Talk:Gothic language

ISO 639.2

Library of Congress Language Coding Agency

ISO 639-2 Code: got

More info: Template:Lang

Germsteel (talk) 21:53, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

ʍ or hʷ

This article uses these two symbols seemingly interchangeably to represent 𐍈 (ƕ). Seeing as the ʍ symbol is notoriously ambiguous, it should probably be avoided in favour of using hʷ everywhere (and this notation makes the relationship between it and the other two labialized sounds more apparent). ~2025-31340-95 (talk) 01:43, 24 January 2026 (UTC)

Question on adding citation for A Barnstormer in Oz

After reading the addition of use of Gothic in the fictional language in A Barnstormer in Oz, and how citation is still needed for this, I was looking into the book and found that the language indeed seems based on Gothic, examples are Wulfla (little wolf, page 12), gund (cancer), and page 9 of the book straightly mentions how Hank Stover sees characters on a clock in a room resembling those which he saw in a book on the Gothic language.

I have tried to look into interviews with Farmer from either 1982 or after and what's still available but unfortunately so far I have not been able to find direct mentions yet or questions on his use of the language in this book. The question I want to ask here is that Wikipedia should use secondary sources and primary sources should only very scarcely be used, but if we can not find information on this mentioned in any secondary sources, would it make sense that we cite how he mentions this in the book itself or would this be problematic considering primary source use, including in the case where we can not find this mention in secondary sources? Bokareis (talk) 22:55, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

I added the citation since I do see that in certain conditions primary sources can be used (primary sources) but rewrote the part from the previous editor so that the book itself could be cited. I am however not sure that mentioning the words for certain English terms (which are very clearly Gothic inspired) alongside with the Gothic terms themselves, is correct during the citation. Bokareis (talk) 01:49, 13 July 2026 (UTC)

Problem with Heinrich May claim and finding citation

So in regard to this part of the article:

Reports of the discovery of other parts of Ulfilas's Bible have not been substantiated. Heinrich May in 1968 claimed to have found in England twelve leaves of a palimpsest containing parts of the Gospel of Matthew.^{[clarification needed][citation needed]}

I was looking if I could find which Heinrich May this could be and I stumbled upon a German librarian and medievalist called Otto Heinrich May who lived from 1887 (Bremerhaven, Germany) until 1977 (Kassel, Germany). (See his German Wikipedia page) His work Kriegs- und Nachkriegsschicksale der Niedersächsischen Landesbibliothek in Hannover (1939–1950). Nach Tagebuchvermerken, Aktenauszügen, Erlebnissen und Erkenntnissen. was published in the year 1968. This year does match the year of the claim in the currently added part with no citation, but I am rather confused how a book about the library of Niedersächsen would contain this claim. However I am not able to find any other books or articles which he would have published in this year.

This book can't be consulted online and someone would either need to purchase this book or borrow it from a library (in Germany?) in order to research if the claim can be found back in this book and the book could be added as a citation.

Leaving this here so that hopefully someone reading this can do something useful with this information. Bokareis (talk) 23:55, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

The library of my alma mater has a copy of the reprint. I'm happy to have a quick look at it next time I go there, but it's not likely to be very soon. --Pfold (talk) 17:32, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

That would be great! :)

I see that it's a book of only about 103 pages so hopefully it should be not too difficult to find if this is the source in this book. If the library happens to have more works of Otto Heinrich May we might have more luck if there's anything more from 1968 he has written, but it might also be the case that what's mentioned online is already all of his work and this book is really only possible source of this. I can continue looking if I can find other Heinrich May's but this really seems to be the only one which this excerpt applies to. Bokareis (talk) 19:40, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

Does this help? - https://www.modeemi.fi/~david/Codex_Argenteus/Cod_Arg_Bib.html (look under "May") --Pfold (talk) 12:51, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

Oh very good work, it seems like this is indeed what we were looking for. Seems like this is in Volume VIII (2013)

ISBN 978-3-935869-19-5 Spirensia & Synoptica, as https://www.gotica.de/minora.html indicates. Then we only need someone able to verify this being written on those pages 73-74 in the website which you linked, and then we can append this reference to this part of the article. Perhaps we also need to add a bit of information there on the suspicions of this being a hoax and why. Bokareis (talk) 14:36, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

New source for the Goths in India part

With the claims of Konow and Krause in regard to Irila and Cita I was trying to find more critical sources on these claims, as the hypothesis of Goths in India seems to say the least, unlikely to me. I did find the following paper by Sundeep S. Jhutti, see page 82 in regard to Konow's claim where Jhutti goes in depth on the Goths in India claims: https://www.sino-platonic.org/complete/spp127_getes.pdf I have checked and it seems like more articles on Wikipedia use the Sino Platonic papers for sourcing, so in that regard we might be able to use this.

On one hand I think it might be important that we incorporate something from this in some way, but I am not entirely sure on this source.

At first I wanted to add this myself, but I am too uncertain on what would be best to add from this source if we use it. One of my problems with the source is how Gothic language names would end up to be used by Gatas which, according to Jhutti are actually Massageteans, Alans or Jhats living in the north of India who were either related to Goths or have related customs to Goths, while he supports the claim that the Goths were an Asianic tribe. Are there actually reliable sources which locate the Goths as an Asianic tribe? Reliable sources seem to locate them in Europe.

And that's my problem overall, on one hand this is the only critical source on part of Konow's claim, but this source itself has its problems. Can someone skim through or read the relevant parts of this and give their opinion? Bokareis (talk) 14:47, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

Sino Platonic papers is usually a problematic source. By its own description, it specializes in providing an outlet for "research that, because of its unconventional or controversial nature, might otherwise go unpublished". The paper by Jhutti seems to fit that pattern. From what I can tell after a brief skimming, his linguistic argumentation is overall naive, to put it mildly. It's basically just drawing connections based on perceived superficial similarity of names and then jumbles that all together, so "Getae", "Massagetae", "Goths", "Jatta", "Yuezhi" end up all being somehow the same. That's not a serious linguistic publication. Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:46, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for your response and look into the source! Yes, I do agree with your assessment of the source, my impression is as well that Jhutti doesn't have sound linguistic arguments while . I guess that it depends entirely on the author and kind of paper in the Sino Platonic papers regarding which ones get used as a source, since when I was looking at it some weeks ago it seemed that some Wikipedia articles do use it, but like you said it usually is problematic. When I was looking for the author himself I also had a hard time to find credentials.

We'll have to disregard this source then and if anything else can be found we might be able to add some contrary viewpoints to this. Bokareis (talk) 10:01, 28 July 2026 (UTC)