--- In cybalist@..., x99lynx@... wrote:
> "Sergejus Tarasovas" <S.Tarasovas@...> (Wed Oct 2, 2002 7:58
am)
> <<Not in Greek proper. <au> was just that in Old Greek, and began
to
> render [av]~[af] in Middle Greek. The reason Wulfila have chosen
<au> for
> Gothic open [O] is obvious -- Greek <o> was (and still is) a close
[o] and
> the <o>-grapheme didn't seem to fit.>>
>
> I don't doubt that what you've written is correct, but my point was
something
> different. Wulfila takes written Greek <o> -- for the reasons
you've given
> -- and writes it in Gothic (writing) <au>. An ancient scribe
dealing ONLY
> with writing and aware of this formula reverses the process,
without regard
> to any Germanic-Latin sound correspondence, which he is unaware of
anyway. So
> that written Germanic <au> is equivalent to written Latin <o>, and
German
> <gaunt> is therefore written <got/goth>. No actual sound
correspondence
> correction necessary or even available within the knowledge of the
scribe.
> Just a scenario to make a small point.
>
I see your point, but Gothic as written by Wulfila is a concrete
entity, while "Germanic" is too a vague notion to associate with it a
specific "writing formula", extrapolated from Wulfila's writing
system created specifically for Gothic, not the abstract "Germanic".
And the scenario you propose actually takes an "ancient scribe" who
apparently has read some Gothic texts (as he is aware of the
orthographic correspondence in question) being not aware of the
actual Gothic letter-sound correspondencies, from which one can
conclude he has no knowledge of Gothic language at all (reading texts
in an unknown language is a strange kind of hobby, I must say). Yet
he somehow knows that, eg, the Gothic grapheme that looks approx.
like Latin minuscule <n> corresponds to Greek <ypsilon> and Latin
<u>. Then the same scribe reading a text in Greek or Latin (because
it's too early for a text in a Germanic language proper to be written
down) comes across an ethnonym and interprets it as being written on
principle of the Gothic orthography (being sure that all pertinent to
Gothic is pertinent to any other Germanic language as well) and, re-
writing the text (or writing his own text), translates the Gothic
orthogramme into a Latin one (he knows of Greek-Gothic orthographic
correspondencies only, but Greek and Latin are one and the same thing
as to the orthography to him). Too many assumptions (and not the most
probable ones), in my opinion, for the scenario to be viable.
Sergei