Gutish is an East Germanic language descended from a language that was probably mutually intelligible with Gothic, though much of its corpus cannot have been inherited from the language of Wulfilas. It is likely, however, that the speakers of the ancestor of Gutish did consider themselves Goths, as reflected in its name. (It is likely similar in development to Modern High German – Deutsch – which is not directly descended from Old High German, but rather a similar dialect spoken by a group who also considered themselves “Diutisk.”) While it shares many of the areal changes of the Northwest Germanic languages, it is also marked by distinctive changes in palatalization, which, while similar to those of Old English, are most likely influenced by contact with Slavic languages.

Writing System

Alphabet & Pronunciation

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
[ɑ]
aska
‘ash’
[eː]
ǣjus
‘horse’
[b]
berkna
‘birch’
[ɡ]
giva
‘gift’
[ʤ]
ǧus
‘creature’
[d]
daǧ
‘day’
[ð]
ǣði
‘mother’
[e̞]
erða
‘earth’
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
[ʐ]
akuža
‘axe’
[h]
haglas
‘hail’
[θ]
þornus
‘thorn’
[i]
igil
‘hedgehog’
[j]
jēr
‘year’
[k]
kune
‘family’
[l]
lagus
‘lake’
[m]
matna
‘man’
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
[n]
nǭþs
‘need’
[o̞]
orte
‘garden’
[p]
perðra
‘chance’
[r]
rǣða
‘wheel’
[s]
sōgil
‘sun’
[ʃ]
šug
‘family’
[t]
tījus
‘Teu’
[ʧ]
čusins
‘chioce’
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
[u]
uvils
‘bad’
[v]
ivras
‘boar’
[f]
fǣjo
‘cattle’
[w]
wynia
‘joy’
[ø̞]
œrča
‘farmer’
[y]
ynča
‘ounce’
[o̞ː]
ǭsus
‘ox’

Non-Alphabetic Variants

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
[ɑː]
āde
‘egg’
[eː]
ēls
‘eel’
[ai̯]
īs
‘ice’
[uː]
ōðlas
‘inheritance’
[au̯]
ūrus
‘aurochs’
[ø̞ː]
œ̄ja
‘island’
[yː]
ȳftigi
‘timeliness’

Though the seven “long vowels” (though there are, in fact, nine) among the “Non-Alphabetic Variants” have individual names, they are not considered to be part of the standard alphabet or alphabetical order. Instead, each long vowel is considered alphabetically to be the equivalent of its doubled short counterpart. That is, ‹ā› is equivalent to ‹aa›, ‹ē› to ‹ee›, ‹ī› to ‹ii›, and so on. This becomes complicated by the fact that all long vowels except for ‹ā› are raised, though it’s not actually any different than what happens to the letter names in English.

(NB: The Gutish alphabet, while mainly latin- and cyrillic-based, contains several characters which are not readily representable using the standard Unicode characters. The forms presented in this wiki are a Romanization of the letters shown in the table above.)

Orthography

Alternative Writing Systems

Cursive

Romanization

Transcriptional Alphabet for Intermediate Language Changes

Phonology

Final Obstruent Devoicing

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Pronouns

Numbers

Articles & Determiners

Nouns

Verbs

Adjectives