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SHarqiy german va roman tillarining uziga xos xususiyatlari
Lesson 7: East Germanic Languages. The Gothic language.
The Gothic language, now dead, was spoken by a group of Old Germanc tribes, known in history as Gothic tribes. Where the Goths first came from is not definitely known. There were stories told by their old men of a time when their people had dwelt far to the north, on the shores and islands of what is now Sweden. Then had
come long, slow wanderings through the forests of western Russia, until they reached the shores of the Black Sea. In time they overran the once mighty Roman Empire to the south. The first of these northern barbarians to conquer Rome were the Visi- goths, or West Goths. Another tribal union of the Goths, the Ost-rogoths, or East Goths, inhabited the Black Sea shores. For a time the Goths ruled a great kingdom north of the Danube river and the Black Sea. Then, in A.D. 315, the Huns, a savage people, swept into Europe from Asia. They conquered the Ostrogoths and forced the Visigoths to seek refuge across the Danube within the boundaries of the Roman Empire. In a battle fought near the city of Adrianople, in 378, the Visigoths defeated and slew Emperor Valens. For a time they lived peaceably on Roman territory. In 395 they rose in rebellion under their ambitious young king Alaric and overran a large part of the Eastern Empire. In 410 Rome fell into the hands of the Visigoths. Alaric led the attack.
Alaric's successors Led their people out of Italy and set up a powerful kingdom in Spain and southern Gaul. In the year 507 the Visigoths in Gaul were defeated by the Franks and were forced beyond the Pyrenees. For 200 years their kingdom in Spain flourished. It did not come to an end until 711, when the Moors crossed over from Africa and in a terrible eight-day battle destroyed the Visigothic kingdom. And that was the end of the Visigoths as an independent people. The Ostrogoths for a time formed part of the vast horde which followed the king of the Huns, Attila. They settled in the lands south of Vienna when the Hunnish kingdom fell apart. Their national hero was Theodoric the Great, a powerful and romantic figure who became king in 474. In 488 he invaded Italy.
Theodore‘s reign was one of the best but his kingdom was one of the great "might-have-beens" of history. He failed largely because no permanent union was affected between the barbarians and the Christian-Roman population. It was during his reign that many manuscripts of Gothic which have come down to us written. After his death in 526 the generals of the Eastern Empires reconquered Italy. After fighting a last battle near Mount Vesuvius in 553), the Ostrogoths marched out of Italy. They
merged with other barbarian hordes north of the Alps and disappeared as a people from history.
THE GOTHIC WRITTEN LANGUAGE AND MONUMENTS
These earliest monuments of the Old Germanc written language, which give us the possibility of speaking on the structure and the vocabulary of the languages, were written in Gothic. The written records of other Old Germanc languages appeared much later, several centuries after. The monuments of the Gothic language reflect the stage in its development when it is still possible to reveal to a certain extent the main peculiarities which characterize Old Germanc languages as a whole. Later on, when written monuments of other Old Germanc languages appeared, these peculiarities had become obliterated or changed considerably, so that only a comparison with Gothic makes it possible to reconstruct the earliest stage in their development or at Least to understand the origin of the phenomenon under review. The early appearance of monuments in Gothic is due to the activities of Ulfilas (in Gothic Wulfila), a Gothic bishop and scholar (311-383). For more than 40 years he labored, first making a Gothic alphabet so that he could translate the Bible and then teaching his people the new faith. This Bible translated by Ulfilas is centuries older than the earliest writing which we have in any other Old Germanc languages, so its historical value is very great. The manuscripts containing the fragments of the biblical translation which have come down to us, are not contemporary with Ulfilas, they were written in the West Gothic dialect in Italy about the year 500. The monuments are the following:
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