Gothic Language Origins
by Frank Schaefer

The Gothic language was put into writing first by Roman missionary Ulfilas, who translated large parts of the Christian Bible into the vernacular. He is also credited with inventing the Gothic alphabet, as the Gothic language had never been written down before.

There are at least two original components to the Gothic language: 1. the more prominent Indo-European language base and 2. less dominant native European (Uralic)influences. Together, these components make up the original Gothic language which is well preserved in its written form via the Gothic Bible (Codex Argeneus).

1. The Indo-Germanic Roots of the Gothic Language
At around 2500 BCE, the Indo-Europeans arrived in Scandinavia, in modern-day southern Sweden. We can be reasonably sure that this area is the original home of the Indo-Europeans, since this is the only area where no pre-Germanic place names, such as rivers, water basins and mountains have been discovered (Bell-Fialkoff, p 117ff).

At around 750 BCE these new inhabitants spoke what scholars call the “Proto-Germanic language” from which all modern Indo-European languages evolved.

According to the Gutasaga (the recorded oral traditions by the Swedish Gotlanders) as well as the work Gettica by Jordanis, a substantial migration of people from “Goteburg” or “Skanzia” marked the beginning of the Gothic people in Northern Europe.

It seems that the basis of the Gothic language is Indo-European as we can see close linguistic connections between Gothic and Old Norse (especially the Old Gutnish dialect) as well as similarities to many other Germanic languages. Gutnish is still spoken in Gotland today. Old Gutnish was the dialect of Old Norse.

2. The pre-Germanic (Uralic) Influence on the Gothic Language
A sure way to trace the influence of pre-Germanic (Uralic) languages is to look at words that are Uralic in their root. However, that’s not as easy as one would think. To scholarly determine whether words are rooted in Uralic or Indo-European is not easy. Traditionally, it has been assumed that the influence of Uralic expressions was limited to geographic names, such as rivers, mountains, valleys, etc. However, recently this theory has been challenged by scholars most notably Germanicist John A. Hawkins who suggests that the creolazation, i.e. the influence of native European tongues, is much greater than we assumed (Hawkins, pp. 58-66).

A second tell-tale about the native European influence on the Gothic language is the lack of similarities with the way other Germanic languages evolved, such as the absence of an Umlaut which is shared by all other Germanic languages.

Pronunciation
Though the Gothic language has not been spoken in many centuries, linguist scholars have attempted to reconstruct the phonetic sounds of the original Gothic. They use sophisticated research methods that trace the history of vocalizations within related language families. But, of course, while we can determine probable ways to pronounce an extinct language, we cannot know with certainty. A detailed description of how to pronounce Gothic can be found in this Wikipedia article.

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