Lesson 2: Nouns
This lesson is about how the noun functions in the Gothic language. (All of this applies to the pronoun and adjective, too.) If you haven't already, please read the introduction to this course.
In order to understand the Gothic noun, we have to understand the concepts of number, case, gender, and declension.
Number
This will be the most recognizable from English. In Gothic, nouns have to numbers: singular and plural, just as in English. (Verbs have a dual number, but that will be explained in a later lesson.)
Gender
If you are familiar with languages such as Spanish, German, Greek, or French, then you are familiar with the concept of nouns having gender. English has grammatical gender as well, but only in pronouns (he is masculine, she is feminine). What gender is is an arbitrary classification of words that, in Gothic, divides them into masculine, feminine, and neuter. There is no way to tell from the noun's meaning itself what the gender of it will be, so learners must memorize it along with the noun. It doesn't get too complicated, and I can assure you, native speakers will not bat an eye if you use the wrong one.
Case
This might be a little bit harder to understand, but we do have it in English, although, just like in gender, it can only be seen in the pronouns. As an example, look at the sentence, "I saw him". "I" is in the subject case, and "him" is in the object case. Pronouns decline (change) for case, so we can't use the form associated with another case and always expect to be understood. Gothic has five cases:
- nominative: the subject of the sentence
- accusative: the direct object of the sentence
- genitive: possessive
- dative: the indirect object
- vocative: used when addressing someone
Let's look at the difference between accusative and dative. Accusative refers to the direct object, and dative refers to the indirect object. In the sentence, "I borrowed the book from the library", "the book" is the direct object, and "the library" is the indirect object. This is because the action denoted by the verb—borrowing—was done to the book. Next, "the library" is the indirect object, because the action affected it, but that is only because the action more directly affected another thing. The library was only affected because the book was borrowed. In the sentence, "I gave my friend a present", the friend is only affected because he was given a present.
Of course, there is another distinction to be made. Some languages will say that any noun that is qualified by a preposition is dative, but, in Gothic, even nouns used with prepositions can be either accusative or dative. Given that the word ana means "on, onto", and that wigs means "way, road", we might have trouble distinguishing ana wig and ana wiga. Which one means "on the road", and which one means "onto the road"? Throwing out there that wig is the accusative form of wigs, and that wiga is the dative form of wigs, we can at least see that the preposition ana takes a different case in each noun phrase given here. The preposition takes the accusative case when it refers to motion or placement into, onto, from, or out of something or somewhere, and it takes the dative when referring to static motion within, outside of, on top of, etc. something or somewhere. So, ana wig means "onto the road", and ana wiga means "on the road".
A quick test: in means "in, into", and akrs means "field". "Into the field" is in akr, and "in the field" is in akra. If you wanted to say someone was walking in the field, which would you use? If you're not familiar with this rule, you probably answered in akr, but you would be wrong if so. Since the walking is being done within or inside of the field, it would be in akra. As long as the motion does not cross the bounds between the object and some other object, any motion still requires the dative case.
Declension
This concept will seem very complicated and intimidating to many people who have never studied a language that has it before. If you've studied Latin or ancient Greek, you should be familiar with the concept of nouns being grouped into different declensions. This categorization is done based on the final letter of a noun's stem, which is the part of the noun that stays the same in all of its forms. However, in Gothic, virtually all nouns' stems end in consonants. Does this mean they must all be consonant stems? No, in fact, consonant stems are very rare in Gothic. The categorization is based on the stems of their ancestor words in Proto-Germanic (see the introduction if you need a refresher on what Proto-Germanic is). So, the noun himins (stem himin-) may not have a stem ending in -a, but its ancestor in Proto-Germanic, himinaz, certainly does, making it a member of the a-stem declension of nouns. A noun's declension will not be intuitive in most cases, and so it must be learned. Every declension declines differently, so it is important to know if you want to actually use the noun in a sentence and decline it by case and number.
Gothic declensions do not correspond perfectly to genders, and so, for instance, all ô-stem nouns are feminine, but a-stem nouns can be either masculine or neuter. Also, not all feminine nouns are ô-stem. Declensions in Gothic fall into three caregories: strong, weak, and consonant.
- strong: these are the a-stem, ja-stem, i-stem, ô-stem, jô-stem, and u-stem nouns.
- weak: these are the an-stem and ôn-stem nouns. There are two ôn-stems: a feminine one and a neuter one.
- consonant: these are usually called s-stems when they end in -s, but nouns ending in -nds and -ndi are nd-stems.
And that is all you need to know about the Gothic noun. From here, you can proceed to Lesson 3, which goes over the a-stem masculine nouns.