38. The East Germanic branch of languages: general characteristics.

As a result of the expansion of the Germanic-speaking peoples, differences of dialect within Proto-Germanic became more marked, and we can distinguish three main branches or groups of dialects, namely North Germanic, East Germanic, and West Germanic.

The East Germanic dialects were spoken by the tribes that expanded East of the Oder around the shores of the Baltic. They included the Goths, and Gothic is the only East Germanic language of which we have any record. Round AD 200 the Goths migrated south-eastwards, and settled in the plains north of the Black Sea, where they divided into two branches, the Ostgoths east of the Dnieper and the Visigoths west of it. The main record of Gothic is the fragmentary remains of a translation of the Bible into Visigothic, made by the Bishop Wulfila or Ulfilas in the middle of the 4th century. The Goths were later overrun by the Huns, but a form of Gothic was being spoken in the Crimea as late as the 17^th century. It has since died out, however, and no East Germanic language has survived into our own times. + Vandal, Burgundian

39. The North Germanic branch оf languages: general characteristics.

It took approximately 5 centuries for the Old Germ. lang-es (dialects) to form the features of individuality to be definitely distinguished from one another, with the East Germ. lang-es having died away by the time the North Germ. lang-es manifested features of differentiation.

The comparative method was developed over the 19th century. Key contributions were made by the Danish scholars Rasmus Rask, Rasmus Rask and the German scholar Jacob Grimm. The first linguist to offer reconstructed forms from a proto-language was August Schleicher, in 1861. They established, with the help of their main method: the comparison, the definition of The language family: this is the language which is represented by a parent language and its daughters ( the divergent continuations of parent languages).

The PG is a dialect of PIE , a linguistic ancestor of Germanic group

To North Germanic belong the modern Scandinavian languages – Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese(West) and Swedish, Danish, Gutnish(East) (the language of the island of Gotland). The earliest recorded form of North Germanic (Old Norse) is found in runic inscriptions from about AD 300

40. Old Germanic alphabets. The distinguished written records.

p.36-42

The commonly used alphabets were Runic ( Futhark, The Anglo-Saxon and the Anglo-Frisian, Younger), Latin, Gothic alphabet.

The runic alphabet is a specifically Germanic alphabet, not to be found in languages of other groups. The word rune originally meant ’secret’, ‘mystery’ and hence came to denote inscriptions believed to be magic. The runes were used as letters, each symbol to indicate separate sound. This alphabet is called futhark after the first six letters.

• runic letters are angular;

• straight lines are preferred, curved lines avoided;

• this is due to the fact that runic inscriptions were cut in hard material: stone, bone or wood.

• the shapes of some letters resemble those of Greek or Latin, other have not been traced to any known alphabet, and the order of the runes in the alphabet is certainly original.

• the number of runes in different OG languages varied.

The main use of runes was to make short inscriptions on objects, often to bestow on them some special power or magic.

The best known runic inscriptions are the earliest extant OE written records. One of them is and inscription on a box called the “Franks Casket”. The ring from Piertoassa IIIc. AD “Goths” “sacred”. The Edge of the Spear from Kovel III-IV c.AD – “attacking”. The Runic Stone IVc AD

The Latin alphabet

The Gothic alphabet