Gothic language

Gothic is an extinct East Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from the Codex Argenteus, a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic language with a sizable text corpus. All others, including Burgundian and Vandalic, are known, if at all, only from proper names that survived in historical accounts, and from loanwords in other languages such as Portuguese, Spanish, and French.
As a Germanic language, Gothic is a part of the Indo-European language family. It is the earliest Germanic language that is attested in any sizable texts, but it lacks any modern descendants. The oldest documents in Gothic date back to the fourth century. The language was in decline by the mid-sixth century, partly because of the military defeat of the Goths at the hands of the Franks, the elimination of the Goths in Italy, and geographic isolation.
The language survived as a domestic language in the Iberian peninsula as late as the eighth century. Gothic-seeming terms are found in manuscripts subsequent to this date, but these may or may not belong to the same language. In particular, a language known as Crimean Gothic survived in the lower Danube area and in isolated mountain regions in Crimea. Lacking certain sound changes characteristic of Gothic, however, Crimean Gothic cannot be a lineal descendant of Bible Gothic.
The existence of such early attested texts makes it a language of considerable interest in comparative linguistics.

History and evidence

Only a few documents in Gothic survive, not enough to completely reconstruct the language. Most Gothic-language sources are translations or glosses of other languages, so foreign linguistic elements most certainly influenced the texts. These are the primary sources:

The largest body of surviving documentation consists of various codices, mostly from the sixth century, copying the Bible translation that was commissioned by the Arian bishop Ulfilas, leader of a community of Visigothic Christians in the Roman province of Moesia. He commissioned a translation of the Greek Bible into the Gothic language, of which roughly three-quarters of the New Testament and some fragments of the Old Testament have survived. The translations, performed by several scholars, are collected in the following codices:
A scattering of old documents: two deeds, alphabets, a calendar, glosses found in a number of manuscripts and a few runic inscriptions that are known or suspected to be Gothic: some scholars believe that these inscriptions are not at all Gothic. Several names in an Indian inscription were thought to be possibly Gothic by Krause. Furthermore, late ninth-century Christian inscriptions using the Gothic alphabet, not runes, and copying or mimicking biblical Gothic orthography, have been found at Mangup in Crimea.
A small dictionary of more than 80 words and an untranslated song, compiled by the Fleming Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, the Habsburg ambassador to the court of the Ottoman Empire in Istanbul from 1555 to 1562, who was curious to find out about the language and by arrangement met two speakers of Crimean Gothic and listed the terms in his compilation Turkish Letters: dating from nearly a millennium after Ulfilas, these terms are not representative of his language. Busbecq's material contains many puzzles and enigmas and is difficult to interpret in the light of comparative Germanic linguistics.

Reports of the discovery of other parts of Ulfilas' 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.
Only fragments of the Gothic translation of the Bible have been preserved. The translation was apparently done in the Balkans region by people in close contact with Greek Christian culture. The Gothic Bible apparently was used by the Visigoths in Iberia until about 700, and perhaps for a time in Italy, the Balkans, and Ukraine; in the latter country at Mangup, ninth-century inscriptions have been found of a prayer in the Gothic alphabet using Biblical Gothic orthography. In exterminating Arianism, many texts in Gothic were probably overwritten as palimpsests or collected and burned. Apart from Biblical texts, the only substantial Gothic document that still exists and the only lengthy text known to have been composed originally in the Gothic language, is the Skeireins, a few pages of commentary on the Gospel of John.
Very few secondary sources make reference to the Gothic language after about 800. In De incrementis ecclesiae Christianae, Walafrid Strabo, a Frankish monk who lived in Swabia, speaks of a group of monks, who reported that even now certain peoples in Scythia, especially around Tomis spoke a sermo Theotiscus, the language of the Gothic translation of the Bible, and they used such a liturgy.
In evaluating medieval texts that mention the Goths, many writers used the word Goths to mean any Germanic people in eastern Europe, many of whom certainly did not use the Gothic language as known from the Gothic Bible. Some writers even referred to Slavic-speaking people as Goths. However, it is clear from Ulfilas' translation that despite some puzzles the language belongs with the Germanic language group, not with Slavic.
The relationship between the language of the Crimean Goths and Ulfilas's Gothic is less clear. The few fragments of Crimean Gothic from the 16th century show significant differences from the language of the Gothic Bible although some of the glosses, such as ada for "egg", could indicate a common heritage, and Gothic mēna, compared to Crimean Gothic mine, can suggest an East Germanic connection.
Generally, the Gothic language refers to the language of Ulfilas, but the attestations themselves are largely from the 6th century, long after Ulfilas had died.

Alphabet and transliteration

A few Gothic runic inscriptions were found across Europe, but due to early Christianization of the Goths, the Runic writing was quickly replaced by the newly invented Gothic alphabet.
Ulfilas's Gothic, as well as that of the Skeireins and various other manuscripts, was written using an alphabet that was most likely invented by Ulfilas himself for his translation. Some scholars claim that it was derived from the Greek alphabet only while others maintain that there are some Gothic letters of Runic or Latin origin.
A standardized system is used for transliterating Gothic words into the Latin script. The system mirrors the conventions of the native alphabet, such as writing long as ei. The Goths used their equivalents of e and o alone only for long higher vowels, using the digraphs ai and au for the corresponding short or lower vowels. There are two variant spelling systems: a "raw" one that directly transliterates the original Gothic script and a "normalized" one that adds diacritics to certain vowels to clarify the pronunciation or, in certain cases, to indicate the Proto-Germanic origin of the vowel in question. The latter system is usually used in the academic literature.
The following table shows the correspondence between spelling and sound for vowels:

Gothic letter or digraph	Roman equivalent	"Normalised" transliteration	Sound	Normal environment of occurrence	Paradigmatically alternating sound in other environments	Proto-Germanic origin
?	a	a		Everywhere	—
?	a	ā		Before,	Does not occur
??	ai	aí		Before,,	i	,
??	ai	ai		Before vowels	ē	,
??	ai	ái		Not before vowels	aj
??	au	aú		Before,,	u
??	au	au		Before vowels	ō
??	au	áu		Not before vowels	aw
?	e	ē		Not before vowels	ai	,
??	ei	ei		Everywhere	—	;
?	i	i		Everywhere except before,,	aí	,
??	iu	iu		Not before vowels	iw
?	o	ō		Not before vowels	au
?	u	u		Everywhere except before,,	aú
?	u	ū		Everywhere	—	;

Notes:

This "normalised transliteration" system devised by Jacob Grimm is used in some modern editions of Gothic texts and in studies of Common Germanic. It signals distinctions not made by Ulfilas in his alphabet. Rather, they reflect various origins in Proto-Germanic. Thus,
* aí is used for the sound derived from the Proto-Germanic short vowels e and i before and.
* ái is used for the sound derived from the Proto-Germanic diphthong ai. Some scholars have considered this sound to have remained as a diphthong in Gothic. However, Ulfilas was highly consistent in other spelling inventions, which makes it unlikely that he assigned two different sounds to the same digraph. Furthermore, he consistently used the digraph to represent Greek αι, which was then certainly a monophthong. A monophthongal value is accepted by Eduard Prokosch in his influential A Common Germanic Grammar. It had earlier been accepted by Joseph Wright but only in an appendix to his Grammar of the Gothic Language.
* ai is used for the sound derived from the Common Germanic long vowel ē before a vowel.
* áu is used for the sound derived from Common Germanic diphthong au. It cannot be related to a Greek digraph, since αυ then represented a sequence of a vowel and a spirant consonant, which Ulfilas transcribed as aw in representing Greek words. Nevertheless, the argument based on simplicity is accepted by some influential scholars.
The "normal environment of occurrence" refers to native words. In foreign words, these environments are often greatly disturbed. For example, the short sounds and alternate in native words in a nearly allophonic way, with occurring in native words only before the consonants,, while occurs everywhere else. In foreign borrowings, however, and occur freely in all environments, reflecting the corresponding vowel quality in the source language.
Paradigmatic alterations can occur either intra-paradigm or cross-paradigm. Examples of intra-paradigm alternation are gawi "district " vs. gáujis "district "; mawi "maiden " vs. máujōs "maiden "; þiwi "maiden " vs. þiujōs "maiden "; taui "deed " vs. tōjis "deed "; náus "corpse " vs. naweis "corpses "; triu ?? "tree " vs. triwis "tree "; táujan "to do" vs. tawida "I/he did"; stōjan "to judge" vs. stauida "I/he judged". Examples of cross-paradigm alternation are Class IV verbs qiman "to come" vs. baíran "to carry", qumans " come" vs. baúrans " carried"; Class VIIb verbs lētan "to let" vs. saian "to sow". A combination of intra- and cross-paradigm alternation occurs in Class V sniwan "to hasten" vs. snáu "I/he hastened".
The carefully maintained alternations between iu and iw suggest that iu may have been something other than. Various possibilities have been suggested ; under these theories, the spelling of iu is derived from the fact that the sound alternates with iw before a vowel, based on the similar alternations au and aw. The most common theory, however, simply posits as the pronunciation of iu.
Macrons represent long ā and ū. Macrons are often also used in the case of ē and ō; however, they are sometimes omitted since these vowels are always long. Long ā occurs only before the consonants, and represents Proto-Germanic nasalized < earlier ; non-nasal did not occur in Proto-Germanic. It is possible that the Gothic vowel still preserved the nasalization, or else that the nasalization was lost but the length distinction kept, as has happened with Lithuanian ą. Non-nasal and occurred in Proto-Germanic, however, and so long ei and ū occur in all contexts. Before and, long ei and ū could stem from either non-nasal or nasal long vowels in Proto-Germanic; it is possible that the nasalization was still preserved in Gothic but not written.

The following table shows the correspondence between spelling and sound for consonants:

Gothic Letter	Roman	Sound	Sound	Environment of occurrence	Paradigmatically alternating sound, in other environments	Proto-Germanic origin
?	b			Word-initially; after a consonant	–
?	b			After a vowel, before a voiced sound
?	d			Word-initially; after a consonant	–
?	d			After a vowel, before a voiced sound
?	f			Everywhere except before a voiced consonant		;
?	g			Word-initially; after a consonant	–
?	g			After a vowel, before a voiced sound
?	g			After a vowel, not before a voiced sound
?	g			Before k, g, gw	–
?	gw			After g	–
?	h			Everywhere except before a voiced consonant
?	ƕ			Everywhere except before a voiced consonant	–
?	j			Everywhere	–
?	k			Everywhere except before a voiced consonant	–
?	l			Everywhere	–
?	m			Everywhere	–
?	n			Everywhere	–
?	p			Everywhere except before a voiced consonant	–
?	q			Everywhere except before a voiced consonant	–
?	r			Everywhere	–
?	s			Everywhere except before a voiced consonant		;
?	t			Everywhere except before a voiced consonant	–
?	þ			Everywhere except before a voiced consonant		;
?	w			Everywhere	–
?	z			After a vowel, before a voiced sound

, which is written with a single character in the native alphabet, is transliterated using the symbol ƕ, which is used only in transliterating Gothic.
is similarly written with a single character in the native alphabet and is transliterated q.
, however, is written with two letters in the native alphabet and hence ??. The lack of a single letter to represent this sound may result from its restricted distribution and its rarity.
is written þ, similarly to other Germanic languages.
Although is the allophone of occurring before and, it is written g, following the native alphabet convention, which leads to occasional ambiguities, e.g. saggws "song" but triggws "faithful".
Phonology

It is possible to determine more or less exactly how the Gothic of Ulfilas was pronounced, primarily through comparative phonetic reconstruction. Furthermore, because Ulfilas tried to follow the original Greek text as much as possible in his translation, it is known that he used the same writing conventions as those of contemporary Greek. Since the Greek of that period is well documented, it is possible to reconstruct much of Gothic pronunciation from translated texts. In addition, the way in which non-Greek names are transcribed in the Greek Bible and in Ulfilas's Bible is very informative.

Vowels

, and can be either long or short. Gothic writing distinguishes between long and short vowels only for by writing i for the short form and ei for the long, in an imitation of Greek usage. Single vowels are sometimes long where a historically present nasal consonant has been dropped in front of an . Thus, the preterite of the verb briggan "to bring" becomes brahta , from Proto-Germanic *branhtē. In detailed transliteration, when the intent is more phonetic transcription, length is noted by a macron : brāhta, brâhta. This is the only context in which appears natively whereas, like, is found often enough in other contexts: brūks "useful".
and are long close-mid vowels. They are written as e and o: neƕ "near" ; fodjan "to feed".
and are short open-mid vowels. They are noted using the digraphs ai and au: taihun "ten", dauhtar "daughter". In transliterating Gothic, accents are placed on the second vowel of these digraphs aí and aú to distinguish them from the original diphthongs ái and áu: taíhun, daúhtar. In most cases short and are allophones of before. Furthermore, the reduplication syllable of the reduplicating preterites has ai as well, which was probably pronounced as a short. Finally, short and occur in loan words from Greek and Latin.
The Germanic diphthongs and appear as digraphs written and in Gothic. Researchers have disagreed over whether they were still pronounced as diphthongs and in Ulfilas's time or had become long open-mid vowels: and : ains "one", augo "eye". It is most likely that the latter view is correct, as it is indisputable that the digraphs and represent the sounds and in some circumstances, and and were available to unambiguously represent the sounds and. The digraph is in fact used to represent in foreign words, and alternations between / and / are scrupulously maintained in paradigms where both variants occur. Evidence from transcriptions of Gothic names into Latin suggests that the sound change had occurred very recently when Gothic spelling was standardized: Gothic names with Germanic au are rendered with au in Latin until the 4th century and o later on. The digraphs and are normally written with an accent on the first vowel when they correspond to Proto-Germanic and.
Long and also occur as allophones of and respectively before a following vowel: waian "to blow", bauan "to build", also in Greek words Trauada "Troad". In detailed transcription these are notated ai, au.
is a Greek sound used only in borrowed words. It is transliterated as w : azwmus "unleavened bread". It represents an υ or the diphthong οι, both of which were pronounced in the Greek of the time. Since the sound was foreign to Gothic, it was perhaps pronounced.
is a falling diphthong.
Greek diphthongs: In Ulfilas's era, all the diphthongs of Classical Greek had become simple vowels in speech, except for αυ and ευ, which were probably still pronounced and. Ulfilas notes them, in words borrowed from Greek, as aw and aiw, probably pronounced : Pawlus "Paul", aíwaggelista "evangelist".
All vowels can be followed by a, which was likely pronounced as the second element of a diphthong with roughly the sound of. It seems likely that this is more of an instance of phonetic juxtaposition than of true diphthongs : alew "olive oil", snáiws , lasiws "tired".
Consonants

In general, Gothic consonants are devoiced at the ends of words. Gothic is rich in fricative consonants derived by the processes described in Grimm's law and Verner's law and characteristic of Germanic languages. Gothic is unusual among Germanic languages in having a phoneme, which has not become through rhotacization. Furthermore, the doubling of written consonants between vowels suggests that Gothic made distinctions between long and short, or geminated consonants: atta "dad", kunnan "to know".

Stops

The voiceless stops, and are regularly noted by p, t and k respectively: paska "Easter", tuggo "tongue", kalbo "calf".
The letter q is probably a voiceless labiovelar stop,, comparable to the Latin qu: qiman "to come". In later Germanic languages, this phoneme has become either a consonant cluster of a voiceless velar stop + a labio-velar approximant or a simple voiceless velar stop
The voiced stops, and are noted by the letters b, d and g. Like the other Germanic languages, they occurred in word-initial position, when doubled and after a nasal. In addition, they apparently occurred after other consonants,: arbi "inheritance", huzd "treasure".
There was probably also a voiced labiovelar stop,, which was written with the digraph gw. It occurred after a nasal, e.g. saggws "song", or long as a regular outcome of Germanic *ww: triggws "faithful".
Similarly, the letters ddj, which is the regular outcome of Germanic *jj, may represent a voiced palatal stop, : waddjus "wall", twaddje "two ".
Fricatives
and are usually written s and z. The latter corresponds to Germanic *z ; at the end of a word, it is regularly devoiced to s. E.g. saíhs "six", máiza "greater" versus máis "more, rather".
and, written f and þ, are voiceless bilabial and voiceless dental fricatives respectively. It is likely that the relatively unstable sound became. f and þ are also derived from b and d at the ends of words and then are devoiced and become approximants: gif "give ", miþ "with". The cluster became : þlauhs "flight" from Germanic *flugiz; þliuhan "flee" from Germanic *fleuhaną. This sound change is unique among Germanic languages.
is written as h: haban "to have". It was probably pronounced in word-final position and before a consonant as well : jah "and".
is an allophone of at the end of a word or before a voiceless consonant; it is always written g: dags "day". In some borrowed Greek words is the special letter x, which represents the Greek letter χ : Xristus "Christ". It may also have signified a.
, and are voiced fricative found only in between vowels. They are allophones of, and and are not distinguished from them in writing. may have become, a more stable labiodental form. In the study of Germanic languages, these phonemes are usually transcribed as ƀ, đ and ǥ respectively: haban "to have", þiuda "people", áugo "eye". When occurring after a vowel at the end of a word or before a voiceless consonant, these sounds become unvoiced, and, e.g. hláifs "loaf" but genitive hláibis "of a loaf", plural hláibōs "loaves".
ƕ is the labiovelar equivalent of, derived from Proto-Indo-European *kʷ. It was probably pronounced , as wh is pronounced in certain dialects of English and in Scots: ƕan "when", ƕar "where", ƕeits "white".
Sonorants

Gothic has three nasal consonants, one of which is an allophone of the others, all found only in complementary distribution with them. Nasals in Gothic, like most other languages, are pronounced at the same point of articulation as either the consonant that follows them. Therefore, clusters like and are not possible.

and are freely distributed and so can be found in any position in a syllable and form minimal pairs except in certain contexts where they are neutralized: before a bilabial consonant becomes, while preceding a dental stop becomes, as per the principle of assimilation described in the previous paragraph. In front of a velar stop, they both become. and are transcribed as n and m, and, in writing, neutralisation is marked: sniumundo .
is not a phoneme and cannot appear freely in Gothic. It is present where a nasal consonant is neutralised before a velar stop and is in a complementary distribution with and. Following Greek conventions, it is normally written as g : þagkjan "to think", sigqan "to sink" ~ þankeiþ "thinks". The cluster ggw sometimes denotes, but sometimes .
is transliterated as w before a vowel: weis , twái "two".
is written as j: jer "year", sakjo "strife".
and occur as in other European languages: laggs "long", mel "hour" : raíhts "right", afar "after".
,, and may occur either between two other consonants of lower sonority or word-finally after a consonant of lower sonority. It is probable that the sounds are pronounced partly or completely as syllabic consonants in such circumstances : tagl or "hair", máiþms or "gift", táikns or "sign" and tagr or "tear ".
Accentuation and intonation

Accentuation in Gothic can be reconstructed through phonetic comparison, Grimm's law and Verner's law. Gothic used a stress accent rather than the pitch accent of Proto-Indo-European. This is indicated by the shortening of long vowels and and the loss of short vowels and in unstressed final syllables.
Just as in other Germanic languages, the free moving Proto-Indo-European accent was replaced with one fixed on the first syllable of simple words. Accents do not shift when words are inflected. In most compound words, the location of the stress depends on the type of compound:

In compounds in which the second word is a noun, the accent is on the first syllable of the first word of the compound.
In compounds in which the second word is a verb, the accent falls on the first syllable of the verbal component. Elements prefixed to verbs are otherwise unstressed except in the context of separable words. In those cases, the prefix is stressed.

For example, with comparable words from modern Germanic languages:

Non-compound words: marka "border, borderlands" ; aftra "after"; bidjan "pray".
Compound words:
* Noun first element: guda-láus "godless".
* Verb second element: ga-láubjan "believe".
Grammar

Morphology

Nouns and adjectives

Gothic preserves many archaic Indo-European features that are not always present in modern Germanic languages, in particular the rich Indo-European declension system. Gothic had nominative, accusative, genitive and dative cases, as well as vestiges of a vocative case that was sometimes identical to the nominative and sometimes to the accusative. The three genders of Indo-European were all present. Nouns and adjectives were inflected according to one of two grammatical numbers: the singular and the plural.
Nouns can be divided into numerous declensions according to the form of the stem: a, ō, i, u, an, ōn, ein, r, etc. Adjectives have two variants, indefinite and definite, with definite adjectives normally used in combination with the definite determiners while indefinite adjectives are used in other circumstances., Indefinite adjectives generally use a combination of a-stem and ō-stem endings, and definite adjectives use a combination of an-stem and ōn-stem endings. The concept of "strong" and "weak" declensions that is prevalent in the grammar of many other Germanic languages is less significant in Gothic because of its conservative nature: the so-called "weak" declensions are, in fact, no weaker in Gothic than the "strong" declensions, and the "strong" declensions do not form a coherent class that can be clearly distinguished from the "weak" declensions.
Although descriptive adjectives in Gothic and the past participle may take both definite and indefinite forms, some adjectival words are restricted to one variant. Some pronouns take only definite forms: for example, sama, adjectives like unƕeila, comparative adjective and present participles. Others, such as áins, take only the indefinite forms.
The table below displays the declension of the Gothic adjective blind, compared with the an-stem noun guma "man, human" and the a-stem noun dags "day":
This table is, of course, not exhaustive. An exhaustive table of only the types of endings that Gothic took is presented below.

vowel declensions:
* roots ending in -a, -ja, -wa : equivalent to the Greek and Latin second declension in ‑us / ‑ī and ‑ος / ‑ου;
* roots ending in -ō, -jō and -wō : equivalent to the Greek and Latin first declension in ‑a / ‑ae and ‑α / ‑ας ;
* roots ending in -i : equivalent to the Greek and Latin third declension in ‑is / ‑is and ‑ις / ‑εως;
* roots ending in -u : equivalent to the Latin fourth declension in ‑us / ‑ūs and the Greek third declension in ‑υς / ‑εως;
n-stem declensions, equivalent to the Greek and Latin third declension in ‑ō / ‑inis/ōnis and ‑ων / ‑ονος or ‑ην / ‑ενος:
* roots ending in -an, -jan, -wan ;
* roots ending in -ōn and -ein ;
* roots ending in -n : equivalent to the Greek and Latin third declension in ‑men / ‑minis and ‑μα / ‑ματος;
minor declensions: roots ending in -r, -nd and vestigial endings in other consonants, equivalent to other third declensions in Greek and Latin.

Gothic adjectives follow noun declensions closely; they take same types of inflexion.

Pronouns

Gothic inherited the full set of Indo-European pronouns: personal pronouns, possessive pronouns, both simple and compound demonstratives, relative pronouns, interrogatives and indefinite pronouns. Each follows a particular pattern of inflexion, much like other Indo-European languages. One particularly noteworthy characteristic is the preservation of the dual number, referring to two people or things; the plural was used only for quantities greater than two. Thus, "the two of us" and "we" for numbers greater than two were expressed as wit and weis respectively. While proto-Indo-European used the dual for all grammatical categories that took a number, most Old Germanic languages are unusual in that they preserved it only for pronouns. Gothic preserves an older system with dual marking on both pronouns and verbs.
The simple demonstrative pronoun sa can be used as an article, allowing constructions of the type definite article + weak adjective + noun.
The interrogative pronouns begin with ƕ-, which derives from the proto-Indo-European consonant *kʷ that was present at the beginning of all interrogratives in proto-Indo-European. That is cognate with the wh- at the beginning of many English interrogative, which, as in Gothic, are pronounced with in some dialects. The same etymology is present in the interrogatives of many other Indo-European languages": w- in German, hv- in Danish, the Latin qu-, the Greek τ- or π-, the Slavic and Indic k- as well as many others.

Verbs

The bulk of Gothic verbs follow the type of Indo-European conjugation called 'thematic' because they insert a vowel derived from the reconstructed proto-Indo-European phonemes *e or *o between roots and inflexional suffixes. The pattern is also present in Greek and Latin:

Latin - leg-i-mus : root leg- + thematic vowel -i- + suffix -mus.
Greek - λύ-ο-μεν : root λυ- + thematic vowel -ο- + suffix -μεν.
Gothic - nim-a-m : root nim- + thematic vowel -a- + suffix -m.

The other conjugation, called 'athematic', in which suffixes are added directly to roots, exists only in unproductive vestigial forms in Gothic, just like in Greek and Latin. The most important such instance is the verb "to be", which is athematic in Greek, Latin, Sanskrit and many other Indo-European languages.
Gothic verbs are, like nouns and adjectives, divided into strong verbs and weak verbs. Weak verbs are characterised by preterites formed by appending the suffixes -da or -ta, parallel to past participles formed with -þ / -t. Strong verbs form preterites by ablaut or by reduplication but without adding a suffix in either case. That parallels the Greek and Sanskrit perfects. The dichotomy is still present in modern Germanic languages:

weak verbs :
* Gothic: haban, preterite: habáida, past participle: habáiþs;
* English: have, preterite: had, past participle: had;
* German: haben, preterite: hatte, past participle: gehabt;
* Icelandic: hafa, preterite: hafði, past participle: haft;
* Dutch: hebben, preterite: had, past participle: gehad;
* Swedish: ha, preterite: hade, supine: haft;
strong verbs :
* Gothic: infinitive: giban, preterite: gaf;
* English: infinitive: give, preterite: gave;
* German: infinitive: geben, preterite: gab;
* Icelandic: infinitive: gefa, preterite: gaf;
* Dutch: infinitive: geven, preterite: gaf;
* Swedish: infinitive: giva, preterite: gav.

Verbal conjugation in Gothic have two grammatical voices: the active and the medial; three numbers: singular, dual and plural; two tenses: present and preterite ; three grammatical moods: indicative, subjunctive and imperative as well as three kinds of nominal forms: a present infinitive, a present participle, and a past passive. Not all tenses and persons are represented in all moods and voices, as some conjugations use auxiliary forms.
Finally, there are forms called 'preterite-present': the old Indo-European perfect was reinterpreted as present tense. The Gothic word wáit, from the proto-Indo-European *woid-h₂e, corresponds exactly to its Sanskrit cognate véda and in Greek to ϝοἶδα. Both etymologically should mean "I have seen" but mean "I know". Latin follows the same rule with nōuī. The preterite-present verbs include áigan and kunnan among others.

Syntax

Word order

The word order of Gothic is fairly free as is typical of other inflected languages. The natural word order of Gothic is assumed to have been like that of the other old Germanic languages; however, nearly all extant Gothic texts are translations of Greek originals and have been heavily influenced by Greek syntax.
Sometimes what can be expressed in one word in the original Greek will require a verb and a complement in the Gothic translation; for example, διωχθήσονται is rendered:
Likewise Gothic translations of Greek noun phrases may feature a verb and a complement. In both cases, the verb follows the complement, giving weight to the theory that basic word order in Gothic is object–verb. This aligns with what is known of other early Germanic languages.
However, this pattern is reversed in imperatives and negations:
And in a wh-question the verb directly follows the question word:

Clitics

Gothic has two clitic particles placed in the second position in a sentence, in accordance with Wackernagel's Law.
One such clitic particle is -u, indicating a yes–no question or an indirect question, like Latin -ne:
The prepositional phrase without the clitic -u appears as af þus silbin: the clitic causes the reversion of originally voiced fricatives, unvoiced at the end of a word, to their voiced form; another such example is wileid-u "do you want" from wileiþ "you want". If the first word has a preverb attached, the clitic actually splits the preverb from the verb: ga-u-láubjats "do you both believe...?" from galáubjats "you both believe".
Another such clitic is -uh "and", appearing as -h after a vowel: ga-h-mēlida "and he wrote" from gamēlida "he wrote", urreis nim-uh "arise and take!" from the imperative form nim "take". After iþ or any indefinite besides sums "some" and anþar "another", -uh cannot be placed; in the latter category, this is only because indefinite determiner phrases cannot move to the front of a clause. Unlike, for example, Latin -que, -uh can only join two or more main clauses. In all other cases, the word jah "and" is used, which can also join main clauses.
More than one such clitics can occur in one word: diz-uh-þan-sat ijōs "and then he seized them " from dissat "he seized", ga-u-ƕa-sēƕi "whether he saw anything" from gasēƕi "he saw".

Comparison to other Germanic languages

For the most part, Gothic is known to be significantly closer to Proto-Germanic than any other Germanic language except for that of the early Norse runic inscriptions, which has made it invaluable in the reconstruction of Proto-Germanic. In fact, Gothic tends to serve as the primary foundation for reconstructing Proto-Germanic. The reconstructed Proto-Germanic conflicts with Gothic only when there is clearly identifiable evidence from other branches that the Gothic form is a secondary development.

Distinctive features

Gothic fails to display a number of innovations shared by all Germanic languages attested later:

lack of Germanic umlaut,
lack of rhotacism.

The language has also preserved many features that were mostly lost in other early Germanic languages:

dual inflections on verbs,
morphological passive voice for verbs,
reduplication in the past tense of Class VII strong verbs,
clitic conjunctions that appear in second position of a sentence in accordance with Wackernagel's Law, splitting verbs from pre-verbs.
Lack of umlaut

Most conspicuously, Gothic shows no sign of morphological umlaut. Gothic fotus, fotjus, can be contrasted with English foot : feet, German Fuß : Füße, Old Norse fótr : fœtr, Danish fod : fødder. These forms contain the characteristic change > , > , > due to i-umlaut; the Gothic form shows no such change.

Lack of rhotacism

Proto-Germanic *z remains in Gothic as z or is devoiced to s. In North and West Germanic, *z changes to r by rhotacism:

Gothic dius, genitive case| diuzis ≠
Old English dēor, dēores "wild animal".
Passive voice

Gothic retains a morphological passive voice inherited from Indo-European but unattested in all other Germanic languages except for the single fossilised form preserved in, for example, Old English hātte or Runic Norse haitē "am called", derived from Proto-Germanic *haitaną "to call, command".
The morphological passive in North Germanic languages originates from the Old Norse middle voice, which is an innovation not inherited from Indo-European.

Dual number

Unlike other Germanic languages, which retained dual number marking only in some pronoun forms, Gothic has dual forms both in pronouns and in verbs. Dual verb forms exist in the first and second person only and only in the active voice; in all other cases, the corresponding plural forms are used. In pronouns, Gothic has first and second person dual pronouns: Gothic and Old English wit, Old Norse vit "we two".

Reduplication

Gothic possesses a number of verbs which form their preterite by reduplication, another archaic feature inherited from Indo-European. While traces of this category survived elsewhere in Germanic, the phenomenon is largely obscured in these other languages by later sound changes and analogy. In the following examples the infinitive is compared to the third person singular preterite indicative:

Gothic saian "to sow" : saiso
Old Norse sá : seri < Proto-Germanic *sezō
Gothic laikan "to play" : lailaik
Old English lācan : leolc, lēc
Classification

The standard theory of the origin of the Germanic languages divides the languages into three groups: East Germanic, North Germanic and West Germanic. Sometimes, a further grouping, that of the Northwest Germanic languages, is posited as containing the North Germanic and West Germanic languages, reflecting the hypothesis that Gothic was the first attested language to branch off.
A minority opinion instead groups North Germanic and East Germanic together. It is based partly on historical claims: for example, Jordanes, writing in the 6th century, ascribes to the Goths a Scandinavian origin. There are a few linguistically significant areas in which Gothic and Old Norse agree against the West Germanic languages.
Perhaps the most obvious is the evolution of the Proto-Germanic *-jj- and *-ww- into Gothic ddj and ggw, and Old Norse ggj and ggv, in contrast to West Germanic where they remained as semivowels. Compare Modern English true, German treu, with Gothic triggws, Old Norse tryggr.
However, it has been suggested that these are, in fact, two separate and unrelated changes. A number of other posited similarities exist only g geminated before j, e.g. Proto-Germanic *kunją > Gothic kuni. However, for the most part these represent shared retentions, which are not valid means of grouping languages. That is, if a parent language splits into three daughters A, B and C, and C innovates in a particular area but A and B do not change, A and B will appear to agree against C. That shared retention in A and B is not necessarily indicative of any special relationship between the two.
Similar claims of similarities between Old Gutnish and Old Icelandic are also based on shared retentions rather than shared innovations.
Another commonly-given example involves Gothic and Old Norse verbs with the ending -t in the 2nd person singular preterite indicative, and the West Germanic languages have -i. The ending -t can regularly descend from the Proto-Indo-European perfect ending *-th₂e, while the origin of the West Germanic ending -i is unclear, suggesting that it is an innovation of some kind, possibly an import from the optative. Another possibility is that this is an example of independent choices made from a doublet existing in the proto-language. That is, Proto-Germanic may have allowed either -t or -i to be used as the ending, either in free variation or perhaps depending on dialects within Proto-Germanic or the particular verb in question. Each of the three daughters independently standardized on one of the two endings and, by chance, Gothic and Old Norse ended up with the same ending.
Other isoglosses have led scholars to propose an early split between East and Northwest Germanic. Furthermore, features shared by any two branches of Germanic do not necessarily require the postulation of a proto-language excluding the third, as the early Germanic languages were all part of a dialect continuum in the early stages of their development, and contact between the three branches of Germanic was extensive.
Polish linguist Witold Mańczak had argued that Gothic is closer to German than to Scandinavian and suggests that their ancestral homeland was located southernmost part of the Germanic territories, close to present day Austria rather than in Scandinavia. Frederik Kortlandt has agreed with Mańczak's hypothesis, stating: "I think that his argument is correct and that it is time to abandon Iordanes' classic view that the Goths came from Scandinavia."

Influence

The reconstructed Proto-Slavic language features several apparent borrowed words from East Germanic, such as *xlěbъ, "bread", vs. Gothic hlaifs.

Use in Romanticism and the Modern Age

J. R. R. Tolkien

Several linguists have made use of Gothic as a creative language. The most famous example is Bagme Bloma by J. R. R. Tolkien, part of Songs for the Philologists. It was published privately in 1936 for Tolkien and his colleague E. V. Gordon.
Tolkien's use of Gothic is also known from a letter from 1965 to Zillah Sherring. When Sherring bought a copy of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War in Salisbury, she found strange inscriptions in it; after she found his name in it, she wrote him a letter and asked him if the inscriptions were his, including the longest one on the back, which was in Gothic. In his reply to her he corrected some of the mistakes in the text; he wrote for example that hundai should be hunda and þizo boko, which he suggested should be þizos bokos. A semantic inaccuracy of the text which he mentioned himself is the use of lisan for read, while this was ussiggwan. Tolkien also made a calque of his own name in Gothic in the letter, which according to him should be Ruginwaldus Dwalakoneis.
Gothic is also known to have served as the primary inspiration for Tolkien's invented language, Taliska which, in his legendarium, was the language spoken by the race of Men during the First Age before being displaced by another of his invented languages, Adûnaic. Tolkien's Taliska grammar has not been published.

Others

On the 10th of February, 1841, the Bayerisch Akademie für Wissenschaften published a reconstruction in Gothic of the Creed of Ulfilas.
The Thorvaldsen museum also has an alliterative poem, Thunravalds Sunau, from 1841 by Massmann, the first publisher of the Skeireins, written in the Gothic language. It was read at a great feast dedicated to Thorvaldsen in the Gesellschaft der Zwanglosen in Munich on July 15, 1841. This event is mentioned by Ludwig Schorn in the magazine Kunstblatt from the 19th of July, 1841. Massmann also translated the academic commercium song Gaudeamus into Gothic in 1837.
In 2012, professor Bjarne Simmelkjær Hansen of the University of Copenhagen published a translation into Gothic of Adeste Fideles for Roots of Europe.
In Fleurs du Mal, an online magazine for art and literature, the poem Overvloed of Dutch poet Bert Bevers appeared in a Gothic translation.
Alice in Wonderland has been translated into Gothic by David Carlton in 2015 and is published by Michael Everson.
Since 2019 Gothic is one of the usable languages in Minecraft.

Examples

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