Gothic alphabet

Gothic Alphabet

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Gothic alphabet

The Gothic alphabet is an alphabetic writing system attributed by Philostorgius

Philostorgius

Philostorgius was a so-called Anomoeanism Church historian of the 4th and 5th centuries. Very little information about his life is available; he was born in Borissus, Cappadocia to Eulampia and Carterius, and later lived in Constantinople....
to Ulfilas

Ulfilas

Ulfilas, or Gothic language Wulfila , bishop, missionary, and bible translator, was a Goths or half-Goth who had spent time inside the Roman Empire at the peak of the Arian controversy....
(also known as Wulfila), used exclusively for writing the ancient Gothic language

Gothic language

Gothic is an extinct language Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from Codex Argenteus, a 6th century copy of a 4th century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic languages with a sizable corpus....
. Before its creation in the fourth century in Nicopolis ad Istrum

Nicopolis ad Istrum

Nicopolis ad Istrum was a Ancient Rome and Early Byzantine Empire town founded by Emperor Trajan around 101-106, at the junction of the Iatrus with the Danube, in memory of his victory over the Dacians....
(modern Bulgaria

Bulgaria

The state of Bulgaria , Scientific transliteration Balgarija, officially the Republic of Bulgaria has played a significant role in the Balkans in south-eastern Europe for over fourteen centuries....
), Gothic was possibly written in runes

Gothic runic inscriptions

Very few Elder Futhark inscriptions in the Gothic language have been found in the territory historically settled by the Goths . This is due to the early Christianization of the Goths, with the Gothic alphabet replacing runes by the mid 4th century....
. It was primarily used by Ulfilas to translate the Bible

Bible

The Bible is the central religious text of Judaism and Christianity. The exact Books of the Bible is dependent on the religious traditions of specific denominations....
into Gothic. It appears to be derived from the Greek alphabet

Greek alphabet

The Greek alphabet is a set of twenty-four letters that has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th century BC or early 8th century BCE....
with some borrowings from the Latin alphabet

Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumae alphabet, and was initially developed by the Ancient Romes to write the Latin....
, as well. The names are clearly related to the names of the Runic alphabet

Runic alphabet

The runic alphabets are a set of related alphabets using Letter known as runes to write various Germanic languages prior to the adoption of the Latin alphabet and for specialized purposes thereafter....
.

w is a table of the Gothic alphabet.

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Encyclopedia

The Gothic alphabet is an alphabetic writing system attributed by Philostorgius

Philostorgius

Ulfilas

Gothic language

Nicopolis ad Istrum

Bulgaria

Gothic runic inscriptions

Bible

Greek alphabet

Latin alphabet

Runic alphabet

The letters

Below is a table of the Gothic alphabet. Two letters used in its transliteration

Transliteration

Transliteration is the practice of transcribing a word or text written in one writing system into another writing system or system of rules for such practice....
are not used in current English: þ (þiuþ, thorn

Thorn (letter)

Thorn, or ?orn , is a letter in the Old English language and Icelandic alphabet alphabets. It was also used in medieval Scandinavia, but was later replaced with the digraph th. The letter originated from the runic alphabet in the Elder Fu?ark, called thorn in the Anglo-Saxon and thorn or thurs in the Scandinavian rune...
) and (hwair

Hwair

Hwair is the name of , the Gothic alphabet expressing the /hw/-sound , transliterated with a special Latin letter of the same name . The name is recorded by Alcuin in Codex Vindobonensis 795 as uuaer....
). These represent sounds like the th in thin and the voiceless wh respectively.

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

Alcuin

Alcuin of York or Ealhwine, nicknamed Albinus or Flaccus was a scholar, ecclesiastic, poet and teacher from York, Northumbria....
(Codex Vindobonensis 795

Codex Vindobonensis 795

The Codex Vindobonensis 795 is a 9th century manuscript.It contains letters and treatises by Alcuin, including a discussion of the Gothic alphabet....
). Most of them seem to be Gothic forms of names also appearing in the rune poem

Rune poem

The Rune Poems are three poems that list the letters of runic alphabets while providing an explanatory poetic stanza for each letter. Three different poems have been preserved: the Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem, the Norwegian Rune Poem, and the Icelandic Rune Poem....
s. The names are given in the reconstructed form of the Gothic words, followed by the spelling of their actual attestation.

Most of the letters are taken over from the Greek alphabet

Greek alphabet

The Greek alphabet is a set of twenty-four letters that has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th century BC or early 8th century BCE....
directly, but a few letters are innovated to accurately express Gothic phonology; these are j, u (likely directly from runic alphabet

Runic alphabet

Qoppa

Qoppa or Koppa is a letter that was used in early forms of the Greek alphabet, which lacked such a sound; it was instead used for before back vowels ....
, which figures merely as the numeral 90 , but a variant of p). þ similarly to Cyrillic ?

or is a letter derived from the Latin alphabet. Both glyphs of the majuscule and Lower case forms of this letter are based on the rotated form of a minuscule e; a similar letter with identical minuscule is used in the Pan-Nigerian Alphabet, but has the capital form majuscule , based on a horizontally flipped majuscule E....
seems derived from Greek F

F is the sixth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English language is spelled ef or eff ....
rather than T

T is the twentieth letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English language is spelled tee . It is the most commonly used consonant and the second most common letter in the English language....
. 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

Digamma

Digamma is an Archaic Greece letter of the Greek alphabet, used primarily as a Greek numeral.The letter had the phonetic value of a voiced labial-velar approximant ....
, since it takes the place of F, not digamma, in alphabetical order. x is only used in proper names and loanwords containing Greek X

X is the twenty-fourth letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English language is spelled ex , plural exes .History...
(xristus "Christ

Christ

Christ is the English language term for the Greek meaning "the anointing", which is a title given to the Reigning Messiah in the given age of the Zodiac....
", galiugaxristus "?e?d????st??

Pseudo-Christ

Pseudo-Christ in Christian eschatology, refers a deceiver pretending to be Jesus or to be the Second Coming, based on Gospel of Mark 13:22....
", zaxarias "Zacharias

Zacharias

In the Bible, Zechariah , was the father of John the Baptist, and a relative by marriage of Jesus....
", aivxaristia "eucharist

Eucharist

The Eucharist, also called Holy Communion or Lord's Supper and other names, is a Christianity sacrament commemorating, by consecrating bread and wine, the Last Supper, the final meal that Jesus Christ shared with his disciples before his arrest, and eventual crucifixion, when he gave them bread saying, "This is my body", and wine...
").

Regarding the letters' numeric values, most correspond to that of the Greek numerals

Greek numerals

Greek numerals are a numeral system using letters of the Greek alphabet. They are also known by the names Milesian numerals, Alexandrian numerals, or alphabetic numerals....
. q takes the place of digamma

Digamma

Digamma is an Archaic Greece letter of the Greek alphabet, used primarily as a Greek numeral.The letter had the phonetic value of a voiced labial-velar approximant ....
(6); j takes the place of ?

Diacritics and punctuation

Diacritics and punctuation used in the Codex Argenteus

Codex Argenteus

The 'Codex Argenteus' is a 6th century manuscript, originally containing bishop Ulfilas's 4th century translation of the Bible into the Gothic language....
include a trema

Umlaut (diacritic)

The word umlaut is the name of a type of sound shift in spoken language and of the diacritic mark used to represent it Orthography. The diacritic mark comprises a pair of dots or lines placed over the letter that represents the affected Vowel....
placed on i, transliterated as ï, in general applied to express diaeresis

Diaeresis

In linguistics, diaeresis, or dieresis, is the pronunciation of two adjacent vowels in two separate syllables rather than as a diphthong, and it is also the name of the diacritic mark used to prompt the reader to pronounce adjacent vowels in this manner....
, the Interpunct

Interpunct

An interpunct is a small dot used for interword separation in ancient Latin alphabet, being perhaps the first consistent visual representation of word boundaries in written language....
(·) and colon

Colon (punctuation)

The colon is a punctuation mark, consisting of two equally sized dots centered on the same vertical line....
(:) as well as overline

Overline

An overline or overbar , refers to the typographical feature of a line drawn immediately above the text, for example used to indicate medieval sigla....
s to indicate sigla

Sigla

Sigla is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Aleksandr?w, Lublin Voivodeship, within Bilgoraj County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland....
(such as xaus for xristaus).

Character encoding

The Gothic alphabet is encoded in Unicode

Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard allowing computers to consistently represent and manipulate Character expressed in most of the world's writing systems....
in the range U+10330–U+1034F. As older software often assumes that all Unicode codepoints can be expressed as 16 bit

Bit

A bit is a binary numeral system numerical digit, taking a value of either 0 or 1. Binary digits are a basic unit of information Computer data storage and transmission in digital computing and digital information theory....
numbers (smaller than U+10000), problems may be encountered using the Gothic alphabet Unicode range.

Gothic alphabet

The letters

Diacritics and punctuation

Character encoding

See also

External links