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Gothic alphabet

Alphabet used for writing the Gothic language From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gothic alphabet
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For other uses, see Gothic script.

The Gothic alphabet is an alphabet for writing the Gothic language. It was developed in the 4th century AD by Ulfilas (or Wulfila), a Gothic preacher of Cappadocian Greek descent, for the purpose of translating the Bible.[a]

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This article contains Gothic characters. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of letters.

The alphabet essentially uses uncial forms of the Greek alphabet, with a few additional letters from the Latin and Runic alphabets to express Gothic phonology.

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Origin

Ulfilas is thought to have consciously chosen to avoid the use of the older Runic alphabet for this purpose, as it was heavily connected with pagan beliefs and customs.[2] Also, the Greek-based script probably helped to integrate the Gothic nation into the dominant Greco-Roman culture around the Black Sea.[3]

Letters

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Below is a table of the Gothic alphabet.[b] Two letters used in its transliteration are not used in current English: thorn ⟨þ⟩ (representing /θ/), and hwair ⟨ƕ⟩ (representing /hʷ/).

As with the Greek alphabet, Gothic letters were also assigned numerical values. When used as numerals, letters were written either between two dots (•𐌹𐌱• = 12) or with an overline (𐌹𐌱 = 12). Two letters, 𐍁 (90) and 𐍊 (900), have no phonetic value.

The letter names are recorded in a 9th-century manuscript of Alcuin (Codex Vindobonensis 795). Most of them seem to be Gothic forms of names also appearing in the rune poems. The names are given in their attested forms followed by the reconstructed Gothic forms and their meanings.[c]

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Most of the letters clearly bear a one-to-one correspondence to matching letters of the Greek alphabet,[10] having similar forms and sounds and sharing the same alphabetical order and value as numerals.

However, a few letters have uncertain or disputed origins, and may have been taken from Latin or possibly (more controversially[11]) Runic letters. These are:

  • 𐌵 (q). Its alphabetical order and its numeric value of 6 correspond to Greek digamma or stigma (), which may also be the source of its form.[11] Other possible sources are a cursive variant of kappa (ϰ), which could strongly resemble a u,[12] or Latin minuscule q.[13]
  • 𐌷 (h). Its alphabetical order and its numeric value of 8 correspond to Greek eta (η). Its form and phonetic value may be borrowed from Latin[14] uncial h;[15] however, Snædal (2015:98) argues that there is no need to use Latin to explain the form or sound value of the Gothic letter.
  • 𐌸 (þ). Its alphabetical order and its numeric value of 9 correspond to Greek theta (θ) /θ/. Its form may be derived from theta via the 4th-century cursive form ϑ.[16] Alternatively, its form has been argued to derive from Greek phi (Φ)[17] /f/ or psi (Ψ) /ps/ with phonetic reassignment, or from Runic ᚦ.[18]
  • 𐌾 (j). Its alphabetical order and its numeric value of 60 correspond to Greek xi (ξ) /ks/. Its form may be derived from Latin G /ɡ/,[19] Greek ξ, the Greek epsilon-iota ligature, or Runic ᛃ[20] (the last of which is itself speculated to be derived from Greek epsilon-iota ligature).
  • 𐌿 (u). Its alphabetical order and its numeric value of 70 correspond to Greek omicron (ο) (originally named οὖ /uː/[21]). Its form may be derived from Greek ο or from Runic ᚢ /u/.[22]
  • 𐍈 (ƕ). Its alphabetical order and its numeric value of 700 correspond to Greek psi (ψ) /ps/. Its form is potentially derived from Greek Θ /θ/ with phonetic reassignment; or from Greek Ο /o/; possibly the letterform was switched with 𐌸;[11] also possibly pictographic in nature, with O for rounding and • for aspiration.[23]
  • 𐍉 (o). Its alphabetical order and its numeric value of 800 correspond to Greek omega (ω). Its form may be derived from Greek ω or from Runic ᛟ.[24][3] An alternative proposal[25] derives it from a cursive form of Greek omicron (ο): Snædal (2015:103) argues that this better matches the shape of the Gothic letter (though the variant of Greek omicron is often vertically mirrored compared to the Gothic letter), and that the use of Greek omicron to represent close-mid /o/ would be symmetrical to the use of Greek epsilon to represent close-mid /e/. On the other hand, Miller argues that the idea that 𐍉 was derived from omicron does not explain why it has the same numerical value and alphabetical position as omega, with the (pronounced) Gothic alphabet being ordered from 𐌰 to 𐍉 like the Greek alphabet is ordered from Α to Ω.[25]

𐍂 (r), 𐍃 (s) and 𐍆 (f) appear to be derived from their Latin equivalents rather than from the Greek, although the equivalent Runic letters (ᚱ, ᛋ and ᚠ), assumed to have been part of the Gothic futhark, possibly played some role in this choice.[26][27] However, Snædal claims that "Wulfila's knowledge of runes was questionable to say the least", as the paucity of inscriptions attests that knowledge and use of runes was rare among the East Germanic peoples.[11] Miller refutes this claim, stating that it is "not implausible" that Wulfila used a runic script in his creation of the Gothic alphabet, noting six other authors—Wimmer, Mensel, Hermann, d'Alquen, Rousseau, and Falluomini—who support the idea of the Gothic alphabet having runic contributions.[25] Some variants of 𐍃 (s) are shaped like a sigma and more obviously derive from the Greek Σ.[11]

𐍇 (x) is only used in proper names and loanwords containing Greek Χ (xristus "Christ", galiugaxristus "Pseudo-Christ", zaxarias "Zacharias", aiwxaristia "eucharist").[28]

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Diacritics and punctuation

Diacritics and punctuation used in the Codex Argenteus include a trema placed on 𐌹 i, transliterated as ï, in general applied to express diaeresis, the interpunct (·) and colon (:) as well as overlines to indicate sigla (such as xaus for xristaus) and numerals.

Unicode

The Gothic alphabet was added to the Unicode Standard in March 2001 with the release of version 3.1.

The Unicode block for Gothic is U+10330–U+1034F in the Supplementary Multilingual Plane. As older software that uses UCS-2 (the predecessor of UTF-16) assumes that all Unicode codepoints can be expressed as 16 bit numbers (U+FFFF or lower, the Basic Multilingual Plane), problems may be encountered using the Gothic alphabet Unicode range and others outside of the Basic Multilingual Plane.

Gothic[1][2]
Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)
 0123456789ABCDEF
U+1033x 𐌰 𐌱 𐌲 𐌳 𐌴 𐌵 𐌶 𐌷 𐌸 𐌹 𐌺 𐌻 𐌼 𐌽 𐌾 𐌿
U+1034x 𐍀 𐍁 𐍂 𐍃 𐍄 𐍅 𐍆 𐍇 𐍈 𐍉 𐍊
Notes
1.^ As of Unicode version 16.0
2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points
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See also

Notes

  1. According to the testimony of the historians Philostorgius, Socrates of Constantinople and Sozomen.[1]
  2. For a discussion of the Gothic alphabet see also.[4]
  3. The forms which are not attested in the Gothic corpus are marked with an asterisk. For a detailed discussion of the reconstructed forms, cf.[5] For a survey of the relevant literature, cf.[6]
  4. Zacher arrives at *iuya, *iwja or *ius, cognate to ON ȳr, OE īw, ēow, OHG īwa "yew tree", though he admits having no ready explanation for the form ezec; cf.[7]
  5. conventionally called *algiz or *elhaz, but unclear original name
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References

Sources

Further reading

External links

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