eftychia: Me in kilt and poofy shirt, facing away, playing acoustic guitar behind head (Default)
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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
There are 7 comments on this entry. (Reply.)
minoanmiss: A detail of the Ladies in Blue fresco (Default)
posted by [personal profile] minoanmiss at 02:34pm on 2020-06-29
I am no help, I'm just amused :)
eftychia: Me in kilt and poofy shirt, facing away, playing acoustic guitar behind head (Default)
posted by [personal profile] eftychia at 04:22pm on 2020-06-30

:-)

gingicat: deep purple lilacs, some buds, some open (Default)
posted by [personal profile] gingicat at 05:04pm on 2020-06-29
[personal profile] kjn might know. I can send him the link via Filkhaven Discord.
eftychia: Me in kilt and poofy shirt, facing away, playing acoustic guitar behind head (Default)
posted by [personal profile] eftychia at 04:22pm on 2020-06-30

Yes, please.

gingicat: deep purple lilacs, some buds, some open (Default)
posted by [personal profile] gingicat at 07:24pm on 2020-06-30
He did not, but now there are several very intrigued filkers.
eftychia: Me in kilt and poofy shirt, facing away, playing acoustic guitar behind head (Default)
posted by [personal profile] eftychia at 03:06am on 2020-07-06

Giovanni Lido (@Giovanni_Lido on twitter) wrote:

I'm just a beginner and my grammar isn't so great. But I think you'd need the forms þata and guta. As for "be able," I'd say "can" (kunnan) in the subjunctive. Perhaps, "jabai þu þata (ussiggwan?) kunneis, aufto is þu [iþþu?] Guta" vel sim.?

The example sentence in Wiktionary for kunnan is, "Sie ni cunnun ēnig feho uuinnan" ("They don't know how to win any good"), which looks like the verb that comes after "can" is in the infinitive like I'd naively guessed, so 'ussiggwan' stays 'ussiggwan' ...

𐌾𐌰𐌱𐌰𐌹 𐌸𐌿 𐌸𐌰𐍄𐌰 𐌿𐍃𐍃𐌹𐌲𐌲𐍅𐌰𐌽 𐌺𐌿𐌽𐌽𐌹𐍃, 𐌰𐌿𐍆𐍄𐍉 𐌹𐍃 𐌸𐌿 𐌲𐌿𐍄𐌰
ᛃᚨᛒᚨᛁ ᚦᚢ ᚦᚨᛏᚨ ᚢᛋᛋᛁᚷᚷᚹᚨᚾ ᚲᚢᚾᚾᛁᛋ, ᚨᚢᚠᛏᛟ ᛁᛋ ᚦᚢ ᚷᚢᛏᚨ
jabai þu þata ussiggwan kunnis, aufto is þu Guta

Or maybe...

𐌾𐌰𐌱𐌰𐌹 𐌸𐌿 𐌸𐌰𐍄𐌰 𐍃𐌹𐌲𐌲𐍅𐌰𐌽 𐌺𐌿𐌽𐌽𐌴𐌹𐍃, 𐌰𐌿𐍆𐍄𐍉 𐌹𐍃 𐌸𐌿 𐌲𐌿𐍄𐌰
ᛃᚨᛒᚨᛁ ᚦᚢ ᚦᚨᛏᚨ ᛋᛁᚷᚷᚹᚨᚾ ᚲᚢᚾᚾᛖᛁᛋ, ᚨᚢᚠᛏᛟ ᛁᛋ ᚦᚢ ᚷᚢᛏᚨ
jabai thu thata siggwan kunneis, aufto is thu Guta

The same caveats as before, of course, apply to my attempts to render these in the Gothic alphabet and in runes. (FWIW, in addition to just "to read", it appears 'siggwan'/'ussiggwan' also means "to read aloud" and "to sing", and that 'kunnan' is cognate to 'ken'.)

Also, "Thank you" in Gothic is "awiliudo thus". :-)

Edited Date: 2020-07-06 03:07 am (UTC)
gingicat: deep purple lilacs, some buds, some open (Default)
posted by [personal profile] gingicat at 10:03am on 2020-07-06
Cool!

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