:''Words in Gothic written in this article are transliterated into the Roman alphabet using the system described on the Gothic alphabet page.''

Coordinates	°′″N°′″N
Name	Gothic
Nativename	𐌲𐌿𐍄𐌹𐍃𐌺 ''Gutisk''
Region	Oium, Dacia, Italy, Gallia Narbonensis, Hispania, Crimea.
Extinct	mostly extinct by the 8th or 9th century, remnants may have lingered into the 17th century
Familycolor	Indo-European
Fam2	Germanic
Fam3	East Germanic
Script	Gothic alphabet
Iso2	got|iso3got|lingua52-ADA
Notice	IPA}}

Gothic is an extinct Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from the Codex Argenteus, a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic language with a sizable Text corpus. All others, including Burgundian and Vandalic, are known, if at all, only from proper names that survived in historical accounts, and from loan-words in other languages such as Spanish and French.

As a Germanic language, Gothic is a part of the Indo-European language family. It is the earliest Germanic language that is attested in any sizable texts, but lacks any modern descendants. The oldest documents in Gothic date back to the 4th century. The language was in decline by the mid-6th century, due, in part, to 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 a church language when the Visigoths converted to Catholicism in 589). The language survived as a domestic language in the Iberian peninsula (modern Spain and Portugal) as late as the 8th century, and Frankish author Walafrid Strabo wrote that it was still spoken in the lower Danube area and in isolated mountain regions in Crimea in the early 9th century (see Crimean Gothic). Gothic-seeming terms found in later (post-9th century) manuscripts may not belong to the same language.

The existence of such early attested corpora makes it a language of considerable interest in comparative linguistics.

History and evidence

There are only a few surviving documents in Gothic, not enough to completely reconstruct the language. This is especially true considering that most Gothic corpora are translations or glosses of other languages (namely, Greek), so that foreign linguistic elements most certainly influenced the texts.

The largest body of surviving documentation consists of codices written and commissioned by the Arian bishop Ulfilas (also known as ''Wulfila'', 311-382), who was the leader of a community of Visigothic Christians in the Roman province of Moesia (modern Bulgaria/Romania). He commissioned a translation of the Greek Bible into the Gothic language, of which roughly three-quarters of the New Testament and some fragments of the Old Testament have survived.

:*Codex Argenteus (Uppsala) (and the Speyer fragment): 188 leaves. ::The best preserved Gothic manuscript, the ''Codex Argenteus'', dates from the 6th century and was preserved and transmitted by northern Ostrogoths in modern Italy. It contains a large part of the four Gospels. Since it is a translation from Greek, the language of the ''Codex Argenteus'' is replete with borrowed Greek words and Greek usages. The syntax in particular is often copied directly from the Greek. :*Codex Ambrosianus (Milan) (and the Codex Taurinensis): Five parts, totaling 193 leaves. ::The ''Codex Ambrosianus'' contains scattered passages from the New Testament (including parts of the Gospels and the Epistles), of the Old Testament (Nehemiah), and some commentaries known as ''Skeireins''. It is therefore likely that the text had been somewhat modified by copyists. :*Codex Gissensis (Gießen): 1 leaf, fragments of Luke 23-24. It was found in Egypt in 1907, but destroyed by water damage in 1945. :*Codex Carolinus: (Wolfenbüttel): 4 leaves, fragments of Romans 11-15. :*Codex Vaticanus Latinus 5750: 3 leaves, pages 57/58, 59/60 and 61/62 of the Skeireins.

A scattering of old documents: alphabets, calendars, glosses found in a number of manuscripts and a few runic inscriptions (between 3 and 13) that are known to be or suspected to be Gothic. Some scholars believe that these inscriptions are not at all Gothic (see Braune/Ebbinghaus "Gotische Grammatik" Tübingen 1981)

A small dictionary of more than eighty words, and a song without translation, compiled by the Fleming Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, the Habsburg ambassador to the court of the Ottoman Empire in Istanbul from 1555 to 1562, who was curious to find out about the language and by arrangement met two speakers of Crimean Gothic and listed the terms in his compilation ''Turkish Letters''. These terms are from nearly a millennium later and are therefore not representative of the language of Ulfilas. See Crimean Gothic.

There have been unsubstantiated reports of the discovery of other parts of Ulfilas' bible. Heinrich May in 1968 claimed to have found in England 12 leaves of a palimpsest containing parts of the Gospel of Matthew. The claim was never substantiated.

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. It appears that the Gothic Bible was used by the Visigoths in Iberia until circa 700 AD, and perhaps for a time in Italy, the Balkans and what is now Ukraine. In exterminating Arianism, many texts in Gothic were probably expunged and overwritten as palimpsests, or collected and burned. Apart from Biblical texts, the only substantial Gothic document which still exists, and the only lengthy text known to have been composed originally in the Gothic language, is the "Skeireins", a few pages of commentary on the Gospel of John.

There are very few references to the Gothic language in secondary sources after about 800. In ''De incrementis ecclesiae Christianae'' (840/2), Walafrid Strabo, who lived in Swabia, speaks of a group of monks, who reported that "even now certain peoples in Scythia (Dobrudja), especially around Tomis" spoke a ''sermo Theotiscus'' (Germanic language), which was the language of the Gothic translation of the Bible, and used such a liturgy. He also refers to the use of Ulfilas' bible in a region probably around Lake Constance. In the former case, the language spoken by the monks was probably an incipient Crimean Gothic.

In evaluating medieval texts that mention the Goths, it must be noted that many writers 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 some Slavic-speaking people,like Croats, as Goths.

The relationship between the language of the Crimean Goths and Ulfilas' Gothic is less clear. The few fragments of their language from the 16th century show significant differences from the language of the Gothic Bible, although some of the glosses, such as ''ada'' for "egg", imply a common heritage, and Gothic ''mena'' ("moon"), compared to Crimean Gothic ''mine'', clearly indicates that Crimean Gothic was East Germanic.

Generally, the Gothic language refers to the language of Ulfilas, but the attestations themselves are largely from the 6th century - long after Ulfilas had died. The above list is not exhaustive, and a more extensive list is available on the website of the Wulfila Project.

Alphabet and transliteration

Ulfilas' 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 (e.g. 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.

This Gothic alphabet has nothing to do with blackletter (also called ''Gothic script''), which was used to write the Roman alphabet from the 12th to 14th centuries and evolved into the Fraktur writing later used to write German.

A standardized system is used for transliterating Gothic words into the Roman alphabet. The system mirrors the conventions of the native alphabet, for example writing long as ''ei''. The most notable conventions are:

Macrons represent long ''ā'' and ''ū'' (however, long i appears as ''ei'', following the representation used in the native alphabet). Macrons are often also used in the case of ''ē'' and ''ō''; however, they are sometimes omitted, since these vowels are always long.

What appear as ''ai'' and ''au'' in the native alphabet are written in three different ways in transliteration, according to the origin:

''ái'' and ''áu'', with an accent over the first vowel, represent original Germanic diphthongs and . These do not occur before a vowel.

''aí'' and ''aú'', with an accent over the second vowel, represent original short Germanic vowels , , and . These occur mostly before ''h'', ''ƕ'' and ''r''.

''ai'' and ''au'', with no accent, represent original long Germanic vowels and . These appear only before a vowel.

, which is written with a single character in the native alphabet, is transliterated using the symbol ''ƕ'', which is used only in transliterating Gothic. is written ''þ'', similarly to other Germanic languages. Although is the allophone of occurring before and , it is written ''g'', following the native-alphabet convention (which in turn follows Greek usage). This leads to occasional ambiguities, e.g. ''saggws'' "song" but ''triggws'' "faithful" (cf. English "true").

Sounds

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, we know that he used the same writing conventions as those of contemporary Greek. Since 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' Bible is very informative.

Vowels

Monophthongs	Diphthongs

, and can be either long or short. Gothic writing distinguishes between long and short vowels only for - writing ''i'' for the short form and ''ei'' for the long (a digraph or ''false diphthong''), in imitation of Greek usage (ει = /iː/). Single vowels are sometimes long where a historically present nasal consonant has been dropped in front of an (a case of compensatory lengthening). Thus, the preterite of the verb ''briggan'' "to bring" (English ''bring'', Dutch ''brengen'', German ''bringen'') becomes ''brahta'' (English ''brought'', Dutch ''bracht'', German ''brachte''), from the proto-Germanic *''braŋk-dē''. In detailed transliteration, where the intent is more phonetic transcription, length is noted by a macron (or failing that, often a circumflex): ''brāhta'', ''brâhta''. is found often enough in other contexts: ''brūks'' "useful" (Dutch ''gebruik'', German ''Gebrauch'', Icelandic ''brúk'' "use"). and are long close-mid vowels. They are written as ''e'' and ''o'': '''' "near" (English ''nigh'', Dutch ''nader'', German ''nah''); ''fodjan'' "to feed". and are short open-mid vowels. They are noted using the digraphs ''ai'' and ''au'': ''taihun'' "ten" (Dutch ''tien'', German ''zehn'', Icelandic ''tíu''), ''dauhtar'' "daughter" (Dutch ''dochter'', German ''Tochter'', Icelandic ''dóttir''). In transliterating Gothic, accents are placed on the second vowel of these digraphs ''aí'' and ''aú'' to distinguish them from the original diphthongs ''ái'' and ''áu'': ''taíhun'', ''daúhtar''. In most cases short and are allophones of before . Furthermore, the reduplication syllable of the reduplicating preterites has ''ai'' as well, which is probably pronounced as a short . Finally, short and occur in loan words from Greek and Latin (''aípiskaúpus'' = "bishop", ''laíktjo'' = ''lectio'' "lection", ''Paúntius'' = ''Pontius''). The Germanic diphthongs ''ai'' and ''au'' appear as ''ai'' and ''au'' in Gothic (normally written with an accent on the first vowel to distinguish them from ''ai, au'' < Germanic ''i/e, u''). Some researchers suppose that they were still pronounced as diphthongs in Gothic, i.e. and , whereas others think that they have become long open-mid vowels, i.e. and : ''ains'' "one" (German ''eins'', Icelandic ''einn''), ''augo'' "eye" (German ''Auge'', Icelandic ''auga''). In Latin sources Gothic names with Germanic ''au'' are rendered with ''au'' until the 4th century and ''o'' later on (''Austrogoti'' > ''Ostrogoti''). Long and also occur as allophones of and respectively before a following vowel: ''waian'' "to blow" (Dutch ''waaien'', German ''wehen''), ''bauan'' "to build" (Dutch ''bouwen'', German "bauen", Icelandic ''búa'' "live"), also in Greek words ''Trauada'' "Troad" (Gk. ). (pronounced like German ''ü'' and French ''u'') is a Greek sound used only in borrowed words. It is transliterated as ''w'' in vowel positions: ''azwmus'' "unleavened bread" (< Gk. ). It represents an υ (y) or the diphthong οι (oi) in Greek, both of which were pronounced in period Greek. Since the sound was foreign to Gothic, it was most perhaps pronounced . is a descending diphthong, i.e. and not : ''diups'' "deep" (Dutch ''diep'', German ''tief'', Icelandic ''djúpur''). Greek diphthongs: In Ulfilas' era, all the diphthongs of classical Greek had become simple vowels in speech (''monophthongization''), except for αυ (au) and ευ (eu), which were probably still pronounced and . (They evolved into and in modern Greek.) Ulfilas notes them, in words borrowed from Greek, as ''aw'' and ''aiw'', probably pronounced : ''Pawlus'' "Paul" (Gk. ), ''aíwaggelista'' "evangelist" (Gk. , via the Latin ''evangelista''). Simple vowels and diphthongs (original and spurious ones) can be followed by a , which was likely pronounced as the second element of a diphthong with roughly the sound of . It seems likely that this is more of an instance of phonetic coalescence than of phonological diphthongs (such as, for example, the sound in the French word ''paille'' ("straw"), which is not the diphthong but rather a vowel followed by an approximant): ''alew'' "olive oil" (< Latin ''oleum''), ''snáiws'' ("snow"), ''lasiws'' "tired" (English ''lazy'').

Consonants

!

!colspan=2

!colspan=2

!colspan=2

!colspan=2

!colspan=2

!colspan=2

Laryngeal consonant>Laryngeals

!Plosives

''p''

''b''

''t''

''d''

''?ddj''

''k''

''g''

''q''

''gw''

!Fricatives

''f''

''b''

''þ''

''d''

''s''

''z''

''g, h''

''g''

''''

''h''

!Approximants

''j''

''w''

Nasal consonant>Nasals

''m''

''n''

''g, n''

Lateral approximant>Laterals

''l''

Trill consonant>Trills

''r''

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 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 phoneme which has not become through rhotacization. Furthermore, the doubling of written consonants between vowels suggests that Gothic made distinctions between long and short, or geminated consonants: ''atta'' "dad", ''kunnan'' "to know" (Dutch ''kennen'', German ''kennen'' "to know", Icelandic ''kunna'').

Stops

The voiceless stops , and are regularly noted by ''p'', ''t'' and ''k'' respectively: ''paska'' ("Easter", from the Greek ), ''tuggo'' ("tongue"), ''kalbo'' ("calf"). The stops probably had (non-phonemic) aspiration like in most modern Germanic languages: . The letter ''q'' is probably a voiceless labiovelar stop, (), comparable to the Latin ''qu'': ''qiman'' "to come". In the later Germanic languages this phoneme has become either a consonant cluster of a voiceless velar stop + a labio-velar approximant (English ''qu'') or a simple voiceless velar stop (English ''c, k'') The voiced stops , and are noted by the letters ''b'', ''d'' and ''g''. Like the other Germanic languages, they occurred in word-initial position, when doubled and after a nasal. In addition, they apparently occurred after other consonants, e.g. ''arbi'' "inheritance", ''huzd'' "treasure". (This conclusion is based on their behavior at the end of a word, where they do not change into voiceless fricatives, unlike when occurring after a vowel.) There was probably also a voiced labiovelar stop, , which was written with the digraph ''gw''. It occurred after a nasal, e.g. ''saggws'' "song", or long as a regular outcome of Germanic *''ww'', e.g. ''triggws'' "faithful" (English ''true'', German ''treu'', Icelandic ''tryggur''). Similarly the letters ''ddj'', which is the regular outcome of Germanic *''jj'', may represent a voiced palatal stop, : ''waddjus'' "wall" (Icelandic ''veggur''), ''twaddje'' " two (genitive)" (Icelandic ''tveggja'').

Fricatives

and are usually written ''s'' and ''z''. The latter corresponds to Germanic *''z'' (which has become ''r'' or silent in the other Germanic languages); at the end of a word, it is regularly devoiced to ''s''. E.g. ''saíhs'' "six", ''máiza'' "greater" (English ''more'', Dutch ''meer'', German ''mehr'', Icelandic ''meira'') ~ ''máis'' "more, rather". and , written ''f'' and ''þ'', are voiceless bilabial and voiceless dental fricatives respectively. It is likely that the relatively unstable sound became . ''f'' and ''þ'' are also derived from ''b'' and ''d'' at the ends of words, when they are devoiced and become approximants: ''gif'' "give (imperative)" (infinitive ''giban'': German ''geben''), ''miþ'' "with" (Old English ''mid'', Old Norse ''með'', Dutch ''met'', German ''mit''). is written as ''h'': ''haban'' "to have". It was probably pronounced in word-final position and before a consonant as well (not , since > is written ''g'', not ''h''): ''jah'' "and" (Dutch, German, Scandinavian ''ja'' "yes").

is an allophone of at the end of a word or before a voiceless consonant; it is always written ''g'': ''dags'' "day" (German ''Tag''). In some borrowed Greek words, we find the special letter ''x'', which represents the Greek letter χ (''ch''): ''Xristus'' "Christ" (Gk. ). It may also have signified a . , and are voiced fricatives only found between vowels. They are allophones of , and and are not distinguished from them in writing. may have become , a more stable labiodental form (a case of fortition). In the study of Germanic languages, these phonemes are usually transcribed as '''', '''' and '''' respectively: ''haban'' "to have", ''þiuda'' "people" (Old Norse ''þióð/þiúð'', Dutch ''Diets'', German ''Deutsch'' > English ''Dutch''), ''áugo'' "eye" (English ''eye'', Dutch ''oog'', German ''Auge''). When occurring after a vowel at the end of a word or before a voiceless consonant, these sounds become unvoiced , and , e.g. ''hláifs'' "loaf" but genitive ''hláibis'' "of a loaf", plural ''hláibōs'' "loaves". '''' (also transcribed ''hw'') is a labiovelar variant of (derived from the proto-Indo-European ). It probably was pronounced (a voiceless ) as it is in certain dialects of English and is predominant in Scots, where it is always written as ''wh'': '''' "when", '''' "where", '''' "white".

Sonorants

Gothic has three nasal consonants, of which one is an allophone of the others, found only in complementary distribution with them. Nasals in Gothic, like most languages, are pronounced at the same point of articulation as either the consonant that follows them (assimilation). Therefore, clusters like and are not possible. and are freely distributed - they can be found in any position in a syllable and form minimal pairs except in certain contexts where they are neutralized: before a bilabial consonant becomes , while preceding a dental stop becomes , as per the principle of assimilation described in the previous paragraph. In front of a velar stop, they both become . and are transcribed as ''n'' and ''m'', and in writing neutralisation is marked: ''sniumundo'' ("quickly"). is not a phoneme and cannot appear freely in Gothic. It is present where a nasal consonant is neutralised before a velar stop and is in a complementary distribution with and . Following Greek conventions, it is normally written as ''g'' (sometimes ''n''): ''þagkjan'' "to think", ''sigqan'' "to sink" ~ ''þankeiþ'' "thinks". The cluster ''ggw'' sometimes denotes , but sometimes (see above). is transliterated as ''w'' before a vowel: ''weis'' ("we"), ''twái'' "two" (German ''zwei''). is written as ''j'': ''jer'' "year", ''sakjo'' "strife". is used much as in English and other European languages: ''laggs'' "long", ''mel'' "hour" (English ''meal'',Dutch ''maal'', German ''Mahl'', Icelandic ''mál''). is a trilled (or possibly a flap ): ''raíhts'' "right", ''afar'' "after". , , and act as the nucleus of a syllable ("vowels") after the final consonant of a word or between two consonants. This is also the case in modern English: for example, "bottle" is pronounced in many dialects. Some Gothic examples: ''tagl'' "hair" (English ''tail'', Icelandic ''tagl''), ''máiþms'' "gift", ''táikns'' "sign" (English ''token'', Dutch ''teken'', German ''Zeichen'', Icelandic ''tákn'') and ''tagr'' "tear (as in crying)".

Accentuation and intonation

Accentuation in Gothic can be reconstructed through phonetic comparison, Grimm's law and Verner's law. Gothic used a stress accent rather than the pitch accent of proto-Indo-European. It is indicated by the fact that long vowels and were shortened and the short vowels and were lost in unstressed syllables.

Just as in other Germanic languages, the free moving Indo-European accent was fixed on the first syllable of simple words. (For example, in modern English, nearly all words that do not have accents on the first syllable—except when they have unaccented prefixes as in "beget" or "forgive"--are borrowed from other languages.) Accents do not shift when words are inflected. In most compound words, the location of the stress depends on its placement in the second part:

In compounds where the second word is a ''noun'', the accent is on the first syllable of the first word of the compound.

In compounds where the second word is a ''verb'', the accent falls on the first syllable of the verbal component. Elements prefixed to verbs are otherwise unstressed, except in the context of separable words (words that can be broken in two parts and separated in regular usage, for example, separable verbs in German and Dutch) - in those cases, the prefix is stressed.

Examples: (with comparable words from modern Germanic languages) Non-compound words: ''marka'' "border, borderlands" (English "march" as in the Spanish Marches); ''aftra'' "after"; ''bidjan'' "pray" (Dutch, ''bidden'', German ''bitten'', Icelandic ''biðja'', English ''bid'').

Compound words:

Noun second element: ''guda-láus'' "godless".

Verb second element: ''ga-láubjan'' "believe" (Dutch ''geloven'', German ''glauben'' < Old High German ''g(i)louben'' by syncope of the unaccented ''i'').

Grammar

Morphology

Nouns and adjectives

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 was sometimes identical to the nominative and sometimes to the accusative. The three genders of Indo-European were all present, including the neuter gender of modern German and Icelandic and to some extent modern Dutch, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish - in opposition to the "common gender" (''genus commune'') which those languages apply to both masculine and feminine nouns. Nouns and adjectives were inflected according to one of two grammatical numbers: the singular and the plural.

One of the most striking characteristics of the Germanic languages is the division of nouns between those with ''weak declensions'' (generally those where the root word ends in an ''n'') and those with ''strong declensions'' (those whose roots end in a vowel or an inflexional suffix indicative of a pronoun). This separation is particularly important in Gothic. While a noun can only belong to one class of declensions, depending on the end of the root word, some adjectives can be either strongly or weakly declined, depending on their meaning. An adjective employed with a particular meaning and accompanied by a deictic article, like the demonstrative pronouns ''sa'', ''þata'', or ''so'' which act as definite articles, took a weak declension, while adjectives used with indefinite articles had a strong declension.

This process is found in, e.g., German and Swedish, where adjectives are declined not only according to gender and number, but also according to indeterminate/determinate form: {|style="border-style: solid; border-color: #8080FF; border-width: 1px" |- ! !style="text-align: left; padding: 0 5px;"|German !style="text-align: left; padding: 0 5px;"|Swedish !style="text-align: left; padding: 0 5px;"|English !style="text-align: left; padding: 0 5px;"|Gothic |- !style="text-align: left; padding: 0 5px;"|weak declension |style="padding: 0 5px;"|der lange Mann |style="padding: 0 5px;"|den långe mannen |style="padding: 0 5px;"|the long man |style="padding: 0 5px;"|sa lagga manna |- !style="text-align: left; padding: 0 5px;"|strong declension |style="padding: 0 5px;"|(ein) langer Mann |style="padding: 0 5px;"|(en) lång man |style="padding: 0 5px;"|(a) long man |style="padding: 0 5px;"|ains laggs manna |}

Descriptive adjectives in Gothic (as well as superlatives ending in ''-ist'' and ''-ost'') and the past participle may take either declension. Some pronouns only take the weak declension; for example: ''sama'' (English "same"), adjectives like '''' ("constantly", from the root '''', "time"; compare to the English "while"), comparative adjectives, and present participles. Others, such as ''áins'' ("some"), take only the strong declension.

The table below displays the declension of the Gothic adjective ''blind'' (English: "blind") with a weak noun (''guma'' - "man") and a strong one (''dags'' - "day"):

-o guman -ana -ona gumans -ans

Case	Weak declension					Strong declension
Singular	Noun	Adjective				Noun	Adjective
		root	! M.	! N.	! F.		! root	! M.	! N.	! F.
''Nom.''	guma		-a	|	-o	dags	rowspan="4" align="right" valign="middle">blind-	-s	-ø
''Acc.''	|	-an	-o	-on	dag	|	-ø	-a
''Gen.''		-ons	dagis	colspan="2" align="center"	-is	-áizos
''Dat.''		-on	daga	colspan="2" align="center"	-amma	ái
Plural	colspan="5"
''Nom.''	gumans	rowspan="4" align="right" valign="middle"	blind-	-ans	|	-ons	dagos	rowspan="4" align="right" valign="middle"	blind-	-ái	-a
''Acc.''	|	-ans	-ona	-ons	dagans	|	-a	-os
''Gen.''		-ono	dage	colspan="2" align="center"	-áize	-áizo
''Dat.''		-om

This table is, of course, not exhaustive. (There are secondary inflexions, particularly for the strong neuter singular and irregular nouns among other contexts, which are not described here.) An exhaustive table of only the ''types'' of endings Gothic took is presented below.

strong declension :

* roots ending in ''-a'', ''-ja'', ''-wa'' (masculine and neuter): equivalent to the Greek and Latin second declension in ''‑us'' / ''‑i'' and ‑ος / ‑ου;

* roots ending in ''-o'', ''-jo'' and ''-wo'' (feminine): equivalent to the Greek and Latin first declension in ''‑a'' / ''‑æ'' and ‑α / ‑ας (‑η / ‑ης);

* roots ending in ''-i'' (masculine and feminine): equivalent to the Greek and Latin third declension in ''‑is'' (acc. ''‑im'') and ‑ις / ‑εως;

* roots ending in ''-u'' (all three genders) : equivalent to the Latin fourth declension in ''‑us'' / ''‑us'' and the Greek third declension in ‑υς / ‑εως;

weak declension (all roots ending in ''-n''), equivalent to the Greek and Latin third declension in ''‑o'' / ''‑onis'' and ‑ων / ‑ονος or ‑ην / ‑ενος:

* roots ending in ''-an'', ''-jan'', ''-wan'' (masculine);

* roots ending in ''-on'' and ''-ein'' (feminine);

* roots ending in ''-n'' (neuter): equivalent to the Greek and Latin third declension in ''‑men'' / ''‑minis'' and ‑μα / ‑ματος;

minor declensions : roots ending in ''-r'', en ''-nd'' and vestigial endings in other consonants, equivalent to other third declensions in Greek and Latin.

Gothic adjectives follow noun declensions closely - they take same types of inflexion.

Pronouns

Gothic inherited 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 inflexion (partially mirroring the noun declension), much like other Indo-European languages. One particularly noteworthy characteristic is the preservation of the dual number, referring to two people or things while the plural was only used 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 only preserved it 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 the Indo-European root ''*so'', ''*seh₂'', ''*tod''; cognate to the Greek article ὁ, ἡ, τό and the Latin ''istud'') 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 ''*k^w'' that was present at the beginning of all interrogratives in proto-Indo-European. This is cognate with the ''wh-'' at the beginning of many English interrogatives which, as in Gothic, are pronounced with [ʍ] in some dialects. This 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, and the Sanskrit ''k-'' as well as many others.

Verbs

The bulk of Gothic verbs follow 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. This pattern is also present in Greek and Latin:

Latin - ''leg-i-mus'' ("we read"): root ''leg-'' + thematic vowel ''-i-'' (from ''*e'') + suffix ''-mus''.

Greek - λύ-ο-μεν ("we untie"): root λυ- + thematic vowel -ο- + suffix -μεν.

Gothic - ''nim-a-m'' ("we take"): root ''nim-'' + thematic vowel ''-a-'' (from ''*o'') + suffix ''-m''.

The other conjugation, called "athematic", where suffixes are added directly to roots, exists only in unproductive vestigial forms in Gothic, just as it does in Greek and Latin. The most important such instance 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 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. This dichotomy is still present in modern Germanic languages:

weak verbs ("to have") :

* Gothic: ''haban'', preterite ''habáida'', past participle ''habáiþs'' ;

* English: ''(to) have'', preterite ''had'', past participle ''had'' ;

* German: ''haben'', preterite ''hatte'', past participle ''gehabt'' ;

* Icelandic: ''hafa'', preterite ''hafði'', past participle ''haft'' ;

* Dutch: ''hebben'', preterite ''had'', past participle ''gehad'' ;

* Swedish: ''ha(va)'', preterite ''hade'', supine ''haft'' ;

strong verbs ("to give") :

* Gothic: infinitive ''giban'', preterite ''gaf'' ;

* English: infinitive ''(to) give'', preterite ''gave'' ;

* German: infinitive ''geben'', preterite ''gab'' ;

* Icelandic: infinitive ''gefa'', preterite ''gaf''.

* Dutch: infinitive ''geven'', preterite ''gaf'' ;

* Swedish: infinitive ''giva'' (''ge''), preterite ''gav'' ;

Verbal inflexions 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 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 - some conjugations use auxiliary forms.

Finally, there are forms called "preterite-present" - old Indo-European perfect - that were reinterpreted as present tense. The Gothic word ''wáit'', from the proto-Indo-European ''*woid-h₂e'' ("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.

Syntax

The syntax of Gothic is similar to that of other old Germanic languages, such as Old English and Old Norse. The word order of Gothic is fairly free, like that of other heavily inflected languages with several noun cases. The natural word order of Gothic is assumed to have been like that of the other old Germanic languages (essentially similar to Modern German word order); however, nearly all extant Gothic texts are translations of Greek originals and have been heavily influenced by Greek syntax.

Clitics

An important and archaic feature of Gothic that is missing from all other Germanic languages is the presence of various clitic particles that are placed in second position in a sentence, in accordance with Wackernagel's Law, for example ab-u þus silbin "of thyself?" where -u is a clitic indicating that a yes/no question is being asked and is attached to the first word of the clause, similar to -ne in Latin. Note that the prepositional phrase without the clitic appears as af þus silbin -- the clitic causes originally voiced fricatives, unvoiced at the end of a word, to revert 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, e.g. 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 the imperative form nim "take". Multiple such clitics can occur, e.g. diz-uh-þan-sat ijōs "and then he seized them (fem.)" from dissat "he seized" (notice again the voicing of diz-), ga-u-ƕa-sēƕi "whether he saw anything" from gasēƕi "he saw".

Comparison to other Germanic languages

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) early Norse runic inscriptions. This 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 is clearly identifiable evidence from other branches that the Gothic form is a secondary development.

Features

Gothic fails to display a number of innovations shared by all later-attested Germanic languages:

Lack of Germanic umlaut

Lack of rhotacism

The language has also preserved many features that have mostly been lost in other early Germanic languages:

Dual inflections on verbs

A morphological passive voice for verbs

Reduplication in the past tense of Class VII strong verbs

Clitic conjunctions that appear in second position of a sentence in accordance with Wackernagel's Law, splitting verbs from preverbs

The following sections describe some of these features in more detail.

Lack of umlaut

Most conspicuously, Gothic shows no sign of morphological umlaut. Gothic ''fotus'', pl. ''fotjus'', can be contrasted with English ''foot'' : ''feet'', German ''Fuß'' : ''Füße'', Old Icelandic ''fótr'' : ''fœtr'', Danish ''fod'' : ''fødder''. These forms contain the characteristic change /o:/ > /ø:/ (> Eng. /i:/, Germ. /y:/) due to i-umlaut; the Gothic form shows no such change.

Lack of rhotacism

Proto-Germanic *''z'' remains in Gothic as ''z'' or is devoiced to ''s''. In North and West Germanic, *''z'' changes to ''r'' by rhotacism.

Gothic ''dius'', gen. sg. ''diuzis''

Old English ''dēor'', gen. sg. ''dēores'' "wild animal" (Modern English ''deer'')

Passive voice

Gothic retains a morphological passive voice inherited from Indo-European, but unattested in all other Germanic languages, except for the single fossilised form preserved in, for example, Old English ''hātte'' or Runic Norse (AD 400) ''haitē'' "am called", derived from the verb ''*haitanaN'' "to call, command". (Note that the related verb ''heißen'' in modern German is derived from the active voice of this verb but has the passive meaning "to be called".)

The morphological passive in North Germanic languages (Swedish ''gör'' "do", ''görs'' "is done") originates from the Old Norse middle voice rather than from Indo-European.

Dual number

Unlike other Germanic languages, which retained dual number marking only in some pronoun forms, Gothic has dual forms both in pronouns and in verbs. Dual verb forms exist in the first and second person only, and only in the active voice; in all other cases, the corresponding plural forms are used. In pronouns, Gothic has first and second person dual pronouns, e.g. Gothic/Old English/Old Norse ''wit'' "we two" (thought to have been in fact derived from ''*wi-du'' literally "we two").

Reduplication

Gothic possesses a number of verbs which form their preterite by reduplication, another archaic feature inherited from Indo-European. While traces of this category survived elsewhere in Germanic, the phenomenon is largely obscured in these other languages by later sound changes and analogy. In the following examples the infinitive is compared to the 3rd person singular preterite indicative:

Gothic ''saian'' "to sow" : ''saiso''

Old Norse ''sá'' : ''seri'' < Proto-Germanic *''sezō''

Gothic ''laikan'' "to play" : ''lailaik''

Old English ''lācan'' : ''leolc'', ''lēc''

Classification

The standard theory of the origin of the Germanic languages divides the languages into three groups: East Germanic (Gothic and a few other very scantily attested languages), North Germanic (Old Norse and its derivatives, such as Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic and Faroese) and West Germanic (all others, including Old English, Old High German, Old Saxon, Old Low Franconian, Old Frisian and numerous modern languages derived from these). The North Germanic and West Germanic languages are further grouped into the Northwest Germanic languages, indicating that Gothic was the first attested language to branch off.

A minority opinion (the so-called Gotho-Nordic Hypothesis) instead groups North Germanic and East Germanic together. This is partly based on historical claims: For example, Jordanes, writing in the 6th century, ascribes to the Goths a Scandinavian origin. There are a few linguistically significant areas where Gothic and Old Norse agree against the West Germanic languages. Perhaps the most obvious is the evolution of the Proto-Germanic *''-jj-'' and *''-ww-'' into Gothic ''ddj'' (from Pre-Gothic ''ggj''?) and ''ggw'', and Old Norse ''ggj'' and ''ggv'' ("Holtzmann's Law"), in contrast to West Germanic where they remained as semivowels. Compare Modern English ''true'', German ''treu'', with Gothic ''triggws'', Old Norse ''tryggr''. However, it has been suggested that these are in fact two separate and unrelated changes. There are a number of other posited similarities (e.g. the existence of numerous inchoative verbs ending in -''na'', such as Gothic ''ga-waknan'', Old Norse ''vakna''; and the absence of gemination before ''j'', or (in the case of old Norse) only ''g'' geminated before ''j'', e.g. Proto-Germanic *''kunjam'' > Gothic ''kuni'' (kin), Old Norse ''kyn'', but Old English ''cynn'', Old High German ''kunni''). However, for the most part these represent shared retentions, which are not valid means of grouping languages. That is, if a parent language splits into three daughters A, B and C, and C innovates in a particular area while A and B don't change, then A and B will appear to agree against C. However, this example of a shared retention in A and B is not necessarily indicative of any special relationship among the two. Similar claims of similarities between Old Gutnish (''Gutniska'') and Old Icelandic are also based on shared retentions rather than shared innovations.

Another commonly given example is that Gothic and Old Norse verbs have the ending ''-t'' in the 2nd person singular preterite indicative, while the West Germanic languages have ''-i''. In this case, neither ending is clearly a retention or innovation. Mainstream linguists would tend to say that this is an example of independent choices made from a doublet existing in the proto-language. That is, Proto-Germanic may have allowed either ''-t'' or ''-i'' to be used as the ending, either in free variation or perhaps depending on dialects within Proto-Germanic or on the particular verb in question. Each of the three daughters independently standardized on one of the two endings, and by chance Gothic and Old Norse chose the same ending.

It must in any case be borne in mind that other isoglosses have led scholars to propose an early split between East and Northwest Germanic. Furthermore, features shared by any two branches of Germanic do not necessarily require the postulation of a proto-language excluding the third, as the early Germanic languages were all part of a dialect continuum in the early stages of their development and contact between the three branches of Germanic was extensive.

Examples

{|border="0" !colspan="2"|The Lord's Prayer in Gothic: |- !Gothic!!English |- !!!(literal translation) |- | Atta unsar þu in himinam || Our father, thou in heaven, |- | weihnai namo þein || holy be thy name. |- | qimai þiudinassus þeins || Thy kingdom come, |- | wairþai wilja þeins || thy will be done, |- | swe in himina jah ana airþai.|| as in heaven also on earth. |- | hlaif unsarana þana sinteinan gif uns himma daga || Our bread (loaf), the everyday, give us this day, |- | jah aflet uns þatei skulans sijaima || And forgive us, who are in debt, |- | swaswe jah weis afletam þaim skulam unsaraim || As we also forgive our debtors. |- | jah ni briggais uns in fraistubnjai || And do not bring us into temptation, |- | ak lausei uns af þamma ubilin || But free us from the evil (one). |- | unte þeina ist þiudangardi jah mahts || For thine is the kingdom and the might |- | jah wulþus in aiwins. || And glory in eternity. |}

Notes

See also

List of Germanic languages

Vocabulary comparison of the Germanic languages for a chart comparing Gothic words to those of other Germanic languages

Geats

Gutes

Old Gutnish

Grimm's law

Verner's law

''Grammar of the Gothic Language'' (book)

Gothic alphabet

References

W. Braune and E. Ebbinghaus, ''Gotische Grammatik'', 17th edition 1966, Tübingen

* 20th edition, 2004. ISBN 3-484-10852-5 (hbk), ISBN 3-484-10850-9 (pbk)

Fausto Cercignani, ''The Development of the Gothic Short/Lax Subsystem'', in «Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung», 93/2, 1979, pp. 272–278.

Fausto Cercignani, ''The Reduplicating Syllable and Internal Open Juncture in Gothic'', in «Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung», 93/1, 1979, pp. 126–132.

Fausto Cercignani, ''The Enfants Terribles of Gothic «Breaking»: hiri, aiþþau, etc.'', in «The Journal of Indo-European Studies», 12/3-4, 1984, pp. 315–344.

Fausto Cercignani, ''The Development of the Gothic Vocalic System'', in ''Germanic Dialects: Linguistic and Philological Investigations'', edited by Bela Brogyanyi and Thomas Krömmelbein, Amsterdam and Philadelphia, Benjamins, 1986, pp. 121–151.

N. Everett, "Literacy from Late Antiquity to the early Middle Ages, c. 300-800 AD", ''The Cambridge Handbook of Literacy'', ed. D. Olson and N. Torrance (Cambridge, 2009), pp. 362–385.

W. Krause, ''Handbuch des Gotischen'', 3rd edition, 1968, Munich.

F. Mossé, ''Manuel de la langue gotique'', Aubier Éditions Montaigne, 1942

Wilhelm Streitberg, ''Die gotische Bibel '', 4th edition, 1965, Heidelberg

Joseph Wright, Grammar of the Gothic language, 2nd edition, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1966

* 2nd edition, 1981 reprint by Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-811185-1

External links

Gotisch im WWW Portal for information on Gothic (in German)

English-Gothic Dictionary (Also contains neologisms and reconstructed words)

"Gothic dictionary with etymologies" by Andras Rajki

Gothic lessons

Germanic Lexicon Project - early (Public Domain) editions of several of the references.

Texts:

* The Gothic Bible in Latin alphabet

* The Gothic Bible in Ulfilan script (Unicode text) from Wikisource

* The Gothic Bible in Runic alphabet (Unicode text) from Wikisource

* Titus has Streitberg's ''Gotische Bibel'' and Crimean Gothic material after Busbecq.

* Wulfila Project

* Skeireins Projet

* ''Bagme Bloma'', a Gothic poem by J. R. R. Tolkien

Gothic for Travellers: Good conversation starters are death, torture, eating and drinking.

Gothic Online from the University of Texas at Austin

Gothic Readings Video clips in Gothic language

Category:Medieval languages Category:Late Antiquity Category:Gothic writing Category:Languages of Spain Category:Languages of Portugal Category:Languages of Ukraine Category:Languages of Italy Category:Languages of Romania Category:Languages of France

af:Goties ang:Gotisc sprǣc ar:لغة قوطية an:Idioma gotico ast:Góticu bar:Gotische Sproch br:Goteg bg:Готски език ca:Llengua gòtica cs:Gótština cy:Gotheg da:Gotisk (sprog) de:Gotische Sprache et:Gooti keel es:Idioma gótico eo:Gota lingvo eu:Gotiko (hizkuntza) fa:زبان گوتیک fr:Gotique fy:Goatysk gl:Lingua gótica glk:گؤتیک got:𐌲𐌿𐍄𐌰𐍂𐌰𐌶𐌳𐌰 ko:고트어 hr:Gotski jezik id:Bahasa Gotik it:Lingua gotica he:גותית kw:Gothek la:Lingua Gothica lt:Gotų kalba hu:Gót nyelv mk:Готски јазик arz:قوطى nl:Gotisch (taal) nds-nl:Gotisch ja:ゴート語 no:Gotisk (språk) nn:Gotisk pms:Lenga gòtica nds:Gootsche Spraak pl:Język gocki pt:Língua gótica ro:Limba gotică ru:Готский язык stq:Gotisk simple:Gothic language sk:Gótčina sl:Gotščina sr:Готски језик sh:Gotski jezik fi:Gootin kieli sv:Gotiska ta:கோதிக் மொழி tr:Gotça uk:Готська мова zh:哥德語

Anglo-Saxon is a term used by historians to designate the Germanic tribes who invaded the south and east of Great Britain beginning in the early 5th century AD, and the period from their creation of the English nation to the Norman conquest. The Anglo-Saxon Era denotes the period of English history between about 550 and 1066 AD. The term is also used for the language now called Old English, spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in much of what is now England and some of southeastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century.

The Benedictine monk, Bede, writing in the early 8th century, identified the English as the descendants of three Germanic tribes: The Angles, who may have come from Angeln (in modern Germany); Bede wrote that their whole nation came to Britain, leaving their former land empty. The name ''England'' ( or ) originates from this tribe. The Saxons, from Lower Saxony (in modern Germany; ) and the Low Countries. The Jutes, possibly from the Jutland peninsula (in modern Denmark; ).

Their language, Old English, derived from "Ingvaeonic" West Germanic dialects and transformed into Middle English from the 11th century. Old English was divided into four main dialects: West Saxon, Mercian, Northumbrian and Kentish.

Etymology

The term ''Anglo-Saxon'' is from writings going back to the time of King Alfred the Great, who seems to have frequently used the title ''rex Anglorum Saxonum'' or ''rex Angul-Saxonum'' (king of the English Saxons).

The Old English terms ''ænglisc'' and ''Angelcynn'' ("Angle-kin", ''gens Anglorum'') when they are first attested had already lost their original sense of referring to the Angles, as distinct from, the Saxons, and in their earliest recorded sense refers to the nation of Germanic peoples who settled eastern Britain in and after the 5th century.

The indigenous British people, who wrote in both Latin and Welsh, referred to these invaders as ''Saxones'' or ''Saeson'' – the latter is still used today in the Welsh word for English people; in the Scottish Gaelic word for English people, ''Sasannach''; and in the Irish word for English people, ''Sasanach''.

The term ''Angli Saxones'' seems to have first been used in continental writing nearly a century before Alfred's time by Paul the Deacon, historian of the Lombards, probably to distinguish the English Saxons from the continental Saxons (''Ealdseaxe'', literally, "old Saxons").

The Angles (Old English ''Engle'', ''Angle'') presumably took their name from their ancestral home in Jutland, ''Angul'' (modern ''Angeln''), an area shaped like a hook (cf. Old English ''angel'', ''angul'' "fishhook", ''anga'' "hook").

Anglo-Saxon history

The history of Anglo-Saxon England broadly covers early medieval England from the end of Roman rule and the establishment of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the 5th century until the Conquest by the Normans in 1066.

Origins (AD 400–600)

Migration of Germanic peoples to Britain from what is now northern Germany, the northern part of the Netherlands and southern Scandinavia is attested from the 5th century (e.g. Undley bracteate). Based on Bede's ''Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum'', the intruding population is traditionally divided into Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, but their composition was likely less clear-cut and may also have included Frisians and Franks. Also, the ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' contains text that may be the first recorded indications of the movement of these Germanic tribes to Britain.

Heptarchy (600–800)

Christianisation of the Anglo-Saxons began in 597 and was at least nominally completed in 686. Throughout the 7th and 8th centuries, power fluctuated between the larger kingdoms. Bede records Aethelbert of Kent as being dominant at the close of the 6th century, but power seems to have shifted northwards to the kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria.

Aethelbert and some of the later kings of the other kingdoms were recognised by their fellow kings as Bretwalda (ruler of Britain). The so-called 'Mercian Supremacy' dominated the 8th century, though again it was not constant. Aethelbald and Offa, the two most powerful kings, achieved high status. This period has been described as the Heptarchy, though this term has now fallen out of academic use.

The word arose on the basis that the seven kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia, Kent, East Anglia, Essex, Sussex and Wessex were the main polities of south Britain. More recent scholarship has shown that theories of the 'heptarchy' are not grounded in evidence, and it is far more likely that power fluctuated between many more 'kingdoms'. Other politically important 'kingdoms' across this period include: Hwicce, Magonsaete, Kingdom of Lindsey and Middle Anglia.

Viking Age and the Norman Conquest (800–1066)

In the 9th century, the Viking challenge grew to serious proportions. Alfred the Great's victory at Edington, Wiltshire, in 878 brought intermittent peace, but with their possession of Jorvik, the Danes gained a solid foothold in England.

An important development in the 9th century was the rise of the Kingdom of Wessex; by the end of his reign Alfred was recognised as overlord by several southern kingdoms. Æthelstan was the first king to achieve direct rule over what is considered "England".

Near the end of the 10th century, there was renewed Scandinavian interest in England, with the conquests of Sweyn of Denmark and his son Cnut the Great. By 1066 there were three lords with claims to the English throne, resulting in two invasions and the battles of Stamford Bridge and Hastings. The latter, which heralded the Norman conquest of England, resulted in the overthrow of the Anglo-Saxon polity and its replacement with Norman rule.

After the Norman Conquest

Following the conquest, the Anglo-Saxon nobility were either exiled or joined the ranks of the peasantry. It has been estimated that only about 8 per cent of the land was under Anglo-Saxon control by 1087. Many Anglo-Saxon nobles fled to Scotland, Ireland, and Scandinavia. The Byzantine Empire became a popular destination for many Anglo-Saxon soldiers, as the Byzantines were in need of mercenaries. The Anglo-Saxons became the predominant element in the elite Varangian Guard, hitherto a largely Scandinavian unit, from which the emperor's bodyguard was drawn and continued to serve the empire until the early 15th century. However, the population of England at home remained largely Anglo-Saxon; for them, little changed immediately except that their Anglo-Saxon lord was replaced by a Norman lord.

Culture

Architecture

Early Anglo-Saxon buildings in Britain were generally simple, not using masonry except in foundations but constructed mainly using timber with thatch for roofing. Generally preferring not to settle within the old Roman cities, the Anglo-Saxons built small towns near their centres of agriculture, at fords in rivers or sited to serve as ports. In each town, a main hall was in the centre, provided with a central hearth.

There are few remains of Anglo-Saxon architecture, with but one secular work remaining above ground – a 10m. x 5m. houscarl's dwelling re-using local Roman materials. This is still completely standing as an undivided single room with a single central north-facing door, belonging to the Godwin estates, so can be dated 1018–1066. At least fifty churches are of Anglo-Saxon origin, with many more claimed to be, in part from their dedication to local Anglo-Saxon saints, although in some cases the Anglo-Saxon part is small and much-altered. All surviving churches, except one timber church, are built of stone or brick and in some cases show evidence of re-used Roman work.

The character of Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical buildings ranges from Celtic influenced architecture in the early period; basilica influenced Romanesque architecture; to in the later Anglo-Saxon period, an architecture characterised by pilaster-strips, blank arcading, baluster shafts and triangular headed openings.

Art

Anglo-Saxon art before roughly the time of Alfred (ruled 871–899) is mostly in varieties of the Hiberno-Saxon or Insular style, a fusion of Anglo-Saxon and Celtic techniques and motifs. The Sutton Hoo treasure is an exceptional survival of very early Anglo-Saxon metalwork and jewellery, from a royal grave of the early 7th century. The period between Alfred and the Norman Conquest, with the revival of the English economy and culture after the end of the Viking raids, saw a distinct Anglo-Saxon style in art, though one in touch with trends on the Continent.

Anglo-Saxon art is mainly known today through illuminated manuscripts, including the ''Benedictional of St. Æthelwold'' (British Library) and ''Leofric Missal'' (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodl, 579), masterpieces of the late "Winchester style", which drew on Hiberno-Saxon art, Carolingian art and Byzantine art for style and iconography, and combined both northern ornamental traditions with Mediterranean figural traditions. The Harley Psalter was a copy of the Carolingian Utrecht Psalter — which was a particular influence in creating an Anglo-Saxon style of very lively pen drawings.

Manuscripts were far from the only Anglo-Saxon art form, but they have survived in much greater numbers than other types of object. Contemporaries in Europe regarded Anglo-Saxon goldsmithing and embroidery (Opus Anglicanum) as especially fine. Perhaps the best known piece of Anglo-Saxon art is the Bayeux Tapestry which was commissioned by a Norman patron from English artists working in the traditional Anglo-Saxon style. The most common example of Anglo-Saxon art is coins, with thousands of examples extant. Anglo-Saxon artists also worked in fresco, ivory, stone carving, metalwork (see Fuller brooch for example) and enamel, but few of these pieces have survived.

Language

Old English, sometimes called Anglo-Saxon, was the language spoken under Alfred the Great and continued to be the common language of England (non-Danelaw) until after the Norman Conquest of 1066 when, under the influence of the Anglo-Norman language spoken by the Norman ruling class, it changed into Middle English roughly between 1150–1500.

Old English is far closer to early Germanic than Middle English. It is less Latinised and retains many morphological features (nominal and verbal inflection) that were lost during the 12th to 14th centuries. The languages today which are closest to Old English are the Frisian languages, which are spoken by a few hundred thousand people in the northern part of Germany and the Netherlands.

Before literacy in the vernacular Old English or Latin became widespread, a runic alphabet, the ''futhorc'', was used for inscriptions. When literacy became more prevalent, a form of Latin script was used with a couple of letters derived from the futhorc: 'thorn' ‹þ› and 'wynn' ‹ƿ› (generally replaced with ‹w› in modern reproductions).

The letters regularly used in printed and edited texts of Old English are the following:

''a æ b c d ð e f g h i l m n o p r s t þ u w x y''

with only rare occurrences of ''j'', ''k'', ''q'', ''v'', and ''z''.

Law

Very few law codes exist from the Anglo-Saxon period to provide an insight into legal culture beyond the influence of Roman law and how this legal culture developed over the course of time. The Saxons chopped off hands and noses for punishment (if the offender stole something or committed another crime). If someone killed a Saxon, he had to pay money called wergild, the amount varying according to the social rank of the victim.

Literature

Old English literary works include genres such as epic poetry, hagiography, sermons, Bible translations, legal works, chronicles, riddles and others. In all there are about 400 surviving manuscripts from the period, a significant corpus of both popular interest and specialist research.

The most famous works from this period include the poem ''Beowulf'', which has achieved national epic status in Britain. The ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' is a collection of important early English history. ''Cædmon's Hymn'' from the 7th century is the earliest attested literary text in English.

Religion

The indigenous pre-Christian belief system of the Anglo-Saxons was a form of Germanic paganism and therefore closely related to the Old Norse religion, as well as other Germanic pre-Christian cultures.

Christianity gradually replaced the indigenous religion of the English around the 7th and 8th centuries. Celtic Christianity was introduced into Northumbria and Mercia by monks from Ireland, but the Synod of Whitby settled the choice for Roman Christianity. As the new clerics became the chroniclers, the old religion was partially lost before it was recorded, and today historians' knowledge of it is largely based on surviving customs and lore, texts, etymological links and archaeological finds.

One of the few recorded references is that a Kentish King would only meet the missionary St. Augustine in the open air, where he would be under the protection of the sky god, Woden. Written Christian prohibitions on acts of paganism are one of historians' main sources of information on pre-Christian beliefs.

Despite these prohibitions, numerous elements of the pre-Christian culture of the Anglo-Saxon people survived the Christianisation process. Examples include the English language names for days of the week:

Tiw, the Anglo-Saxon equivalent of Tyr: Tuesday

Woden, the Anglo-Saxon equivalent of Odin: Wednesday

Þunor, the Anglo-Saxon equivalent of Thor: Thursday

''*Fríge'', the Anglo-Saxon equivalent of Frigg: Friday

Contemporary meanings

"Anglo-Saxon" in linguistics is still used as a term for the original West Germanic component of the modern English language, which was later expanded and developed through the influence of Old Norse and Norman French, though linguists now more often refer to it as Old English. In the 19th century the term "Anglo-Saxon" was broadly used in philology, and is sometimes so used at present. In Victorian Britain, some writers such as Robert Knox, James Anthony Froude, Charles Kingsley and Edward A. Freeman used the term "Anglo-Saxon" to justify racism and imperialism, claiming that the "Anglo-Saxon" ancestry of the English made them racially superior to the colonised peoples. Similar racist ideas were advocated in the 19th Century United States by Samuel George Morton and George Fitzhugh.

The term "Anglo-Saxon" is sometimes used to refer to peoples descended or associated in some way with the English ethnic group. The definition has varied from time to time and varies from place to place. In contemporary Anglophone cultures outside the United Kingdom, the term is most commonly found in certain contexts, such as the term "White Anglo-Saxon Protestant" or "WASP". Such terms are often politicised, and bear little connection to the precise ethnological or historical definition of the term "Anglo-Saxon". It often encapsulates socio-economic identifiers more than ethnic ones.

Outside Anglophone countries, both in Europe and in the rest of the world, the term "Anglo-Saxon" and its direct translations are used to refer to the Anglophone peoples and societies of Britain, the United States, and other countries such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand - areas which are sometimes referred to as the Anglosphere. The term "Anglo-Saxon" can be used in a variety of contexts, often to identify the English-speaking world's distinctive language, culture, technology, wealth, markets, economy, and legal systems. Variations include the German "Angelsachsen", French "Anglo-Saxon", Spanish "anglosajón", Portuguese "anglo-saxão", Italian "anglosassone", Catalan "anglosaxó", Japanese "Angurosakuson" and Ukrainian "aнглосакси" (anhlosaksy). As with the English language use of the term, what constitutes the "Anglo-Saxon" varies from speaker to speaker.

See also

Angles

Anglo-Frisian

Anglo-Saxon architecture

Anglo-Saxon dress

Anglo-Saxon military organization

Anglophile

Britons

Frisia

Ingvaeones

Jutes

Saxons

States in Medieval Britain

Timeline of Anglo-Saxon settlement in Britain

Staffordshire Hoard

Modern concepts:

English people

Anglo-Saxon economy

Notes

References

Oppenheimer, Stephen. ''The Origins of the British''(2006). Constable and Robinson, London. ISBN 1-84529-158-1

Further reading

Clark, David, and Nicholas Perkins, eds. ''Anglo-Saxon Culture and the Modern Imagination'' (2010)

F.M. Stenton, ''Anglo-Saxon England'', 3rd edition, (Oxford: University Press, 1971)

J. Campbell et al., ''The Anglo-Saxons'', (London: Penguin, 1991)

E. James, ''Britain in the First Millennium'', (London: Arnold, 2001)

M. Lapidge et al., ''The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England'', (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999)

Donald Henson, ''The Origins of the Anglo-Saxons'', (Anglo-Saxon Books, 2006)

Primary sources

D. Whitelock, ed. ''English Historical Documents c.500–1042'', (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1955)

Bede, ''Ecclesiastical History of the English People'', trans. L. Sherly-Price, (London: Penguin, 1990)

External links

Photos of over 600 items found in the Anglo-Saxon Hoard in Staffordshire Sept. 2009

Anglo-Saxon gold hoard September 2009: largest ever hoard officially declared treasure

Huge Anglo-Saxon gold hoard found, BBC News, with photos.

Fides Angliarum Regum: the faith of the English kings

Anglo-Saxon Origins: The Reality of the Myth by Malcolm Todd

''An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary''

Simon Keynes' bibliography of Anglo-Saxon topics

Category:Germanic paganism Category:Invasions of England Category:West Germanic peoples Anglo-Saxons Category:Sub-Roman Britain

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