| Gothic | |
| Languages: | Gothic |
| Type: | Alphabet |
| Time: | From c. 350, in decline by 600 |
| Fam1: | Greek script augmented with Latin and possibly Runic (questionable) |
| Unicode: | U+10330–U+1034F |
| Iso15924: | Goth |
| Sample: | File:Codex Argenteus page.jpg |
The Gothic alphabet is an alphabet used 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.[1]
The alphabet essentially uses uncial forms of the Greek alphabet, with a few additional letters to express Gothic phonology:
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]
Below is a table of the Gothic alphabet.[4] Two letters used in its transliteration are not used in current English: thorn þ (representing pronounced as /link/), and hwair (representing pronounced as /link/).
As with the Greek alphabet, Gothic letters were also assigned numerical values. When used as numerals, letters were written either between two dots (•Gothic: • = 12) or with an overline (
Gothic: = 12). Two letters, Gothic: (90) and Gothic: (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.[5]
| Letter | Translit. | Compare | Alcuin name | Gothic name | PGmc rune name | Numeric value | XML entity | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gothic: | a | Α, Ⲁ | aza | pronounced as /link/ | 1 | 𐌰 | ||||
| Gothic: | b | Β, Ⲃ | bercna |
| pronounced as /link/ [{{IPA link|b}}, {{IPA link|β}}] | 2 | 𐌱 | |||
| Gothic: | g | Γ, Ⲅ | geuua | Gothic: (giba) "gift" | pronounced as /link/ [{{IPA link|ɡ}}, {{IPA link|ɣ}}, {{IPA link|x}}]; pronounced as /link/ [{{IPA link|ŋ}}] | 3 | 𐌲 | |||
| Gothic: | d | Δ, D, Ⲇ | daaz | Gothic: (dags) "day" | pronounced as /link/ [{{IPA link|d}}, {{IPA link|ð}}] | 4 | 𐌳 | |||
| Gothic: | e | Ε, Ⲉ | eyz |
| pronounced as /link/ | 5 | 𐌴 | |||
| Gothic: | q | (Ϛ),, Ⲋ(?) | quetra |
| (see *perþō) | pronounced as /link/ | 6 | 𐌵 | ||
| Gothic: | z | Ζ, Ⲍ | ezec | (?)[6] Likely related to
| pronounced as /link/ | 7 | 𐌶 | |||
| Gothic: | h | Η, Ⲏ | haal |
| pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/ | 8 | 𐌷 | |||
| Gothic: | þ (th) | Φ, Ψ, Ⲑ | thyth | Gothic: (þiuþ) "good" or Gothic: (þaurnus) "thorn" | pronounced as /link/ | 9 | 𐌸 | |||
| Gothic: | i | Ι, Ⲓ | iiz |
| pronounced as /link/ | 10 | 𐌹 | |||
| Gothic: | k | Κ, Ⲕ | chozma |
| pronounced as /link/ | 20 | 𐌺 | |||
| Gothic: | l | Λ, Ⲗ | laaz |
| pronounced as /link/ | 30 | 𐌻 | |||
| Gothic: | m | Μ, Ⲙ | manna | Gothic: (manna) "man" | pronounced as /link/ | 40 | 𐌼 | |||
| Gothic: | n | Ν, Ⲛ | noicz | Gothic: (nauþs) "need" | pronounced as /link/ | 50 | 𐌽 | |||
| Gothic: | j | G, ᛃ, Ⲝ(?) | gaar | Gothic: (jēr) "year, harvest" | pronounced as /link/ | 60 | 𐌾 | |||
| Gothic: | u | , Ⲟ(?) | uraz |
| pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/ | 70 | 𐌿 | |||
| Gothic: | p | Π, Ⲡ | pertra |
| pronounced as /link/ | 80 | 𐍀 | |||
| Gothic: | Ϙ, Ϥ | 90 | 90 | 𐍁 | ||||||
| Gothic: | r | R, Ⲣ | reda |
| pronounced as /link/ | 100 | 𐍂 | |||
| Gothic: | s | S, Ⲥ | sugil | Gothic: (sauil) "sun" or *Gothic: (*sōjil) "sun" | pronounced as /link/ | 200 | 𐍃 | |||
| Gothic: | t | Τ, ᛏ, Ⲧ | tyz |
| pronounced as /link/ | 300 | 𐍄 | |||
| Gothic: | w | Υ, Ⲩ | uuinne | Gothic: (winja) "field, pasture" or Gothic: (winna) "pain" | pronounced as //w//, pronounced as //y// | 400 | 𐍅 | |||
| Gothic: | f | Ϝ, F, Ⲫ(?) | fe | Gothic: (faihu) "wealth, chattel" | pronounced as /link/ | 500 | 𐍆 | |||
| Gothic: | x | Χ, Ⲭ | enguz |
| pronounced as /link/[8] | 600 | 𐍇 | |||
| Gothic: | (hw) | Θ, Ⲯ(?) | uuaer |
| pronounced as /link/, pronounced as //ʍ// | 700 | 𐍈 | |||
| Gothic: | ō | Ω, Ο,, Ⲱ | utal |
| pronounced as /link/ | 800 | 𐍉 | |||
| Gothic: | ᛏ, Ͳ (Ϡ), Ⳁ | 900 | 𐍊 | |||||||
Gothic: (r), Gothic: (s) and Gothic: (f) appear to be derived from their Latin equivalents rather than from the Greek, although the equivalent Runic letters (and), assumed to have been part of the Gothic futhark, possibly played some role in this choice.[16] 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. 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. Some variants of Gothic: (s) are shaped like a sigma and more obviously derive from the Greek Σ.
Gothic: (x) is only used in proper names and loanwords containing Greek Χ (xristus "Christ", galiugaxristus "Pseudo-Christ", zaxarias "Zacharias", aiwxaristia "eucharist").[17]
Regarding the letters' numeric values, most correspond to those of the Greek numerals. Gothic Gothic: takes the place of Ϝ (6), Gothic: takes the place of ξ (60), Gothic: that of Ο (70), and Gothic: that of ψ (700).
Diacritics and punctuation used in the Codex Argenteus include a trema placed on Gothic: 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.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.