Alphabet Key To History Of Mankind

Author(s): David Diringer
Publisher: Hutchinsons Scientific and Technical Publications

Page 474

GREEK ALPHABET AND ITS OFFSHOOTS 473
Gothic Alphabet
(Fig. 211)
(This is quite different from the "Gothic script," a variety of the Latin alphabet; see below.)
THE
The Goths, or rather Visigoths, or Western Goths, were a Teutonic people who played an important part in the European history of the fourth and fifth centuries A.D. In the fourth century A.D. they lived in what is now Bulgaria. They were the first Teutonic people to be converted to Christianity.
The Gothic bishop Wulfila (or Ulfilas), who lived in the fourth century and died in 381 or 383, translated the Bible into Gothic, "with the exception of the Books of Kings which he omitted, because they are a mere narrative of military exploits and the Gothic tribes were especially fond of war." Of Wulfila's translation some fragments are extant in manuscripts of the fifth and sixth centuries, the most important being the Codex Argenteus (Fig. 211, 2 and 3), preserved at Uppsala in Sweden (186 pages, written in silver and gold on purple-red parchment). They preserve what is by several centuries the oldest specimen of Teutonic speech. However, this early Gothic civilization with its distinctive language and script had not the slightest influence on the subsequent Germanic culture.
Wulfila employed an alphabet-generally known as Gothic, or MosoGothic-invented by himself, which consisted of twenty-seven letters (Fig. 211, 1); some nineteen or twenty signs were taken over from the Greek uncial script, some five or six (modified in part) from the Latin alphabet, and perhaps two letters seem either to have been borrowed from the Runes (see Appendix to the next Chapter) or freely invented.
Although the greater part of the Gothic symbols are identical in form and phonetic value with the Greek uncial letters or with the Latin characters, there are, as stated, some which are different either in shape or in phonetic value, but it is not easy to determine their origin. It is obviously not always possible to know everything behind the achievements of great men like Wulfila.
There was also a Gothic cursive script for everyday use, as is shown by a document in the National Library of Naples and by an alphabet written on a manuscript in the Vienna National Library.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
L. Meyer, Die gotische Sprache, Berlin, 1869.
W. Luft, Studien zu den æltesten germanischen Alphabeten, Guetersloh, 1898. C. C. Uhlenbeck, Kurzgefasstes etymologisches Weerterbuch der gotischen Sprache, 2nd ed., Amsterdam, 1900; Bemerkungen zum gotischen Wortschatz, Halle, 1905
E. H. Mensel, in "MODERN PHILOLOGY," 1904.
J. Wright, Grammar of the Gothic Language, Oxford, 1910.
O. von Friesen, in J. Hoops, Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde, 11,