Thank you for an entertaining story, Konrad.


> 5) Gothic often shows U were Norse or Old English show A and visa
> versa. Here is an example: "sunjis" means "true" in Gothic, whereas
> Old Norse shows the form "sannr". There are many such examples.

I would guess that in this case Gothic and Old Norse preserve different
ablaut grades of the root. Gothic seems to have the zero-grade (a syllabic
n that developed into /un/ in Proto-Germanic) whereas Old Norse seems to
have the o-base-grade (an /o/ that developed into /a/ in Proto-Germanic).
Compare this with the better known tönn vs. tunþu example. Why Gothic seems
to prefer the zero-grade I have no idea.

To those of you to whom this sounded like so much mumbo-jumbo - don't worry.
You don't have to know about the origins of the Germanic ablaut to learn
Old Norse or the other Germanic languages.

Kveðja,
Haukur