Reviving Gothic

Valdemar II

Banned
How are it possible for Gothic to be revived*, what groups could be interested in it and how can we get a community of at least a few thousands to speak it as first language.

*In as recognisable form as modern Hebrew are to ancient Hebrew.
 
The problem is we don't have a lot of surviving records on Gothic, and any communities that were once Gothic have long assimilated into whatever cultures they are now.

You're going to have to preserve the language of Gothic much better if you want any chance at revival. Having it as a lingua franca among German tribes for religion or something would definitely not hurt.
 
It also depends on how far back you're willing to go.

The Swedes were very interesting in Gothic history in the 19th century: were there are any substantive surviving corpus of Gothic literature or anything I'm sure a few would've pushed to revive the language. The Spanish nobility also claimed descent from the Visigoths: had any remaining Gothic culture been found (in the Crimea, Danube or elsewhere) and they knew it about it's possible they might've at least sent someone to go check it out, and they might've written more down.

For the language to get revived though you need some corpus of literature so people know the words, morphology etc. Depending on how far you want to go back this is either very possible (6th century and before) or very difficult (post-1500s).
 
But what if Hittler decides to make the teaching of this language obligatory?

Maybe we could see a big grow from this

I'm going to look overzealous on the topic but the problem with Gothic is we really don't know much about it. The only sources we have are an ancient partial biblical translation from when the differences between Germanic languages weren't all that...different, and the attestation of a 15th century Flemish ambassador who basically just met two dudes in Constantinople and was surprised to hear they called themselves Goths. iirc one didn't even speak Gothic, his buddy just did as a second language- and the ambassador wrote down a dozen or so songs. He wrote it in Flemish orthography too. That's our one source.

So before any revival, you're going to need someone to write down a lot more of the language. Once that's done, a lot is possible- and mandatory instruction of Gothic in school is definitely a really intriguing possibility in the later 19th-20th centuries. I'd argue it'd be more likely done in Spain or Italy however, the former of whom especially (at least for the monarchy) looks back on the Visigoths with a great deal of pride (iirc many Spanish in the north/the monarchy claim(ed) to be descendants of the Goths).
 

Valdemar II

Banned
The problem is we don't have a lot of surviving records on Gothic, and any communities that were once Gothic have long assimilated into whatever cultures they are now.

You're going to have to preserve the language of Gothic much better if you want any chance at revival. Having it as a lingua franca among German tribes for religion or something would definitely not hurt.

I agree, but other revived language suffered from the same problem, I doubt revived Gothic would be understandable for Goth. Likely we would see the one reviving it using words from other Germanic languages where they couldn't find a Gothic. How the language end up looking are not the important issue, buit how we can get a group to embrace it.
 
Crimean Gothic as a liturgical language in the context of an uniterruptedly Christian Crimea? With a kind of National Revival later on?

Even so, a few thousand at most.
 

Valdemar II

Banned
I) was thinking more a ethic group in Ukraine/Crimea, which push their claim to be the original group, by claiming to be descendants of the Goths, whom "revive" Gothic by using the Gothic bible and other sources of Gothic words, adopting words from other Germanic languages (both modern and old, through changed to look Gothic) when they couldn't find a Gothic equalant, likely with East Slavic word order and pronoucement.
 
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