [personal profile] eftychia at 02:09am on 2020-06-29
I know spending a couple hours poking at a glossary and the Wikipedia page for a language is not the way to do translation, and Google Translate wasn't a help here, so I'm pretty sure I didn't get this right on the first try, but ... anybody here know enough Gothic to be able to tell whether this is anywhere close to what I'm trying to say?

𐌾𐌰𐌱𐌰𐌹 𐌸𐌿 𐌹𐍃 𐌼𐌰𐌷𐍄𐌴𐌹𐌲𐌰𐌽𐌰 𐌸𐌰𐍄𐌰𐌽 𐌿𐍃𐍃𐌹𐌲𐌲𐍅𐌰𐌽 𐌸𐌿 𐌰𐌿𐍆𐍄𐍉 𐌲𐌿𐍄𐌰𐌽 𐌹𐍃
ᛃᚨᛒᚨᛁ ᚦᚢ ᛁᛋ ᛗᚨᚺᛏᛖᛁᚷᚨᚾᚨ ᚦᚨᛏᚨᚾ ᚢᛋᛋᛁᚷᚷᚹᚨᚾ ᚦᚢ ᚨᚢᚠᛏᛟ ᚷᚢᛏᚨᚾ ᛁᛋ
jabai thu is mahteigana thatan ussiggwan, thu aufto Gutan is.

Intended: "If you can read this, you might be a Goth," or word-for-word, "If thou art able this to read, thou Goth maybe art." Did I even come close? Is this the right word order?

(The first line is in the Gothic script, the second is Elder Futhark runes because apparently Gothic was written in that until Bishop Ulfilas decided to translate the Bible into Gothic (and maybe invented the Gothic script for the purpose?), though I may have picked the wrong runic alphabet, I'm not sure. The third is the Roman-alphabet transliteration that the glossary I found and all the grammar notes I saw are written in. Except for the Roman 'th' mapping to a single letter in the other two alphabets, all three should match letter-for-letter, unless I goofed there. If you read this on some mobile devices, only the Roman-alphabet version might be visible.)

I woke up yesterday (Sunday) with the notion that I needed this, in Gothic, on a card. I don't know why my brain does that. But as a result I learned some interesting things about Gothic (such as having dual forms for pronouns and verbs, but only singular and plural for most nouns[*]), I discovered that people are coining new Gothic words (e.g. "email", "bitcoin", "dictionary"), and I had an odd moment where I saw "Gothic email", almost parsed it correctly, then went, "Wait, I haven't learned this alphabet yet -- WTF?" (I guessed "e-book" instead of "email", so I don't get full credit, but I caught that the word was "ebooks" and recognized the "bokos" part from "dictionary" in that glossary being "waurdabokos". Gothic 𐍉 and Elder Futhark ᛟ looking so similar helped a lot.) Something has definitely shifted in the language-processing part of my brain in the last few years. Time to see whether I've gotten any better at learning languages (as opposed to just playing around with phrases). Maybe brush up on my French, and have yet another stab at Modern Greek.

[*] For example, in nominative (subject) case: thou -> thu; you two -> jut; all y'all -> jus. That's a y-sound 'j', not a zh-sound 'j', so the thou/you parallel to English is there. The accusative (direct object) case doesn't feel as English-like though: thee -> thuk; you two -> igqis; all y'all -> izwis.
Mood:: 'quixotic' quixotic
eftychia: Me in kilt and poofy shirt, facing away, playing acoustic guitar behind head (cyhmn)
posted by [personal profile] eftychia at 05:24am on 2020-06-29

"The radicals are really always saying the same thing. They do not change; everybody else changes. They are accused of the most incompatible crimes, of egoism and mania for power, indifference to the fate of their own cause, fanaticism, triviality, want of humor, buffoonery and irreverence. But they sound a certain note. Hence the great practical power of consistent radicals. To all appearance nobody follows them, yet everyone believes them. They hold a tuning-fork and sound A, and everybody knows it really is A, though the time-honored pitch is G flat. The community cannot get that A out of its head. Nothing can prevent an upward tendency in the popular tone so long as the real A is kept sounding." -- John Jay Chapman

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