Caucasian Gothic

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Revision as of 12:12, 22 May 2024 by Plexus (talk | contribs) (Created page with "{{construction}} '''Gothic''' (also referred to as '''Caucasian Gothic''' to differentiate it from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_language Biblical Gothic]) is an Indo-European language of the East Germanic branch, spoken in Gothia and pockets around the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea Black Sea]. It is spoken by about 4 million native speakers, about 450,000 of which live in other countries. Despite the name, Gothic is not descended from Biblical Gothic,...")
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Gothic (also referred to as Caucasian Gothic to differentiate it from Biblical Gothic) is an Indo-European language of the East Germanic branch, spoken in Gothia and pockets around the Black Sea. It is spoken by about 4 million native speakers, about 450,000 of which live in other countries. Despite the name, Gothic is not descended from Biblical Gothic, but a closely related dialect. It is a recognized minority language in Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Turkey and Romania. It is written in the Gothic script, an alphabet descended from the Biblical Gothic script created by Wulfila, who is canonized as a Saint by the Gothic Orthodox Church.

Orthography

Alphabet

Gothic is written in its own alphabet known as the Gothic script. It is descended from the Biblical Gothic script (in Gothic called the "Wulfilan script"), but is based on cursive and handwritten letter forms. It is an entirely minuscule script, meaning it is written only with lowercase letters. However, the Wulfilan forms are commonly used to convey an archaic style, and are also sometimes used in religious situations. They are generally well-known, and there have been attempts to standardize them as European-style capital letters, but they have mostly failed.

Letter
IPA Romanization
ɑ /ɑ/ a
ƅ /b/, /v/ b
ƨ /g/, /ɣ/ g
q /d/, /ð/
d
c /iː/
e
u /kʷ/ q
ȥ
/z/
z
h /∅/, /ˠ/, /x/ h
/θ/
th
ı
/i/
i
k /k/ k
ʎ /l/
l
ʍ /m/
m
ν
/n/
n
ȷ
/j/
j
ƞ /u/ u
n /p/
p
ɾ /r/ r
s /s/
s
ʈ /t/ t
ү /w/ w
f /f/ f
/x/
x
ɵ /ʍ/
wh
ʊ /uː/ o

The alphabet also features one diacritic, the diaeresis/trema, and multiple digraphs.

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

Prosody

Stress

Intonation

Phonotactics

Morphophonology

Morphology

Syntax

Constituent order

Noun phrase

Verb phrase

Sentence phrase

Dependent clauses

Example texts

Other resources