Oium, Dacia, Pannonia, Dalmatia, Italy, Gallia Narbonensis, Gallia Aquitania, Hispania, Crimea, North Caucasus
Era
attested 3rd–10th century; related dialects survived until 18th century in Crimea
Language family
Indo-European
Germanic
East Germanic
Gothic
Dialects
Crimean Gothic †
Gepid? †
Writing system
Gothic alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-2
got
ISO 639-3
got
Glottolog
goth1244
Linguasphere
52-ADA
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Expansion of early Germanic tribes into previously mostly Celtic Central Europe:[1]
Settlements before 750 BC
New settlements by 500 BC
New settlements by 250 BC
New settlements by AD 1
Some sources also give a date of 750 BC for the earliest expansion out of southern Scandinavia and northern Germany along the North Sea coast towards the mouth of the Rhine.[2]
Gothic is an extinct East Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from the Codex Argenteus, a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic language with a sizeable text corpus. All others, including Burgundian and Vandalic, are known, if at all, only from proper names that survived in historical accounts, and from loanwords in other, mainly Romance, languages.
As a Germanic language, Gothic is a part of the Indo-European language family. It is the earliest Germanic language that is attested in any sizable texts, but it lacks any modern descendants. The oldest documents in Gothic date back to the fourth century. The language was in decline by the mid-sixth century, partly because of the military defeat of the Goths at the hands of the Franks, the elimination of the Goths in Italy, and geographic isolation (in Spain, the Gothic language lost its last and probably already declining function as a church language when the Visigoths converted from Arianism to Nicene Christianity in 589).[3]
The language survived as a domestic language in the Iberian peninsula (modern-day Spain and Portugal) as late as the eighth century. Gothic-seeming terms are found in manuscripts subsequent to this date, but these may or may not belong to the same language.
A language known as Crimean Gothic survived in the lower Danube area and in isolated mountain regions in Crimea as late as the second half of the 18th century. Lacking certain sound changes characteristic of Gothic, however, Crimean Gothic cannot be a lineal descendant of (Bible) Gothic (but possible of another East Germanic language, or alternatively be originally a West Germanic language).[4][5]
The existence of such early attested texts makes it a language of considerable interest in comparative linguistics.
^Kinder, Hermann (1988), Penguin Atlas of World History, vol. I, London: Penguin, p. 108, ISBN 0-14-051054-0.
^"Languages of the World: Germanic languages". The New Encyclopædia Britannica. Chicago, IL, United States: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. 1993. ISBN 0-85229-571-5.
^Strategies of Distinction: Construction of Ethnic Communities, 300–800 (Transformation of the Roman World, vol. 2) by Walter Pohl, ISBN 90-04-10846-7 (pp. 119–121)
^Stearns 1978, p. 118.
^MacDonald Stearns, Das Krimgotische. In: Heinrich Beck (ed.), Germanische Rest- und Trümmersprachen, Berlin/New York 1989, p. 175–194, here the chapter Die Dialektzugehörigkeit des Krimgotischen on p. 181–185
mainly Romance, languages. As a Germanic language, Gothic is a part of the Indo-European language family. It is the earliest Germanic language that is attested...
Crimean Gothic was a Germanic, probably East Germanic, language spoken by the Crimean Goths in some isolated locations in Crimea until the late 18th century...
alphabet used for writing the Gothiclanguage. It was developed in the 4th century AD by Ulfilas (or Wulfila), a Gothic preacher of Cappadocian Greek...
Schwabacher, a form of Blackletter Gothic alphabet, the Greek-derived writing system of the Gothiclanguage Sans-serif, or gothic, a typographical style without...
The Gothic Bible or Wulfila Bible is the Christian Bible in the Gothiclanguage spoken by the Eastern Germanic (Gothic) tribes in the Early Middle Ages...
used the translation of the Bible into the Gothiclanguage and shared common doctrines and practices. The Gothic tribes converted to Christianity sometime...
mutual intelligibility with other North Germanic languages today. The East Germanic branch included Gothic, Burgundian, and Vandalic, all of which are now...
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was the Germanic language spoken by the Vandals during roughly the 3rd to 6th centuries. It was probably closely related to Gothic, and, as such, is...
of the GothicLanguage is a book by Joseph Wright describing the extinct Gothiclanguage, first published in 1910. It includes the language's development...
branches of Germanic languages, along with North Germanic and West Germanic. The only East Germanic language of which texts are known is Gothic, although a word...
In the Gothiclanguage, the Goths were called the *Gut-þiuda ('Gothic people') or *Gutans ('Goths'). The Proto-Germanic form of the Gothic name is *Gutōz...
Gothic fiction, sometimes called Gothic horror (primarily in the 20th century), is a loose literary aesthetic of fear and haunting. The name refers to...
Southern Gothic is an artistic subgenre of fiction, country music, film, theatre, and television that are heavily influenced by Gothic elements and the...
Black Sea steppes. These Germanic people brought their name and language to the Gothic people who emerged in the 3rd century (associated with the Chernyakhov...
American Gothic is a 1930 painting by Grant Wood in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. A character study of a man and a woman portrayed in...
the Roman empire, and no Gothiclanguage or distinct Gothic ethnicity has survived. On the other hand, the Gothiclanguage texts which the Ostrogothic...
admittedly sparse Gothic loans for Albanian studies, however, arguing that Gothic is the only clearly post-Roman and "pre-Ottoman" language after Latin with...
Gothic is an inflected language, and as such its nouns, pronouns, and adjectives must be declined in order to serve a grammatical function. A set of declined...
Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic or neo-Gothic) is an architectural movement that after a gradual build-up beginning in the second...
A Gothic film is a film that is based on Gothic fiction or contains Gothic elements. Since various definite film genres—including science fiction, film...
the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic languages. The language group is also referred to as the Nordic languages, a direct translation...
Very few Elder Futhark inscriptions in the Gothiclanguage have been found in the territory historically settled by the Goths (Wielbark culture, Chernyakhov...
It was developed by fans of gothic rock, an offshoot of the post-punk music genre. Post-punk artists who presaged the gothic rock genre and helped develop...
Gothicism or Gothism (Swedish: Göticism Swedish pronunciation: [ˈjøːtɪsˌɪsm]; Latin: Gothicismus) was a dacianistic cultural movement in Sweden, which...
Venetan (łengua vèneta [ˈeŋɡwa ˈvɛneta] or vèneto [ˈvɛneto]) is a Romance language spoken natively in the northeast of Italy, mostly in Veneto, where most...
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