§§ 31-2] Alphabet and Pronunciation

ι

§ 31. PHONETIC SURVEY OF THE GOTHIC SOUND-SYSTEM. A. ' Guttural

I Long a, ð, au, ū D ... (Short aí, i Palatal 4T _ . , (Long e, aí, ei To these must also be added the nasals m, n, and the liquids 1, r in the function of vowels. See § 15Θ.

B. Consonants. LABIAL. INTER" DENTAL, DENTAL. GUTTURAL. Explosives (Voiceless ρ I Voiced b t, tt đ, dd k, kk: g. gg q Spirants | Voiceless f þ, þ|> 1 Voiced b d s, ss Ζ h, (g?): g hr Nasals m, mm η, ηη g(gg) Liquids 1,11; r, rr

Semi-vowels w, j (palatal) To these must be added the aspirate h. See § 2 note ι forX. In Gothic as in the oldest period of the other Germanic languages, intervocalic double consonants were really long, and were pronounced long as in Modern Italian and Swedish, thus Jitta = at-ta, father; manna = man-na, man. STRESS (ACCENT). § 32. All the Indo-Germanic languages have partly pitch (musical) and partly stress accent, but one or other of the two systems of accentuation always predominates in each language, thus in Sanskrit and Old Greek the accent was predominantly pitch, whereas in the oldest periods of the Italic dialects, and the Keltic and Germanic languages.