Early Germanic

**cmacq** · 07-13-2008, 00:45

In short, there are no documents from this period. Everthing to do with pronunciation is founded on reconstructions supported by a number of theories, which are based on some assumptions, that more often than not, reflect the recent or modern geopolitical leanings, of their academic progenitors and advocates alike. The earliest surviving text in Alemannic is the Bülach fibula; a very short runic script, which dates between the 3rd and 6th centuries AD. The earliest known East Germanic text is the Codex Argenteus (6th century AD) which includes Ulfilas's 4th century AD translation of the Greek Bible into Gothic.

I hope this may help.

CmacQ

**blitzkrieg80** · 07-16-2008, 20:00

Cmacq does a good job answering the question in a short summation (although I would dispute geopoliticalness in concern to linguistic theory and clear Indo-European connection), but were you interested in online resources for Gothic, Old High German, ect., despite their later transcription? Or decent publications at an academic library? I would be happy to provide some stuff I have encountered, but I won't bother if you or anyone else isn't going to be checking back to this thread... sorry, but I am very busy.

PS- what kind of terminology are you looking for? there are significant differences in the lexicon offered by the various dialects, for many reasons, such as with Gothic which is restricted to religious material, although the Bible is not without action (just pale in comparison to lovely Viking saga), but does have a direct influence on how pagan religious terminology is ignored or borrowed for usage to convey the Bible to Christians, and how the Germans viewed various concepts through their various usages.

**Aodhan** · 07-17-2008, 18:23

I was interested in the oldest Germanic recorded, (by either Germans or Latin historians) and I was interested in academic collections, because even though I have an extraordinarily large collection of academic references, almost none of them have anything to say Early Germanic beyond that it was clearly Indo-European. Of coarse that’s because almost all of the books I have are about the Celtic world (because I'm infatuated with my peoples history) and so I was wondering if anyone knew where I could find either the theories of how Early Germanic worked or actual contemporary references.

And I was most interested in the West Germans, the Chatii, Chauci, ect.