Content-Type: text/html

# Gothic language

HomePage | RecentChanges | Preferences
You can edit this page right now! It's a free, community project

The Gothic Language, the only known Eastern Germanic language, is known to us by a translation of the Bible dating from the 4th century AD, of which some books survive. The translation was apparently done somewhere in the Balkans region, by people in close contact with Greek Christian culture. The language used is Germanic but has major differences to other known Germanic languages.

It appears that the Gothic Bible was used by the Visigoths in Spain until circa 700 AD, and perhaps for a time in Italy, the Balkans and what is now the Ukraine.

Apart from the Bible, the only other Gothic document is a few pages of commentary on the Gospel according to St. John. This document is usually called the "Skereins" (please check spelling).

In addition, there are numerous short fragments and Runic inscriptions that are known or suspected to be Gothic. (In this context a fragment usually means a single word, or a short cryptic phrase.) Some scholars think that these inscriptions are not Gothic (see Braune/Ebbinghaus? "Gotische Grammatik" Tübingen 1981)

The Gothic Bible and Skereins were written using a special alphabet. See Gothic alphabet.

The Gothic alphabet was probably created by the man who also translated the Bible into the "razda" (language). Some scholars (e.g. Braune) claim that it was derived from the Greek alphabet only, others maintain that there are also some Gothic letters of runic or Latin origin.

There are very few references to the Gothic language in secondary sources after about 800AD, so perhaps it was rarely used by that date. In evaluating mediaeval texts that mention the Goths, it must be noted that many writers used "Goths" to mean any Germanic people in eastern Europe, many of whom certainly did not use the Gothic language as known from the Gothic Bible. Some writers even refered to Slavic speaking people as Goths.

There is also the case of the "Crimean Goths". We have a few fragments of their language dating to the 16th Century AD. Assuming those fragments are genuine, it appears to be a different language to the one used in the Gothic Bible (but is still certainly Germanic).

(Sorry this is by a non expert just from memory and should be rewritten by someone who actually knows.)

HomePage | RecentChanges | Preferences
You can edit this page right now! It's a free, community project
Edit text of this page | View other revisions
Last edited August 13, 2001 11:54 am (diff)
Search: