Latin Calques and Loanwords in Wulfila’s Bible

Wulfila was an Arian Christian bishop largely responsible for the conversion of the Gothic tribes during the fourth century. As part of his missionary efforts, he invented a Gothic alphabet and translated the Bible (supposedly all of it except for the four books of Kings) from Greek into Gothic. The vast majority of attested Gothic survives in fragments of copies of his translation made some time around the year 500 (Wright 196). Great attention has been paid over the years to the probable Greek text which Wulfila used, and to which his translation owes its syntax and possibly some of its more specialized vocabulary.[1] But an examination of existing Gothic vocabulary reveals several direct calques and loanwords from Latin. I will review three of these, and then consider the possible implications for how we should think about the complex linguistic and cultural milieu of Wulfila’s day.

*aket “vinegar”: This word, translating Greek ὄξος “vinegar” is attested only in the genitive singular. It is derived from Latin acetum. Since vinegar is made from wine, which was introduced to the Germanic tribes by Mediterranean and specifically Roman culture, this word was likely adopted well before Wulfila’s translation. The unpalatalized -c- of acetum suggests a borrowing no later than the third century AD (Lehmann 23-4).

*alew “oil”: This word translates Greek ἐλαίου “oil.” It is attested in the genitive singular form alewis. It is elsewhere used to refer to olives, as at fairgunja alewjin “at the mount of olives.” As with *aket, this loan word represents a material product associated with Mediterranean culture (olives and olive oil) and almost certainly predates Wulfila’s translation. What is less clear, however, is how the word entered Gothic. A straight borrowing from Latin oleum would suggest the form *auliw (see OE æle, OHG oli). Recent attempts have traced the route of transmission through the Roman province of Rhaetia, where surviving inscriptions show a dialectal variant of Latin which replaced -ō- with -ā-. If this transmission took place before the shift of the Archaic Latin diphthong ei > ē > Classical Latin ī, it would render the etymon *alewa- (Lehmann 26-7). But this would require interaction with the Goths sometime prior to 75 BC, much earlier than is generally supposed (Fortson 284). It seems more likely that the word was transmitted via one or more intermediary forms,[2] and that it came to Gothic as the result of indirect contact (probably via trade) with Mediterranean culture.

*armahairts “mercy, alms”: This word translates Greek ἐλεημοσύνη “alms,” and is attested in its nominative plural form. It is a compound of arma- from *arms “poor, pitiable,” and hairto “heart.” The latter is cognate, via Grimm’s Law, with Latin cor. Armahairts is thus an exact calque of Latin misericordia (Lehmann 42). Similar calques exist elsewhere in Germanic languages (see OE ælmesse, which is a more direct calque, via Vulgar Latin, of ἐλεημοσύνη), suggesting a word for this specific kind of gift-giving did not exist in Germanic culture prior to contact with Christianity, and needed to be borrowed. It is possible Wulfila introduced this word himself, although the use of a Latin calque seems curious unless the word was already known to his audience.[3]

By the time Wulfila translated the Bible into Gothic, the Goths had been in direct contact with the Roman Empire—as both enemies and mercenaries—for over a century. Although it is impossible to know just how much indirect contact they had before that, the linguistic evidence suggests that Mediterranean trade goods with Latin names had reached them. Wulfila’s missionary efforts did not take place in a cultural vacuum. His audience, having interacted with the Roman Empire during the heyday of its conversion to Christianity, was likely already familiar with the basic practices of the new religion.


[1] There are many words which appear to be Gothic transliterations of precise Greek words or phrases. Although it is likely that Wulfilas introduced these to supplement shortcomings in Gothic vocabulary, it is also possible that some of them already existed prior to his translation.

[2] An intermediary Celtic form of *olevom has been suggested, however there is no direct evidence for either this or the proposed Rhaetic form (Lehmann 26-7).

[3] As noted above, Wulfila’s tendency is to adhere (sometimes rigidly) to the syntax and meaning of his Greek source, and this practice seems to extend to compounds he introduced.

Works Cited

Fortson, Benjamin W. Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction. Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.

Lehmann, Winfred Philipp, and Helen-Jo J. Hewitt. A Gothic Etymological Dictionary: based on the third edition of Vergleichendes Wörterbuch der Gotischen Sprache by Sigmund Feist. E. J. Brill, 1986.

Wright, Joseph. Grammar of the Gothic Language. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1910.


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The Gothic Digraphs ai and au

The vowels of Wulfila’s Gothic include the letters a, e, i, o, u, and the digraphs ei, iu, ai, and au. There is some question about the sound values of the latter two, the traditional understanding being that these digraphs were each used to represent three different sounds: a diphthong, a short vowel, and a long vowel. By this theory, the digraph ai was used to represent (1) the diphthong ái (identical to ei in German mein); (2) the short vowel aí (similar to a in English hat); (3) the long monophthong ai [e:]. The au digraph was used to represent (1) the diphthong áu (ou English house); (2) the short vowel aú (o in English not); (3) the long monophthong au (au in English aught).

There are several criteria we must consider when reconstructing the various sounds that may have been indicated by these digraphs. The first and most important of these is the comparison of Gothic with other Old Germanic languages. This criterion takes examples of words with the au or ai digraph and compares them to their cognates in other Old Germanic languages, as well as to the reconstructed Proto-Germanic form. Where we find a consistent type of sound across several forms, and in the reconstructed form, it is reasonable to assume the same type of sound is at work in Gothic.

Comparison of Gothic baíran “to bear” to cognates in other Old Germanic languages shows a short vowel: see OHG beran, ON bera. Similarly, daúhtar “daughter” is cognate with OHG tohter and OE dohtor, suggesting the au in this word represents a short vowel. Applying this same principle of comparison to other words suggests that under certain conditions these digraphs are used to represent a diphthong, under others a long monophthong. (Robinson 64)

Another criterion which is helpful for determining the value of these digraphs is the Gothic spelling of Biblical names. For instance, ai is used both to render Greek ɛ in the name Aíleisabaíþ “Elizabeth”, and the long Greek monophthong αι in the second syllable of Haíbraius “Hebrew” (Robinson 65). By carefully considering the list of attested forms, their cognates in other Old Germanic languages, and their use in rendering the spelling of Greek names, we can derive the following rules (Wright 1910):

aí appears only before r, h, and ƕ[1]

ai appears only before a following vowel

aú appears only before r and h

au appears only before a following vowel

This theory has recently been challenged: if these sounds were uniformly distinct, why would Wulfila, whose orthography is otherwise very precise, not have represented them using individual symbols? This objection posits a two-way distinction: a short vowel (ai as [e] and au as [o]) before consonants, and a longer vowel (ai as [e:] and au as [o:]) before vowels. But whether a three-way distinction existed in Wulfila’s time, Robinson maintains it is useful for the modern study of Gothic, since the suggested vowels aí ái and ai each derive from different sources in the proto-language. (Robinson 67)



Works Cited

Robinson, Orrin W. Old English and its Closest Relatives: A Survey of the Earliest Germanic Languages. Stanford, CA, Stanford Univ. Pr., 2003.

Wright, Joseph. Grammar of the Gothic Language. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1910.



[1] Wright notes the possible exceptions of aíþþáu, waíla, and the reduplicated syllable of pret. strong verbs belonging to Class VII.


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Only Gistradagis

The Gothic word for "tomorrow" is 𐌲𐌹𐍃𐍄𐍂𐌰𐌳𐌰𐌲𐌹𐍃, gistradagis. If that word looks familiar, it should. It's a compound made up of two elements:

gistra-, which is cognate with Old English geostran- which in Modern English becomes yester-.

-dagis is of course from dags, cognate with Old English dæg which becomes Modern English day.

That's right. The Gothic word for "tomorrow" is the same as our word for "yesterday." This is doubly curious, because the same set of compounds in every single cognate language, including words like Latin hesternus, mean "the day before this day." Gothic is the only one where it means "the day after this day."

In A Gothic Etymological Dictionary, Lehmann speculates the reason for this might be that the Proto-Germanic prefix *gistr- may have originally meant "adjacent day," and that in non-Gothic languages it may have taken the meaning "previous day" whereas in Gothic it took the meaning "next day."

Possibly supporting this idea is that in the Old Norse poem Hamðismál we see the cognate form used to speak of the next day:

Vel höfum vit vegit,
stöndum á val Gotna,
ofan eggmóðum,
sem ernir á kvisti;
góðs höfum tírar fengit,
þótt skylim nú eða í gær deyja;
kveld lifir maðr ekki
eftir kvið norna."
(Hamðismál stanza 30)


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