Gothic alphabet
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- This article is about the 4th century alphabet of the Gothic bible. Blackletter typefaces for the Latin alphabet are sometimes referred to as "Gothic script".
The Gothic alphabet is an alphabetic writing system attributed by Philostorgius to Wulfila, used exclusively for writing the ancient Gothic language. Before its creation in the fourth century, Gothic was possibly written in runes. It was primarily used by Wulfila to translate the Bible into Gothic. It appears to be derived from the Greek alphabet with some borrowings from the Latin one. The names clearly derive from the names of runes.
The letters
| History of the Alphabet |
|---|
Middle Bronze Age 19–15th c. BC
|
| Meroitic 3rd c. BC |
| Complete genealogy |
As with the Greek alphabet, letters were also used as numerals. When used as numerals, letters were generally written with an overdot or overbar. There are two numerals (representing 90 and 900) with no phonetic value.
The letter names are recorded in a 9th century manuscript of Alcuin (Codex Vindobonensis 795). Most of them seem to be Gothic forms of names also appearing in the rune poems. The names are given in the reconstructed form of the Gothic words, followed by the spelling of their actual attestation.
| Letter | Translit. | c.f. | Name | IPA | Numeric value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
𐌰 
| a | Α | ahsa / aza | 1 | |
𐌱 
| b | Β | bairkan / bercna | 2 | |
𐌲 
| g | Γ | giba / geuua | 3 | |
𐌳 
| d | Δ | dags / daaz | 4 | |
𐌴 
| e | Ε | aiƕus / eyz | 5 | |
𐌵 
| q | Π | qairþra (qairthra) / qertra | 6 | |
𐌶 
| z | Ζ | ezec | 7 | |
𐌷 
| h | H | hagl / haal | 8 | |
𐌸 
| þ, th | Θ | þiuþ (thiuth) / thyth | 9 | |
𐌹 
| i | Ι | eis / iiz | 10 | |
𐌺 
| k | Κ | kusma / chozma | 20 | |
𐌻 
| l | Λ | lagus / laaz | 30 | |
𐌼 
| m | Μ | manna | 40 | |
𐌽 
| n | Ν | nauþs (nauths) / noicz | 50 | |
𐌾 
| j | ᛃ | jer / gaar | 60 | |
𐌿 
| u | ᚢ | urus / uraz | 70 | |
𐍀 
| p | Π | pairþra (pairthra) / pertra | 80 | |
𐍁 
| Ϟ | 90 | |||
𐍂 
| r | R | raida / reda | 100 | |
𐍃 
| s | S | sauil / sugil | 200 | |
𐍄 
| t | Τ | teiws / tyz | 300 | |
𐍅 
| w | Υ | winja / uuinne | 400 | |
𐍆 
| f | F | faihu / fe | 500 | |
𐍇 
| x | X | iggws / enguz | 600 | |
𐍈 
| 700 | ||||
𐍉 
| o | Ω | oþal (othal) / utal | 800 | |
𐍊 
| Ϡ | 900 |
Most of the letters are taken over from the Greek alphabet directly, but a few letters are innovated to accurately express Gothic phonology (other than the Elder Futhark even featuring letters for the labiovelars); these are 
j,
u (expressed in Greek as a digraph ου),
ƕ,
and 
q (interestingly not derived from Greek koppa, which figures merely as the numeral 90 
, but a variant of 
p). 
þ similalry to Cyrillic Ф seems derived from Greek Φ rather than Θ.
r and 
s appear derived from the Latin rather than the Greek alphabet. Likewise, the shape of 
f is derived from Latin F rather than Greek digamma, since it takes the place of Φ, not digamma, in alphabetical order.
x is only used in proper names and loanwords containing Greek X (xristus "Christ", galiugaxristus "ψευδόχριστος", zaxarias "Zacharias", aivxaristia "eucharist").
Regarding the letters' numeric values, most correspond to that of the Greek numerals. q takes the place of digamma (6); j takes the place of ξ (60), u that of ο (70) ƕ that of ψ (700).
Diacritics and punctuation
Diacritics and punctuation used in the Codex Argenteus include a trema placed on
i, transliterated as ï, in general applied to express diaeresis, the Interpunct (·) and colon (:) as well as overlines to indicate sigla (such as xaus for xristaus).Character encoding
The Gothic alphabet is encoded in Unicode in the range U+10330–U+1034F. As older software often assumes that all Unicode codepoints can be expressed as 16 bit numbers (smaller than U+10000), problems may be encountered using the Gothic alphabet Unicode range.See also
External links
- [Omniglot's Gothic writing page]
- [Pater Noster in Gothic]
- [JavaScript Gothic transliterator]
- [Unicode code chart for Gothic]
- Fonts
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