How did the Gothic language sound like? Where can I find audio examples?

Written by Heiko Evermann in Allgemein

The Gothic language died out centuries before the invention of audio recording. Linguists have however reconstructed very well how Gothic sounded like. Some language enthusiasts have then made recordings of various Gothic texts based on this reconstruction.

Here are some suggestions from the Web with various examples of the Gothic language. Most are taken from the main source of Gothic: the Gothic Bible.

Mark 8

This video contains:

  • Numbers
  • greetings
  • pronouns
  • some nouns
  • Gospel of Mark 8:1-20
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qRMIx7Hc6U

Luke 15 with explanation

This video contains:

  • some introductory remarks about the Gothic language and the Gothic Bible
  • Gospel of Luke 15:11ff in Gothic with a word by word translation into English
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkKrS5yOPFI

Luke 1

This video contains:

  • The Gospel of Luke chapter 1 subtitled with Gothic in the Gothic Alphabet.

The audio quality is very nice. It gives a good impression of how Gothic has sounded. But in order to follow the text it might help to reduce the speed of the Youtube video. You might also want to put the English text and/or a transliteration of the Gothic text into the Latin alphabet into a second browser window. (That means: as long as you are not fluent with the Gothic alphabet)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkYJYrYFVz8

The Lord’s Prayer in Gothic

This video contains the Lord’s Prayer in Gothic in song. The music is nice. The video is subtitled in Gothic (Latin alphabet) and English. Highly recommended.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TJ00sZzX2U

Mark 1

This video contains the Gospel of Mark chapter 1. It has Gothic subtitles in Latin Alphabet. Google also offers Bulgarian subtitles which will not be helpful for those who do not speak Bulgarian. Remember that you can switch those subtitles of so that you can concentrate on the Gothic subtitles that come with the video.

The video comes with nice images that follow the Bible text. These help to follow the Gothic text.

https://youtu.be/GgkJ9H23LbY?t=10

The complete Gospel of Matthew

This video contains a reading of the complete Gospel of Matthew. Or to be more precice: of those passages that remain: Matthew 5-27. The video comes without subtitels. You might want to put the text from http://www.wulfila.be/gothic/browseOpens in a new tab. into a separate browser window.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVKu6LSr9sc

Image source: imageOpens in a new tab. by PublicDomainPicturesOpens in a new tab. on PixabayOpens in a new tab.

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