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118-613: There is some evidence that North and West Germanic developed as a single language, Proto-Northwest Germanic, after East Germanic had begun to diverge. However, changes unproblematically datable to the PNWGmc period are few, suggesting that that period of linguistic unity did not last long. On the other hand, there are some indications that North and West Germanic remained in contact, exchanging and thus partly sharing further innovations, after they had begun to diverge, and perhaps even after West Germanic had itself begun to diversify. This grouping

236-731: A sermo Theotiscus ('Germanic language'), the language of the Gothic translation of the Bible, and that they used such a liturgy. Many writers of the medieval texts that mention the Goths used the word Goths to mean any Germanic people in eastern Europe (such as the Varangians ), many of whom certainly did not use the Gothic language as known from the Gothic Bible. Some writers even referred to Slavic -speaking people as "Goths". However, it

354-441: A stress accent rather than the pitch accent of Proto-Indo-European . This is indicated by the shortening of long vowels [eː] and [oː] and the loss of short vowels [a] and [i] in unstressed final syllables. Just as in other Germanic languages, the free moving Proto-Indo-European accent was replaced with one fixed on the first syllable of simple words. Accents do not shift when words are inflected. In most compound words,

472-684: A 10-year hiatus, the Goths and the Heruli , with a raiding fleet of 500 ships, sacked Heraclea Pontica , Cyzicus and Byzantium . They were defeated by the Roman navy but managed to escape into the Aegean Sea , where they ravaged the islands of Lemnos and Scyros , broke through Thermopylae and sacked several cities of southern Greece ( province of Achaea ) including Athens , Corinth , Argos , Olympia and Sparta . Then an Athenian militia, led by

590-508: A Roman army led by Claudius advancing from the north. The battle most likely took place in 269, and was fiercely contested. Large numbers on both sides were killed but, at the critical point, the Romans tricked the Goths into an ambush by pretending to retreat. Some 50,000 Goths were allegedly killed or taken captive and their base at Thessalonika destroyed. Apparently Aurelian , who was in charge of all Roman cavalry during Claudius' reign, led

708-633: A Scandinavian origin. Scholars generally locate Gothiscandza in the area of the Wielbark culture . This culture emerged in the lower Vistula and along the Pomeranian coast in the 1st century AD, replacing the preceding Oksywie culture . It is primarily distinguished from the Oksywie by the practice of inhumation, the absence of weapons in graves, and the presence of stone circles . This area had been intimately connected with Scandinavia since

826-578: A century later, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World . While their main force had constructed siege works and was close to taking the cities of Thessalonica and Cassandreia , it retreated to the Balkan interior at the news that the emperor was advancing. Learning of the approach of Claudius, the Goths first attempted to directly invade Italy. They were engaged near Naissus by

944-534: A church language when the Visigoths converted from Arianism to Nicene Christianity in 589). The language survived as a domestic language in the Iberian Peninsula (modern-day Spain and Portugal) as late as the eighth century. Gothic-seeming terms are found in manuscripts subsequent to this date, but these may or may not belong to the same language. A language known as Crimean Gothic survived in

1062-485: A distinct people. Gothic architecture , Gothic literature and the modern-day Goth subculture ultimately derive their names from the ancient Goths, though the Goths themselves did not directly create or influence these art forms. In the Gothic language , the Goths were called the * Gut-þiuda ('Gothic people') or * Gutans ('Goths'). The Proto-Germanic form of the Gothic name is recostructed as * Gutōz , but it

1180-466: A fashion which was loudly denounced by conservatives. The 4th-century Greek bishop Synesius compared the Goths to wolves among sheep, mocked them for wearing skins and questioned their loyalty towards Rome: A man in skins leading warriors who wear the chlamys , exchanging his sheepskins for the toga to debate with Roman magistrates and perhaps even sit next to a Roman consul , while law-abiding men sit behind. Then these same men, once they have gone

1298-509: A few documents in Gothic have survived – not enough for a complete reconstruction of the language. Most Gothic-language sources are translations or glosses of other languages (namely, Greek ), so foreign linguistic elements most certainly influenced the texts. These are the primary sources: Reports of the discovery of other parts of Ulfilas's Bible have not been substantiated. Heinrich May in 1968 claimed to have found in England twelve leaves of

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1416-428: A former perfect); three grammatical moods : indicative , subjunctive (from an old optative form) and imperative as well as three kinds of nominal forms: a present infinitive , a present participle , and a past passive . Not all tenses and persons are represented in all moods and voices, as some conjugations use auxiliary forms . Finally, there are forms called 'preterite-present': the old Indo-European perfect

1534-549: A little way from the senate house, put on their sheepskins again, and when they have rejoined their fellows they mock the toga, saying that they cannot comfortably draw their swords in it. In the 4th century, Geberic was succeeded by the Greuthungian king Ermanaric , who embarked on a large-scale expansion. Jordanes states that Ermanaric conquered a large number of warlike tribes, including the Heruli (who were led by Alaric),

1652-681: A palimpsest containing parts of the Gospel of Matthew . Only fragments of the Gothic translation of the Bible have been preserved. The translation was apparently done in the Balkans region by people in close contact with Greek Christian culture. The Gothic Bible apparently was used by the Visigoths in Occitania until the loss of Visigothic Occitania at the start of the 6th century, in Visigothic Iberia until about 700, and perhaps for

1770-464: A portion of his people and asked to be allowed to settle on the south bank of the Danube. Valens permitted this, and even assisted the Goths in their crossing of the river (probably at the fortress of Durostorum ). The Gothic evacuation across the Danube was probably not spontaneous, but rather a carefully planned operation initiated after long debate among leading members of the community. Upon arrival,

1888-419: A result the Goths are often identified as originating from south-central Sweden. According to Jordanes, the Goths originated on an island called Scandza (Scandinavia), from where they emigrated by sea to an area called Gothiscandza under their king Berig . Historians are not in agreement on the authenticity and accuracy of this account. Most scholars agree that Gothic migration from Scandinavia

2006-748: A significant westward movement of Alans and Huns from the east. Large numbers of Goths subsequently concentrated upon the Roman border at the Lower Danube , seeking refuge inside the Roman Empire. After they entered the Empire, violence broke out, and Goth-led forces inflicted a devastating defeat upon the Romans at the Battle of Adrianople in 378. Roman forces regained a level of control but many Goths and other eastern peoples were quickly settled in and near

2124-456: A time in Italy, the Balkans, and Ukraine until at least the mid-9th century. During the extermination of Arianism , Trinitarian Christians probably overwrote many texts in Gothic as palimpsests, or alternatively collected and burned Gothic documents. Apart from biblical texts, the only substantial Gothic document that still exists – and the only lengthy text known to have been composed originally in

2242-669: A widescale rebellion in Thrace, in which he was joined not only by Gothic refugees and slaves, but also by disgruntled Roman workers and peasants, and Gothic deserters from the Roman Army. The ensuing conflict, known as the Gothic War , lasted for several years. Meanwhile, a group of Greuthungi, led by the chieftains Alatheus and Saphrax , who were co-regents with Vithericus, son and heir of the Greuthungi king Vithimiris , crossed

2360-519: Is the verb "to be" , which is athematic in Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, and many other Indo-European languages. Gothic verbs are, like nouns and adjectives, divided into strong verbs and weak verbs. Weak verbs are characterised by preterites formed by appending the suffixes -da or -ta , parallel to past participles formed with -þ / -t . Strong verbs form preterites by ablaut (the alternating of vowels in their root forms) or by reduplication (prefixing

2478-420: Is an allophone of the others, all found only in complementary distribution with them. Nasals in Gothic, like most other languages, are pronounced at the same point of articulation as the consonant that follows them ( assimilation ). Therefore, clusters like [md] and [nb] are not possible. Accentuation in Gothic can be reconstructed through phonetic comparison, Grimm's law , and Verner's law . Gothic used

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2596-473: Is clear from Ulfilas's translation that – despite some puzzles – the Gothic language belongs with the Germanic language-group, not with Slavic. Generally, the term "Gothic language" refers to the language of Ulfilas , but the attestations themselves date largely from the 6th century, long after Ulfilas had died. A few Gothic runic inscriptions were found across Europe, but due to early Christianization of

2714-591: Is clearly identifiable evidence from other branches that the Gothic form is a secondary development. Gothic fails to display a number of innovations shared by all Germanic languages attested later: The language also preserved many features that were mostly lost in other early Germanic languages: Most conspicuously, Gothic shows no sign of morphological umlaut. Gothic fotus , pl. fotjus , can be contrasted with English foot  : feet , German Fuß  : Füße , Old Norse fótr  : fœtr , Danish fod  : fødder . These forms contain

2832-521: Is constituted by a range of common linguistic innovations in phonology , morphology , word formation and lexis in North and West Germanic, though in fact there is considerable debate about which innovations are significant. An additional problem is that Gothic , which provides almost the sole evidence of the East Germanic dialects, is attested much earlier than the other Germanic languages, with

2950-492: Is fairly free as is typical of other inflected languages. The natural word order of Gothic is assumed to have been like that of the other old Germanic languages; however, nearly all extant Gothic texts are translations of Greek originals and have been heavily influenced by Greek syntax. Sometimes what can be expressed in one word in the original Greek will require a verb and a complement in the Gothic translation; for example, διωχθήσονται ( diōchthēsontai , "they will be persecuted")

3068-634: Is hard to separate the two) derived by the processes described in Grimm's law and Verner's law and characteristic of Germanic languages . Gothic is unusual among Germanic languages in having a /z/ phoneme, which has not become /r/ through rhotacization. Furthermore, the doubling of written consonants between vowels suggests that Gothic made distinctions between long and short, or geminated consonants: atta [atːa] "dad", kunnan [kunːan] "to know" (Dutch kennen , German kennen "to know", Icelandic kunna ). Gothic has three nasal consonants, one of which

3186-590: Is in the late 3rd century that the name Goths ( Latin : Gothi ) is first mentioned. Ancient authors do not identify the Goths with the earlier Gutones. Philologists and linguists have no doubt that the names are linked. On the Pontic steppe the Goths quickly adopted several nomadic customs from the Sarmatians. They excelled at horsemanship , archery and falconry , and were also accomplished agriculturalists and seafarers . J. B. Bury describes

3304-469: Is less significant in Gothic because of its conservative nature: the so-called "weak" declensions (those ending in n ) are, in fact, no weaker in Gothic (in terms of having fewer endings) than the "strong" declensions (those ending in a vowel), and the "strong" declensions do not form a coherent class that can be clearly distinguished from the "weak" declensions. Although descriptive adjectives in Gothic (as well as superlatives ending in -ist and -ost ) and

3422-588: Is proposed that this co-existed with an n-stem variant * Gutaniz , attested in Gutones , gutani , or gutniskr . The form * Gutōz is etymologically identical to that of the Gutes from Gotland, Sweden, and closely related to that of the Geats , from mainland Sweden, whose name is reconstructed as * Gautōz . Though these names probably mean the same, their exact meaning is uncertain. They are all thought to be related to

3540-402: Is reflected in the archaeological record, but the evidence is not entirely clear. Rather than a single mass migration of an entire people, scholars open to hypothetical Scandinavian origins envision a process of gradual migration in the 1st centuries BC and AD, which was probably preceded by long-term contacts and perhaps limited to a few elite clans from Scandinavia. Similarities between

3658-411: Is rendered: Likewise Gothic translations of Greek noun phrases may feature a verb and a complement. In both cases, the verb follows the complement, giving weight to the theory that basic word order in Gothic is object–verb. This aligns with what is known of other early Germanic languages. However, this pattern is reversed in imperatives and negations: And in a wh -question the verb directly follows

Northwest Germanic - Misplaced Pages Continue

3776-417: Is strongly tied to runic inscriptions dated from AD 200 onwards. Most scholars agree that East Germanic broke up from the rest of the languages in the 2nd or 1st centuries BC. The Runic Inscriptions (being written from the 2nd century) may mean that the north and West broke up in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. The Migration Period started around the 4th and 5th centuries; an event which probably help diversify

3894-562: Is the Getica of the 6th-century historian Jordanes , who may have been of Gothic descent. Jordanes claims to have based the Getica on an earlier lost work by Cassiodorus , but also cites material from fifteen other classical sources, including an otherwise unknown writer, Ablabius . Many scholars accept that Jordanes' account on Gothic origins is at least partially derived from Gothic tribal tradition and accurate on certain details, and as

4012-564: Is the earliest Germanic language that is attested in any sizable texts, but it lacks any modern descendants. The oldest documents in Gothic date back to the fourth century. The language was in decline by the mid-sixth century, partly because of the military defeat of the Goths at the hands of the Franks , the elimination of the Goths in Italy, and geographic isolation (in Spain, the Gothic language lost its last and probably already declining function as

4130-647: Is the preservation of the dual number , referring to two people or things; the plural was used only for quantities greater than two. Thus, "the two of us" and "we" for numbers greater than two were expressed as wit and weis respectively. While proto-Indo-European used the dual for all grammatical categories that took a number (as did Classical Greek and Sanskrit ), most Old Germanic languages are unusual in that they preserved it only for pronouns. Gothic preserves an older system with dual marking on both pronouns and verbs (but not nouns or adjectives). The simple demonstrative pronoun sa (neuter: þata , feminine: so , from

4248-529: Is used for transliterating Gothic words into the Latin script . The system mirrors the conventions of the native alphabet, such as writing long /iː/ as ei . The Goths used their equivalents of e and o alone only for long higher vowels, using the digraphs ai and au (much as in French ) for the corresponding short or lower vowels. There are two variant spelling systems: a "raw" one that directly transliterates

4366-556: The Codex Argenteus , a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic language with a sizeable text corpus . All others, including Burgundian and Vandalic , are known, if at all, only from proper names that survived in historical accounts, and from loanwords in other, mainly Romance , languages. As a Germanic language, Gothic is a part of the Indo-European language family. It

4484-511: The Gutones  – possibly early Goths – are documented living near the lower Vistula River in current Poland in the 1st century, where they are associated with the archaeological Wielbark culture . More recent genetic evidence has confirmed that Wielbark culture Goths from the Vistula carry Scandinavian Y-haplogroups , strongly suggesting that Gothic clans formed with migration from Southern Scandinavia. From

4602-636: The Aegean Sea and a detachment ravaged the Aegean islands as far as Crete , Rhodes and Cyprus . According to the Augustan History , the Goths achieved no success on this expedition because they were struck by the Cyprianic Plague . The fleet probably also sacked Troy and Ephesus , damaging the Temple of Artemis , though the temple was repaired and then later torn down by Christians

4720-646: The Aesti and the Vistula Veneti , who, although militarily weak, were very numerous, and put up a strong resistance. Jordanes compares the conquests of Ermanaric to those of Alexander the Great , and states that he "ruled all the nations of Scythia and Germany by his own prowess alone." Interpreting Jordanes, Herwig Wolfram estimates that Ermanaric dominated a vast area of the Pontic Steppe stretching from

4838-476: The Balkan provinces. In the meantime, a second and larger sea-borne invasion had started. An enormous coalition consisting of Goths (Greuthungi and Thervingi), Gepids and Peucini, led again by the Heruli, assembled at the mouth of river Tyras (Dniester). The Augustan History and Zosimus claim a total number of 2,000–6,000 ships and 325,000 men. This is probably a gross exaggeration but remains indicative of

Northwest Germanic - Misplaced Pages Continue

4956-633: The Danube . Around 275 the Goths launched a last major assault on Asia Minor , where piracy by Black Sea Goths was causing great trouble in Colchis , Pontus, Cappadocia , Galatia and even Cilicia . They were defeated sometime in 276 by Emperor Marcus Claudius Tacitus . By the late 3rd century, there were at least two groups of Goths, separated by the Dniester River : the Thervingi and

5074-595: The Greuthungi . The Gepids , who lived northwest of the Goths, are also attested as this time. Jordanes writes that the Gepids shared common origins with the Goths. In the late 3rd century, as recorded by Jordanes, the Gepids, under their king Fastida , utterly defeated the Burgundians, and then attacked the Goths and their king Ostrogotha. Out of this conflict, Ostrogotha and the Goths emerged victorious. In

5192-746: The Roman–Persian Wars , notably participating at the Battle of Misiche in 244. An inscription at the Ka'ba-ye Zartosht in Parthian , Persian and Greek commemorates the Persian victory over the Romans and the troops drawn from gwt W g'rmny xštr , the Gothic and German kingdoms, which is probably a Parthian gloss for the Danubian (Gothic) limes and the Germanic limes . Meanwhile, Gothic raids on

5310-763: The Vandals , with whom they were certainly closely affiliated. The Vandals are associated with the Przeworsk culture , which was located to the south of the Wielbark culture. Wolfram suggests that the Gutones were clients of the Lugii and Vandals in the 1st century AD. In 77 AD, Pliny the Elder mentions the Gutones as one of the peoples of Germania . He writes that the Gutones, Burgundiones , Varini , and Carini belong to

5428-537: The conversion of Goths to Christianity . The Goths are classified as a Germanic people in modern scholarship. Along with the Burgundians , Vandals and others they belong to the East Germanic group. Roman authors of late antiquity did not classify the Goths as Germani . In modern scholarship the Goths are sometimes referred to as being Germani . A crucial source on Gothic history

5546-622: The name of the Goths , some Swedish place names and the names of the Gutes and Geats have been cited as evidence that the Goths originated in Gotland or Götaland . The Goths, Geats and Gutes may all have descended from an early community of seafarers active on both sides of the Baltic. Similarities and dissimilarities between the Gothic language and Scandinavian languages (particularly Gutnish ) have been cited as evidence both for and against

5664-498: The past participle may take both definite and indefinite forms, some adjectival words are restricted to one variant. Some pronouns take only definite forms: for example, sama (English "same"), adjectives like unƕeila ("constantly", from the root ƕeila , "time"; compare to the English "while"), comparative adjective and present participles . Others, such as áins ("some"), take only the indefinite forms. The table below displays

5782-635: The wh- at the beginning of many English interrogative, which, as in Gothic, are pronounced with [ʍ] in some dialects. The same etymology is present in the interrogatives of many other Indo-European languages: w- [v] in German, hv- in Danish , the Latin qu- (which persists in modern Romance languages ), the Greek τ- or π-, the Slavic and Indic k- as well as many others. The bulk of Gothic verbs follow

5900-546: The " Hlöðskviða " (The Battle of the Goths and Huns), a medieval Icelandic saga. The sagas recall that Gizur , king of the Geats , came to the aid of the Goths in an epic conflict with the Huns, although this saga might derive from a later Gothic-Hunnic conflict. Although the Huns successfully subdued many of the Goths who subsequently joined their ranks, Fritigern approached the Eastern Roman emperor Valens in 376 with

6018-520: The 2nd century, the Wielbark culture expanded southwards towards the Black Sea in what has been associated with Gothic migration, and by the late 3rd century it contributed to the formation of the Chernyakhov culture . By the 4th century at the latest, several Gothic groups were distinguishable, among whom the Thervingi and Greuthungi were the most powerful. During this time, Wulfila began

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6136-770: The Baltic Sea to the Black Sea as far eastwards as the Ural Mountains , encompassing not only the Greuthungi, but also Baltic Finnic peoples , Slavs (such as the Antes ), Rosomoni (Roxolani), Alans, Huns , Sarmatians and probably Aestii ( Balts ). According to Wolfram, it is certainly possible that the sphere of influence of the Chernyakhov culture could have extended well beyond its archaeological extent. Chernyakhov archaeological finds have been found far to

6254-420: The Danube in what is now Ukraine, Moldova and Romania. From here they conducted raids into Roman territory, and large numbers of them joined the Roman military. These early Goths lived in the regions where archaeologists find the Chernyakhov culture , which flourished throughout this region during the 3rd and 4th centuries. In the late 4th century, the lands of the Goths in present-day Ukraine were overwhelmed by

6372-415: The Danube without Roman permission. The Gothic War culminated in the Battle of Adrianople in 378, in which the Romans were badly defeated and Valens was killed. Following the decisive Gothic victory at Adrianople, Julius, the magister militum of the Eastern Roman Empire , organized a wholesale massacre of Goths in Asia Minor , Syria and other parts of the Roman East. Fearing rebellion, Julian lured

6490-427: The Gothic language – is the Skeireins , a few pages of commentary on the Gospel of John . Very few medieval secondary sources make reference to the Gothic language after about 800. In De incrementis ecclesiae Christianae (840–842), Walafrid Strabo , a Frankish monk who lived in Swabia , writes of a group of monks who reported that even then certain peoples in Scythia ( Dobruja ), especially around Tomis , spoke

6608-404: The Gothic period as "the only non-nomadic episode in the history of the steppe." William H. McNeill compares the migration of the Goths to that of the early Mongols , who migrated southward from the forests and came to dominate the eastern Eurasian steppe around the same time as the Goths in the west. From the 240s at the earliest, Goths were heavily recruited into the Roman Army to fight in

6726-445: The Goths and other Germanic groups such as the Heruli . It nevertheless also included Iranian , Dacian , Roman and probably Slavic elements as well. The first incursion of the Roman Empire that can be attributed to Goths is the sack of Histria in 238. The first references to the Goths in the 3rd century call them Scythians , as this area, known as Scythia, had historically been occupied by an unrelated people of that name. It

6844-462: The Goths into the confines of urban streets from which they could not escape and massacred soldiers and civilians alike. As word spread, the Goths rioted throughout the region, and large numbers were killed. Survivors may have settled in Phrygia . With the rise of Theodosius I in 379, the Romans launched a renewed offensive to subdue Fritigern and his followers. Around the same time, Athanaric arrived in Constantinople, having fled Caucaland through

6962-447: The Goths were to be disarmed according to their agreement with the Romans, although many of them still managed to keep their arms. The Moesogoths settled in Thrace and Moesia . Mistreated by corrupt local Roman officials, the Gothic refugees were soon experiencing a famine; some are recorded as having been forced to sell their children to Roman slave traders in return for rotten dog meat. Enraged by this treachery, Fritigern unleashed

7080-474: The Goths, the Runic writing was quickly replaced by the newly invented Gothic alphabet. Ulfilas's Gothic, as well as that of the Skeireins and various other manuscripts, was written using an alphabet that was most likely invented by Ulfilas himself for his translation. Some scholars (such as Braune) claim that it was derived from the Greek alphabet only while others maintain that there are some Gothic letters of Runic or Latin origin. A standardized system

7198-408: The Gotones (or Gothones) and the neighbouring Rugii and Lemovii were Germani who carried round shields and short swords, and lived near the ocean, beyond the Vandals. He described them as "ruled by kings, a little more strictly than the other German tribes". In another notable work, the Annals , Tacitus writes that the Gotones had assisted Catualda , a young Marcomannic exile, in overthrowing

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7316-415: The Greek of that period is well documented, it is possible to reconstruct much of Gothic pronunciation from translated texts. In addition, the way in which non-Greek names are transcribed in the Greek Bible and in Ulfilas's Bible is very informative. In general, Gothic consonants are devoiced at the ends of words. Gothic is rich in fricative consonants (although many of them may have been approximants ; it

7434-547: The Greuthungi and Thervingi became heavily Romanized during the 4th century. This came about through trade with the Romans, as well as through Gothic membership of a military covenant, which was based in Byzantium and involved pledges of military assistance. Reportedly, 40,000 Goths were brought by Constantine to defend Constantinople in his later reign, and the Palace Guard was thereafter mostly composed of Germanic warriors, as Roman soldiers by this time had largely lost military value. The Goths increasingly became soldiers in

7552-441: The Greuthungi and were subjects of the Huns. Procopius interpreted the name Visigoth as "western Goths" and the name Ostrogoth as "eastern Goth", reflecting the geographic distribution of the Gothic realms at that time. A people closely related to the Goths, the Gepids, were also living under Hunnic domination. A smaller group of Goths were the Crimean Goths , who remained in Crimea and maintained their Gothic identity well into

7670-441: The Gythones (or Gutones) as living east of the Vistula in Sarmatia, between the Veneti and the Fenni . In an earlier chapter he mentions a people called the Gutae (or Gautae) as living in southern Scandia . These Gutae are probably the same as the later Gauti mentioned by Procopius. Wolfram suggests that there were close relations between the Gythones and Gutae, and that they might have been of common origin. Beginning in

7788-419: The Hunnic thrust into Europe and the Roman Empire was an attempt to subdue the independent Goths in the west. The Huns fell upon the Thervingi, and Athanaric sought refuge in the mountains (referred to as Caucaland in the sagas). Ambrose makes a passing reference to Athanaric's royal titles before 376 in his De Spiritu Sancto (On the Holy Spirit). Battles between the Goths and the Huns are described in

7906-417: The Indo-European root *so , *seh 2 , *tod ; cognate to the Greek article ὁ, ἡ, τό and the Latin is tud ) can be used as an article, allowing constructions of the type definite article + weak adjective + noun . The interrogative pronouns begin with ƕ- , which derives from the proto-Indo-European consonant *kʷ that was present at the beginning of all interrogatives in proto-Indo-European, cognate with

8024-407: The Northwest Germanic (maybe even the West Germanic ) languages even more. The date by which such a grouping must have dissolved—in that innovations ceased to be shared—is also contentious, though it seems unlikely to have persisted after 500 AD, by which time the Anglo-Saxons had migrated to England and the Elbe Germanic tribes had settled in Southern Germany. The evidence for Northwest Germanic

8142-416: The Northwest Germanic and the Gotho-Nordic groupings. However, these are standardly taken to be the result of late areal contacts, based the cultural contacts across the Alps in the 5th and 6th centuries, reflected in the Christian loanwords from Gothic into Old High German. Gotho-Nordic Gothic is an extinct East Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths . It is known primarily from

8260-465: The Proto-Germanic verb * geuta- , which means "to pour". The similarity of these Scandiavian names has long been noted by scholars in connection with the 6th-century book Getica ( c.  551 ), by the historian Jordanes who wrote that the Goths originated on Scandza many centuries earlier, and moved to the Vistula delta. However, the accuracy of Jordanes' account for such early gothic history has been questioned by scholars. A people called

8378-548: The Roman Empire continued, In 250–51, the Gothic king Cniva captured the city of Philippopolis and inflicted a devastating defeat upon the Romans at the Battle of Abrittus , in which the Roman Emperor Decius was killed. This was one of the most disastrous defeats in the history of the Roman army. The first Gothic seaborne raids took place in the 250s. The first two incursions into Asia Minor took place between 253 and 256, and are attributed to Boranoi by Zosimus . This may not be an ethnic term but may just mean "people from

8496-488: The Roman Empire. Soon afterwards, Fritigern , a rival of Athanaric, converted to Arianism, gaining the favor of Valens. Athanaric and Fritigern thereafter fought a civil war in which Athanaric appears to have been victorious. Athanaric thereafter carried out a crackdown on Christianity in his realm. Around 375 the Huns overran the Alans , an Iranian people living to the east of the Goths, and then, along with Alans, invaded

8614-621: The Roman armies in the 4th century leading to a significant Germanization of the Roman Army. Without the recruitment of Germanic warriors in the Roman Army, the Roman Empire would not have survived for as long as it did. Goths who gained prominent positions in the Roman military include Gainas , Tribigild , Fravitta and Aspar . Mardonius , a Gothic eunuch, was the childhood tutor and later adviser of Roman emperor Julian , on whom he had an immense influence. The Gothic penchant for wearing skins became fashionable in Constantinople,

8732-708: The Roman army. In the aftermath of the Hunnic onslaught, two major groups of the Goths would eventually emerge, the Visigoths and Ostrogoths . Visigoths means the "Goths of the west", while Ostrogoths means "Goths of the east". The Visigoths, led by the Balti dynasty , claimed descent from the Thervingi and lived as foederati inside Roman territory, while the Ostrogoths, led by the Amali dynasty , claimed descent from

8850-626: The Romans, the Thervingi invaded the territory of the Sarmatians of the Tisza . In this conflict, the Thervingi were led by Vidigoia , "the bravest of the Goths" and were victorious, although Vidigoia was killed. Jordanes states that Aoric was succeeded by Geberic , "a man renowned for his valor and noble birth", who waged war on the Hasdingi Vandals and their king Visimar , forcing them to settle in Pannonia under Roman protection. Both

8968-463: The Romans. After Gallienus was assassinated outside Milan in the summer of 268 in a plot led by high officers in his army, Claudius was proclaimed emperor and headed to Rome to establish his rule. Claudius' immediate concerns were with the Alamanni , who had invaded Raetia and Italy. After he defeated them in the Battle of Lake Benacus , he was finally able to take care of the invasions in

9086-464: The Thervingi, there were also populations of Taifali , Sarmatians and other Iranian peoples, Dacians , Daco-Romans and other Romanized populations. According to Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks (The Saga of Hervör and Heidrek), a 13th-century legendary saga , Árheimar was the capital of Reidgotaland , the land of the Goths. The saga states that it was located on the Dnieper river. Jordanes refers to

9204-460: The Thervingian king Ariaric , was captured. Eusebius , a historian who wrote in Greek in the third century, wrote that in 334, Constantine evacuated approximately 300,000  Sarmatians from the north bank of the Danube after a revolt of the Sarmatians' slaves. From 335 to 336, Constantine, continuing his Danube campaign, defeated many Gothic tribes. Having been driven from the Danube by

9322-643: The Vandili. Pliny classifies the Vandili as one of the five principal "German races", along with the coastal Ingvaeones , Istvaeones , Irminones , and Peucini . In an earlier chapter Pliny writes that the 4th century BC traveler Pytheas encountered a people called the Guiones . Some scholars have equated these Guiones with the Gutones, but the authenticity of the Pytheas account is uncertain. In his work Germania from around 98 AD, Tacitus writes that

9440-599: The beginning of the Marcomannic Wars . By 200 AD, Wielbark Goths were probably being recruited into the Roman army . According to Jordanes, the Goths entered Oium , part of Scythia, under the king Filimer , where they defeated the Spali . This migration account partly corresponds with the archaeological evidence. The name Spali may mean "the giants" in Slavic , and the Spali were thus probably not Slavs . In

9558-504: The characteristic change /u/ > /iː/ (English), /uː/ > /yː/ (German), /oː/ > /øː/ (ON and Danish) due to i-umlaut; the Gothic form shows no such change. Goths The Goths were a Germanic people who played a major role in the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the emergence of medieval Europe . They were first reported by Graeco-Roman authors in the 3rd century AD, living north of

9676-410: The correspondence between spelling and sound for consonants: It is possible to determine more or less exactly how the Gothic of Ulfilas was pronounced, primarily through comparative phonetic reconstruction. Furthermore, because Ulfilas tried to follow the original Greek text as much as possible in his translation, it is known that he used the same writing conventions as those of contemporary Greek. Since

9794-488: The decisive attack in the battle. Some survivors were resettled within the empire, while others were incorporated into the Roman army. The battle ensured the survival of the Roman Empire for another two centuries. In 270, after the death of Claudius, Goths under the leadership of Cannabaudes again launched an invasion of the Roman Empire , but were defeated by Aurelian , who, however, did surrender Dacia beyond

9912-466: The declension of the Gothic adjective blind (English: "blind"), compared with the an -stem noun guma "man, human" and the a -stem noun dags "day": This table is, of course, not exhaustive. (There are secondary inflexions of various sorts not described here.) An exhaustive table of only the types of endings that Gothic took is presented below. Gothic adjectives follow noun declensions closely; they take same types of inflection. Gothic inherited

10030-416: The definite determiners (such as the definite article sa / þata / sō ) while indefinite adjectives are used in other circumstances., Indefinite adjectives generally use a combination of a -stem and ō -stem endings, and definite adjectives use a combination of an -stem and ōn -stem endings. The concept of "strong" and "weak" declensions that is prevalent in the grammar of many other Germanic languages

10148-524: The early 3rd century AD, western Scythia was inhabited by the agricultural Zarubintsy culture and the nomadic Sarmatians . Prior to the Sarmatians, the area had been settled by the Bastarnae , who are believed to have carried out a migration similar to the Goths in the 3rd century BC. Peter Heather considers the Filimer story to be at least partially derived from Gothic oral tradition. The fact that

10266-516: The early Germanic languages, given their close geographic position over a long period of time.) Under such an assumption, an early close relationship between Nordic and Gothic dialects does not exclude a later similar relationship between remaining North and West Germanic groups, once the Gothic migration had started in the 2nd or 3rd century. There are also common innovations in Old High German and Gothic, which would appear to challenge both

10384-516: The empire. One group of these, initially led by their king Alaric I , were the precursors of the Visigoths , and their successors eventually establishing a Visigothic Kingdom in Spain at Toledo . Meanwhile, Goths under Hunnic rule gained their independence in the 5th century, most importantly the Ostrogoths . Under their king Theodoric the Great , these Goths established an Ostrogothic Kingdom in Italy at Ravenna . The Ostrogothic Kingdom

10502-480: The end of a word, to their voiced form; another such example is wileid-u "do you ( pl. ) want" from wileiþ "you ( pl. ) want". If the first word has a preverb attached, the clitic actually splits the preverb from the verb: ga-u-láubjats "do you both believe...?" from galáubjats "you both believe". Another such clitic is -uh "and", appearing as -h after a vowel: ga-h-mēlida "and he wrote" from gamēlida "he wrote", urreis nim-uh "arise and take!" from

10620-640: The exception of a few runic inscriptions . This means that direct comparisons between Gothic and the other Germanic languages are not necessarily good evidence for subgroupings, since the distance in time must also be taken into account. The following shared innovations, which must have taken place in Proto-Northwest Germanic , can be noted: Many common innovations are of post-Proto-Northwest Germanic date, however. These could have spread through an already differentiated dialect continuum, or have been present in latent form and solidified only in

10738-536: The expanding Goths appear to have preserved their Gothic language during their migration suggests that their movement involved a fairly large number of people. By the mid-3rd century AD, the Wielbark culture had contributed to the formation of the Chernyakhov culture in Scythia. This strikingly uniform culture came to stretch from the Danube in the west to the Don in the east. It is believed to have been dominated by

10856-443: The full set of Indo-European pronouns: personal pronouns (including reflexive pronouns for each of the three grammatical persons ), possessive pronouns , both simple and compound demonstratives , relative pronouns , interrogatives and indefinite pronouns . Each follows a particular pattern of inflection (partially mirroring the noun declension), much like other Indo-European languages. One particularly noteworthy characteristic

10974-538: The historian Dexippus , pushed the invaders to the north where they were intercepted by the Roman army under Gallienus . He won an important victory near the Nessos ( Nestos ) river, on the boundary between Macedonia and Thrace , the Dalmatian cavalry of the Roman army earning a reputation as good fighters. Reported barbarian casualties were 3,000 men. Subsequently, the Heruli leader Naulobatus came to terms with

11092-561: The imperative form nim "take". After iþ or any indefinite besides sums "some" and anþar "another", - uh cannot be placed; in the latter category, this is only because indefinite determiner phrases cannot move to the front of a clause. Unlike, for example, Latin - que , - uh can only join two or more main clauses. In all other cases, the word jah "and" is used, which can also join main clauses. More than one such clitics can occur in one word: diz-uh-þan-sat ijōs "and then he seized them ( fem. )" from dissat "he seized" (notice again

11210-556: The individual dialects. Postulated common innovations in North Germanic and Gothic, which therefore challenge the Northwest Germanic hypothesis, include: A minority opinion is able to harmonize these two hypotheses by denying the genetic reality of both Northwest Germanic and Gotho-Nordic, seeing them rather as mere cover terms indicating close areal contacts. (Such areal contacts would have been quite strong among

11328-410: The last decades of the 3rd century, large numbers of Carpi are recorded as fleeing Dacia for the Roman Empire, having probably been driven from the area by Goths. In 332, Constantine helped the Sarmatians to settle on the north banks of the Danube to defend against the Goths' attacks and thereby enforce the Roman border. Around 100,000 Goths were reportedly killed in battle, and Aoric , son of

11446-415: The location of the stress depends on the type of compound: For example, with comparable words from modern Germanic languages: Gothic preserves many archaic Indo-European features that are not always present in modern Germanic languages, in particular the rich Indo-European declension system. Gothic had nominative , accusative , genitive and dative cases , as well as vestiges of a vocative case that

11564-525: The lower Danube area and in isolated mountain regions in Crimea as late as the second half of the 18th century. Lacking certain sound changes characteristic of Gothic, however, Crimean Gothic cannot be a lineal descendant of the language attested in the Codex Argenteus. The existence of such early attested texts makes Gothic a language of considerable interest in comparative linguistics . Only

11682-487: The middle of the 2nd century, the Wielbark culture shifted southeast towards the Black Sea . During this time the Wielbark culture is believed to have ejected and partially absorbed peoples of the Przeworsk culture. This was part of a wider southward movement of eastern Germanic tribes, which was probably caused by massive population growth. As a result, other tribes were pushed towards the Roman Empire , contributing to

11800-517: The name Gutones . The equation between Gutones and later Goths is disputed by several historians. Around 15 AD, Strabo mentions the Butones, Lugii , and Semnones as part of a large group of peoples who came under the domination of the Marcomannic king Maroboduus . The "Butones" are generally equated with the Gutones. The Lugii have sometimes been considered the same people as

11918-521: The north in the forest steppe , suggesting Gothic domination of this area. Peter Heather on the other hand, contends that the extent of Ermanaric's power is exaggerated. Ermanaric's possible dominance of the Volga - Don trade routes has led historian Gottfried Schramm to consider his realm a forerunner of the Viking -founded state of Kievan Rus' . In the western part of Gothic territories, dominated by

12036-452: The north". It is unknown if Goths were involved in these first raids. Gregory Thaumaturgus attributes a third attack to Goths and Boradoi, and claims that some, "forgetting that they were men of Pontus and Christians," joined the invaders. An unsuccessful attack on Pityus was followed in the second year by another, which sacked Pityus and Trabzon and ravaged large areas in the Pontus . In

12154-487: The original Gothic script and a "normalized" one that adds diacritics ( macrons and acute accents ) to certain vowels to clarify the pronunciation or, in certain cases, to indicate the Proto-Germanic origin of the vowel in question. The latter system is usually used in the academic literature. The following table shows the correspondence between spelling and sound for vowels: Notes: The following table shows

12272-404: The question word: Gothic has two clitic particles placed in the second position in a sentence, in accordance with Wackernagel's Law . One such clitic particle is - u , indicating a yes–no question or an indirect question, like Latin - ne : The prepositional phrase without the clitic - u appears as af þus silbin : the clitic causes the reversion of originally voiced fricatives, unvoiced at

12390-539: The region as Oium. In the 360s, Athanaric , son of Aoric and leader of the Thervingi, supported the usurper Procopius against the Eastern Roman Emperor Valens . In retaliation, Valens invaded the territories of Athanaric and defeated him , but was unable to achieve a decisive victory. Athanaric and Valens thereupon negotiated a peace treaty, favorable to the Thervingi, on a boat in the Danube river, as Athanaric refused to set his feet within

12508-419: The root with the first consonant in the root plus aí ) but without adding a suffix in either case. This parallels the Greek and Sanskrit perfects . The dichotomy is still present in modern Germanic languages: Verbal conjugation in Gothic have two grammatical voices : the active and the medial; three numbers: singular, dual (except in the third person) and plural; two tenses: present and preterite (derived from

12626-469: The rule of Maroboduus. Prior to this, it is probable that both the Gutones and Vandals had been subjects of the Marcomanni. Sometime after settling Gothiscandza , Jordanes writes that the Goths defeated the neighbouring Vandals. Wolfram believes the Gutones freed themselves from Vandalic domination at the beginning of the 2nd century AD. In his Geography from around 150 AD, Ptolemy mentions

12744-509: The scale of the invasion. After failing to storm some towns on the coasts of the western Black Sea and the Danube ( Tomi , Marcianopolis ), the invaders attacked Byzantium and Chrysopolis . Part of their fleet was wrecked, either because of the Goth's inexperience in sailing through the violent currents of the Propontis or because they were defeated by the Roman navy. Then they entered

12862-506: The scheming of Fritigern. Athanaric received a warm reception by Theodosius, praised the Roman Emperor in return, and was honoured with a magnificent funeral by the emperor following his death shortly after his arrival. In 382, Theodosius decided to enter peace negotiations with the Thervingi, which were concluded on 3 October 382. The Thervingi were subsequently made foederati of the Romans in Thrace and obliged to provide troops to

12980-420: The territory of the Goths. A source for this period is the Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus , who wrote that Hunnic domination of the Gothic kingdoms in Scythia began in the 370s. It is possible that the Hunnic attack came as a response to the Gothic expansion eastwards. Upon the suicide of Ermanaric (died 376), the Greuthungi gradually fell under Hunnic domination. Christopher I. Beckwith suggests that

13098-538: The third year, a much larger force devastated large areas of Bithynia and the Propontis , including the cities of Chalcedon , Nicomedia , Nicaea , Apamea Myrlea , Cius and Bursa . By the end of the raids, the Goths had seized control over Crimea and the Bosporus and captured several cities on the Euxine coast, including Olbia and Tyras , which enabled them to engage in widespread naval activities. After

13216-592: The time of the Nordic Bronze Age and the Lusatian culture . Its inhabitants in the Wielbark period are usually thought to have been Germanic peoples, such as the Goths and Rugii. Jordanes writes that the Goths, soon after settling Gothiscandza , seized the lands of the Ulmerugi (Rugii). The Goths are generally believed to have been first attested by Greco-Roman sources in the 1st century under

13334-458: The type of Indo-European conjugation called ' thematic ' because they insert a vowel derived from the reconstructed proto-Indo-European phonemes *e or *o between roots and inflexional suffixes. The pattern is also present in Greek and Latin: The other conjugation, called ' athematic ', in which suffixes are added directly to roots, exists only in unproductive vestigial forms in Gothic, just like in Greek and Latin. The most important such instance

13452-520: The voicing of diz- ), ga-u-ƕa-sēƕi "whether he saw anything" from gasēƕi "he saw". For the most part, Gothic is known to be significantly closer to Proto-Germanic than any other Germanic language except for that of the (scantily attested) Ancient Nordic runic inscriptions, which has made it invaluable in the reconstruction of Proto-Germanic . In fact, Gothic tends to serve as the primary foundation for reconstructing Proto-Germanic . The reconstructed Proto-Germanic conflicts with Gothic only when there

13570-841: Was destroyed by the Eastern Roman Empire in the 6th century, while the Visigothic Kingdom was largely conquered by the Umayyad Caliphate in the early 8th century, with a remnant in Asturias which would go on to initiate the Reconquista under Pelagius . Remnants of Gothic communities in Crimea , known as the Crimean Goths , established a culture that survived for more than a thousand years, although Goths would eventually cease to exist as

13688-563: Was proposed by Hans Kuhn as an alternative to the older view of a Gotho-Nordic versus West Germanic division. This older view is represented by mid 20th-century proposals to assume the existence by 250 BC of five general groups to be distinguishable: North Germanic in Southern Scandinavia excluding Jutland; North Sea Germanic along the middle Rhine and Jutland; Rhine-Weser Germanic; Elbe Germanic; and East Germanic. The Northwest Germanic theory challenges these proposals, since it

13806-526: Was reinterpreted as present tense. The Gothic word wáit , from the proto-Indo-European *woid-h 2 e ("to see" in the perfect), corresponds exactly to its Sanskrit cognate véda and in Greek to ϝοἶδα. Both etymologically should mean "I have seen" (in the perfect sense) but mean "I know" (in the preterite-present meaning). Latin follows the same rule with nōuī ("I have learned" and "I know"). The preterite-present verbs include áigan ("to possess") and kunnan ("to know") among others. The word order of Gothic

13924-538: Was sometimes identical to the nominative and sometimes to the accusative. The three genders of Indo-European were all present. Nouns and adjectives were inflected according to one of two grammatical numbers : the singular and the plural. Nouns can be divided into numerous declensions according to the form of the stem: a , ō , i , u , an , ōn , ein , r , etc. Adjectives have two variants, indefinite and definite (sometimes indeterminate and determinate ), with definite adjectives normally used in combination with

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