Talk:Gothic declension

Genesis of article

To fix:

• describe numeri (a few pronouns have dualis),
• describe cases usages,
• add adjective declension, weak and strong,
• add pronouns and articles,
• add number forms declension,
• add lotsa samples and pecyooliar cases,
• add instrumental case samples,

Said: Rursus ☻ 14:16, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Order of cases

Former order was Nom - Gen - Dat - Acc - Voc. This order follows American (but not British!) usage in Latin. However, it makes little sense for Germanic languages, where the Nom and Acc are so often the same, a fact that is obscured by separating them. Furthermore, both Wright's "Grammar of the Gothic Language" and Bennett's "An Introduction to the Gothic Language" use the order Nom - (Voc -) Acc - Gen - Dat, and so I rearranged things to follow this order. Benwing (talk) 06:32, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Relation of weak declension to Latin declensions

You state that The an, on and in declensions constitute a Germanic word derivation, which is also used for adjectives in the weak form marking definiteness. The declensions are unique for Germanic languages, and so have no counterparts in Latin or Greek.

I am not an expert but I think that there is a relation between the weak declensions and certain Latin declensions. For example, guma, gumins should be related to Latin homo, hominis. (As far as I know these particular words are also etymologically connected.) The corresponding Greek declension could be in -ōn, -onos (e.g. σώφρων, σώφρονος), but I am less sure here.

The type tuggō, tuggōns (with a long o) could be compared with Latin natiō, natiōnis, or with latrō, latrōnis.

The type wato, watins could have some relation to Latin declension type femur / feminis (roots that alternate r/n in the stem). Gothic does not show this -r in the nominative (wato) but other Germanic languages have an -r (e.g. water, Wasser). So each Germanic language has simplified the declension of this class of words by generalizing either -r (English) or -n (Gothic).

I think it is worth checking out if these relations between the declensions hold.

Giorb (talk) 00:52, 24 June 2010 (CET)

You're quite right, the weak declension of nouns is not unique to Germanic and is indeed cognate to the n-stems of languages like Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, etc. What is unique to Germanic is having both a strong declension (originally the o-/eh₂-stem declension) and a weak declension (originally the n-stem declension) for all adjectives, but that isn't what the article says. +Angr 18:54, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

The -uh declension

What is the paradigm of the -uh declension (cf. 𐌸𐌹𐌿𐌷)? 2.9.125.57 (talk) 06:01, 17 October 2012 (UTC)