Does anyone nowadyas speak Gothic? ( The language, not the people wearing black)?

Question

I know it went extinct by around 600 A.D. but I thought it'd be cool to learn.. Also does anyone speak any other extinct language like that???

Yeah go to this site:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_language

Also, go to amazon and look up gothic language books and there are a couple of learn it yourself books there!

Actually, it was a language. It was a Gernaminc language spoken by the Goths. The Goths were defeated by the Franks, and the language wasn't spoken much past the 7 to 9 th century.

Answer 1

Gothic was a language? I didn't even know that...

Answer 2

The Goths were one of the most important "barbarian" tribes responsible for the downfall of the Roman Empire and the politics of early Medieval Europe. By the 4th century CE, the Goths were becoming Christianized. At this time, the Goths wrote their language using their version of the Futhark alphabet, but it was deemed to be a pagan invention. Instead, Bishop Wulfila (or Ulfilas), a Greek missionary responsible for the conversion of the Goths to Christianity, took the Greek alphabet, added letters from Latin and Futhark alphabets, and created a new alphabet to write the Gothic language.

The Goths spoke a Germanic language, and it is unique not only in that it is the earliest documented Germanic language, but also in that it is the only language in a completely separate branch of the Germanic family unrelated to any other surviving Germanic languages.

In most of Europe, the Gothic alphabet and language slowly faded into obscurity by the 9th century CE. The Gothic language survived in the Crimea but it too became extinct around the 17th century CE.

There are many extinct languages due to geographical and/or political upheavals, that is the languages were incorporated with other languages [of the conquering culture] thus the language slowly faded.

The following website will give you an extensive list of 'lost' languages.


http://www.ethnologue.com/nearly_extinct.asp

Answer 3

The Goths originally lived near the Baltic Sea in parts of what is now Kaliningrad (East Prussia), Poland and southern Sweden.

Under their leader Alaric, the Goths invaded large parts of the Roman Empire in the 4tth century A.D. from Greece and Yugoslavia to Spain and Portugal.

However, Greek and Latin were the languages of the civilized world and Gothic could not compete with them. So it eventually died out in most places. Strangely, one Gothic speaking enclave survived in Crimea, in southern Russia, until abut 1750.

Contrary to popular belief, Gothic was not quite a Germanic language even though it was Indo-European and closely related to Germanic. To call it "Germanic" would be to ignore certain similarities it also shared with Tocharian, Celtic, Italic and Balto-Slavic that are not found in the Germanic languages.

It would be difficult to revive Gothic as a spoken language since we don't know all of its vocabulary, idioms, colloquialisms and turns of speech. We only know what was written in texts that ancient writers have passed down to us.

However, if you are satisfied with learning to speak a limited amount of the language, "Wright's Grammar of the Gothic Language" is available in many libraries and on the internet.
It has been the basic standard for anyone learning the language.

http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~kurisuto/germanic/goth_wright_about.html

Answer 4

Here's an article that includes a history of the language, links to existing writings in Gothic, including the Bible, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_language

And you can learn some Gothic in these sites:

http://members.terracom.net/~dorothea/david/gothic/index.html

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Gothic/1/Introduction

Once you get to know people, they'll help you find other resources. Good luck!

Answer 5

as fars as i know gothic is no longer spoken. It was an ancient germanic language spoken by the various gothic tribes that took over the roman empire. it is still bein studied and read by scholars and you can find numerous dictionaries and grammars on this language on web. there are many extinct languages, sumerian, hittite, palaic, kaskian, luwian, carian, gutian, tartessian, iberian, aquitanian, thracian, etc etc

Answer 6

Gothic was an archetectural style, not a language. Perhaps you are thinking of Latin?

Pax Deus Vobiscum.

Answer 7

i had no clue gothic was a language. where'd you hear that from? that's really interesting!