On why Wulfila would have developed a new alphabet for the Bible, instead of using runes, Wulfila's alphabet seems well adapted for writing with a quill, where runes seem to be well adapted for inscription.

@eid8fkebe7f27ejdjdjduyhsvqhwu2

3 ай бұрын

Although you wouldn't need to invent a whole new alphabet for that, since you could just round the runes and write R instead of ᚱ and so on. Maybe there were additional reasons he decided to mix the those alphabets up, who knows.

Counterpoint to the social/religious aspect of scripts: yiddish is often written in the Hebrew rather than the Roman script, and I think other Jewish dialects/languages like Ladino may be similar. Of course, the Jewish ethnoreligious identity has historically been stronger than and different from, say, Gothic. In the migration period generally, ethnic designations seem very fluid, and people from diverse linguistic backgrounds like Hunnic, Gothic, and Alan, were often under the same tribal confederations. (Though perhaps after Christianization, there was an identification between Goths and Arianism, but that's maybe just a tangent spurred by too much coffee?)

The longer I look at runes the more I am convinced that they all came from Greek rather than Latin. Massilia as a Greek colony did have amber trade and there is no reason to believe that Germanic and Greek traders would not know of each other. Looking at this Gothic alphabet, I think that Greek Koppa existed and continued to be used as the number sign for 90. And it was written with "half circle" opening to the upper left. So both the Gothic "q" as well the Gothic "j" look very similar to original Greek Koppa. Further, the Gothic "hw" may also be an Omikron. If you turn a Theta you get a Phi. And finally Digamma was a Greek letter used to denote the number 6. So there is no need to assume that Ulfila copied anything from Latin in creating his alphabet.

@marjae2767

3 ай бұрын

He used Roman and/or Runic R. He was writing in the overlap between the Latin-speaking and Greek-speaking areas, so he was probably familiar with both, and he may have wanted to avoid letters where the same shape has different sounds in Latin and Greek. Also the Gothic letter 90, though it's a placeholder, looks exactly like the Cyrillic letter 90 "Che."

@oneukum

3 ай бұрын

But how did he know how to pronounce a digamma, if not from Romans?

@travelingonline479

3 ай бұрын

@@oneukum While he probably knew Latin and therefore may have taken "F" from Latin, the point I wanted to make is that the Greek alphabet was there before the Latin one, indeed the Latin one is a Western Greek alphabet adopted by the Etruscans, which the Romans then got from the Etruscans. And this focus of trying to credit far too many things to the Romans when it is not necessary because the Greeks were not only first but contemporary with the Romans and actually everywhere in the Roman empire their language being dominant in the east and the language of the elites in the urban centers of the west.

11:16 A minor correction. Bulgarian is a South Slavic language. And the Cyrillic script was created for Church Slavonic, a literary language based on medieval Bulgarian with Greek loanwords for the religious stuff. It replaced an earlier Glagolitic script (ⰃⰎⰀⰃⰑⰎⰉⰜⰀ¹) which is now used only by nerds, and freaks who believe it connects you to the cosmic powers, but it was used in Croatia until 19th century 1. Android renders it using the later Croatian blocky font and Windows use the earlier Bulgarian rounded font by default

@davidmandic3417

3 ай бұрын

You get the round type in Croatia too in very early inscriptions (late 10th, 11th c.), but it was already getting a bit angular because the inscriptions were cut in stone, which is easier to do with straight lines... The true blocky type (with somewhat simplified letter forms) had developed by the 1400s and, I think, was characteristic only of Croatian texts.

Although I'm not one myself, Scottish and Irish speakers of English generally don't have the wine-whine merger and as such still pronounce 'wh' as [ʍ] rather than [w].

@Gandalf_the_Black_

3 ай бұрын

Yep. My Germanic Philology teacher is from N. Ireland and she pronunces as [hʷ].

@GaryDunion

3 ай бұрын

I don't think I have the strongest Scottish accent but I definitely have the distinction between those sounds

@davidmandic3417

3 ай бұрын

@@GaryDunion Even I have that distinction and I'm not even a native speaker... just from constant listening to others around me :)

@drmasroberts

Ай бұрын

I am an older American (72) from Oregon and of Scottish-Northern Irish ancestry. I regularly destinguish the pronunciations of words like whine from wine especially question words. I didn’t realize the two sounds were merging in standard American English. I will have to listen more carefully to my grandchildren.

I'm partial to the Wulfilan alphabet, but it's a *lot* easier if you have larger and smaller letters, if you have closed Rs that don't look like Ks, etc. So far, Skeirs is most readable font I've found for it.

Thanks! Been looking for the Gothic alphabet for a while.

Kiitos!

Venetic and Lepontic use versions of phi that look more like a theta with a vertical line (Φ without the line surpassing the circle)-Venetic /b/, Lepontic /p~b/. Wondering if there is a variant Phi in some Greek alphabet maybe combined with a dialect that pronounces phi as a bilabial affricate [pφ] or maybe fricative [φ] circa 300AD. If so, maybe Wulfila sources the /hw/ letter from phi an not theta. The distance between [pφ~φ] and [hw] might seem large, but it reminds me of English transcription of Maori bilabial fricative [φ] as There’s at least 3 logical leaps here, very unlikely this is the real story, but I’m planting a flag here

@Nakiel

3 ай бұрын

I'm just gonna post another flag; φelturiesi

Missourian here. I think I'm a couple years younger than you (I'm 36), but I too still pronounce WH in most circumstances. And once again, I don't know many other folks who do.

Thank you! I love looking at all these languages through your lens!

Wanted to give another point on the religious aspect of scripts - in the Dead Sea Scrolls, there are several instances of writing God's name in paleo-hebrew script, while the rest of the text is in the later aramaic hebrew script. It definitely points to the script choice having some theological weight in their cultural context, especially as parts of the tanakh were likely originally written in paleo-hebrew.

Thank you for pointing out the letter-names of the Gothic alphabet per Alcuin.

I imagine others have pointed it out, but your videos are extremely quite compared to the average KZread video. I like to put your videos while I get work done, but in order to make your video audible I have to crank my computer's volume up to double or triple what it was for the last video from any other channel, to the point where any other notification or sound my computer makes can be heard by my neighbors. Your videos would be much more enjoyable and informative (at least for me) if you sampled some other videos on the site and matched the volume of your videos to them.

Greek was really the language of the future. The Goths were likely surrounded by Greek as a lingua franca and the language of the elites - much more than the North Germanics.

@azazelazel

3 ай бұрын

​@@stenhard61.46.1 At what time? They were located around the Balkans at the time the alphabet in the video was developed, and probably had been for several generations.

Concerning ease of reading, it‘s a matter of exposure, I guess. I have no trouble at all reading „gebrochene Schrift“ (Fraktur) but I constantly struggle with „Deutsche Schrift“ (Sütterlin).

The font used in Wiktionary I have trouble reading; the letters B, K, and R look confusingly similar. The font you show is easier to read, but the Δ, while clearly distinct from A, looks like some font of a. I think there should be a Gothic font that looks like the Latin and Greek capital alphabets, except for those letters that don't, like hwair.

This video is my equivalent to the Elden ring dlc trailer dropping

Good video.

As always, fascinating.

Great video but unfortunately the volume is very low!

Of course it says dinosaurs lol.

For the Gothic Alphabet, the influence from Greek, or some Greek-derived alphabet is undeniable, but we have to consider the possibility that Wulfilas possibly had some knowledge of the Latin script, but it is more speculative to say it has influence from the Runic Script, or "Futhark". The shape of letters like lambda and gamma and pi and especially chi are similar to the Greek letters, as well as the order of the letters (mostly, with some Latin influence, for example the "F" or "V" letter ((Digamma in Greek)) appearing after "U" or "W"), The use of upsilon Y for the /w/ sound conclusively proves the Greek influence for me, as well as the alphabetical order. The letters R and S look very similar to the Latin alphabet, but the S could have come from some kinds of Greek scripts that had a 3-stroke sigma. The only letters that show any similarity to Runes are the "U" letter looking like and upside-down "V", and possibly the "G" or "Y" letter "Gaar". This letter possibly shows the bilingualism (or, at least knowledge of both Latin and Greek) of Wulfilas. Because "G" can be palatalized in Greek to a "Y" sound before the vowel /i/, Also, Alcuin cites the letter names being similar to the Runic names, but we don't know if these are the "original" letter names in Gothic, or if Alcuin was being influenced by his own knowledge of the Runic letter names.

I always thought it was interesting that the graphemes and phonemes related to the letters Y, Γ, G, Я, J, & I were all conflated and related and suchlike here and there at various points in time, you know? It's one of my favorite odd correlating sets. I also like to ponder on the vague correlation between all the so-called "lunate" letters resembling the Latin C & U and the Greek Ωω. This is what came to mind when you were wondering about Alcuin's reasons for using the hermetic sigil for gold as his letter uuaer. I get the distinct impression that he was deliberately making subtle references to significant words and concepts in Hebrew and Hermeticism, because he and Charlemagne and Pope Leo III around that time did actually have specific religious ideas in regards to certain letters and sounds. I get the impression that the Hebrews at various times felt very strongly that certain sounds that were parts of certain names for God should be revered and not spoken in vain. I think this is the reason for the religious notions shoehorned into alphabets, particularly vowels and aspirated sounds. I also agree with you that the letter þ is derived from the Greek letter Φ, maybe related to the tongue being involved. 👅 Lastly, it occurred to me that the oddly-named letters you mentioned, chozma, manna, quetra, tyz, and geuua are all similar to Hebrew words relating to the Kaballah and other religious concepts: chokmah, manna, triquetra, tav, and gevurah, respectively. I really enjoyed this video. I've only just recently discovered my fascination with letters and their origins & secrets. I hope my amateur speculations aren't too easily dismissed.

9:12 Noo! Please don't be shed off the living body of American English! I love hearing your aspirated "wh-" and have tried doing it myself. :)

Interesting material. However, fraktur is beautiful. ;-)

The Gothic alphabet doesn't have the distinction between s and z as in Proto-Norse for earlier s and later Norse r, which makes me wonder whether there truly was no distinction or if it's from Greek influense which didn't distinguish between the s and sh sounds suggesting that Gothic nominative s was devoiced into the sh sound.

I think I remember reading the wh letting is a circle because the Gothic word for pot was something like wher so its supposed to look like a pot.

@vampyricon7026

2 ай бұрын

It was kas

The sounds is pretty low

🤠💜

“Old Norse Sleshaliss”

Just a comment to appease the youtube algorithm,

I can barely hear you on your outdoor videos, and my volume is cranked as high as it'll go.

@briantaylor9475

3 ай бұрын

He has stated numerous times that this is his volume. Yes, it is difficult to hear him sometimes,; it is the way it is.

@hive_indicator318

3 ай бұрын

I hear just fine on my 3 year old headphones that I've had to glue back together numerous times

@blob22201

3 ай бұрын

Yeah it's a bit annoying, I can't watch these videos while doing anything else because of the volume mismatch.

Much more than half interesting.

In ancient sources, the Goths are always described as tall and athletic, with light skin, blonde hair and blue eyes.[233][234] The 4th-century Greek historian Eunapius described their characteristic powerful musculature in a pejorative way: "Their bodies provoked contempt in all who saw them, for they were far too big and far too heavy for their feet to carry them, and they were pinched in at the waist - just like those insects Aristotle writes of."[235] Procopius notes that the Vandals and Gepids looked similar to the Goths, and on this basis, he suggested that they were all of common origin. Of the Goths, he wrote that "they all have white bodies and fair hair, and are tall and handsome to look upon."[236]

Jackson - you lost me. Who was Wulfila and who was Alcuin?

@gavinrogers5246

3 ай бұрын

Wulfila was a fourth-century bishop and the missionary to the Goths and translated the Bible into Gothic using an alphabet of his own devising. Alcuin of York was a Northumbrian cleric in the later 8th century and was a chief advisor to Charlemagne.

@karolw.5208

3 ай бұрын

@@gavinrogers5246 Thanks, my point was that this should have come from Jackson.

@gavinrogers5246

3 ай бұрын

@@karolw.5208 Please check out 00:44 and 12:07 where he tells the viewer who Wufila and Alcuin are respectively. Furthermore, I know from long experience that Dr. Crawford does not usually have time to read let alone answer the questions in the comments section. If you go to his page, he lets you know how to best reach him (or, more likely, his assistant, Stella) to ask these types of questions more directly.

gothic and fraktur are eye sores? Take it back! 😂

I love the Gothic alphabet (and Fraktur for that matter ^^) and wish it were still used nowadays. 𐌼𐌰𐌽𐌷𐌼𐌳𐌻 𐍃𐌷𐍂𐌴𐌹𐌱𐌴 𐌹𐌷 𐌼𐌴𐌹𐌽𐌴 𐌽𐍉𐍄𐌹𐌶𐌴𐌽 𐌰𐌿𐌷 𐌼𐌹𐍄 𐌳𐌴𐌼 𐌲𐍉𐍄𐌹𐍃𐌷𐌴𐌽 𐌰𐌻𐍆𐌰𐌱𐌴𐍄.

@ValentineMJ

2 ай бұрын

Standard German in the Gothic Alphabet? Hmmm…

@eid8fkebe7f27ejdjdjduyhsvqhwu2

2 ай бұрын

@@ValentineMJ Please give me some slack. It works well enough and Germans unfortunately adopted the Latin alphabet very early on...

@ValentineMJ

2 ай бұрын

@@eid8fkebe7f27ejdjdjduyhsvqhwu2 I don’t think that any of the ancient Germanic scripts could be 𝙩𝙧𝙪𝙡𝙮 adapted for modern use, without being a mess.

@eid8fkebe7f27ejdjdjduyhsvqhwu2

2 ай бұрын

@@ValentineMJ Why not? Elder Futhark works almost perfectly for German. Þ is useless in it but otherwise it would fit perfectly if the orthography were to be adapted a bit (like ᚺ always being pronounced as ch is currently, and long vowels being represented as it is in Finnish or sometimes in German with words like 'Aal' 'Aachen' or 'Tee') and maybe some new character for ß.

@ValentineMJ

2 ай бұрын

⁠​⁠​⁠@@eid8fkebe7f27ejdjdjduyhsvqhwu2I’d say it’d be a mess because of the umlauted vowels. '𐌶' is phonetically like a single S in German ( /z/ ), and 𐍃 would be the same phonetically as German ß ( /s/ ).

14:00 You don't think our writing has any socio-political ovetones?! Why don't we write English like this then; ᚧᚶ ᛩᚢᛂᚲ ᚡᚱᛟᚩᚾ ᚠᚩᛉ When that is a good way to write English. But rather we write like this: The Quick Brown Fox It's because of the symbolic power these things hold. Good Roman Christians write in Latin because Runes are used by Mean Germanic Pagans.