On the Approaches to the English Language [pp. 434-456]

444 ON THE APPROACHES TO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. [July,,
ties are in the main preserved. Besides the work of Ulfilas we have
the fragment of a commentary upon the Gospel of John, called
the skeireins* or explanation, by an unknown hand, and the
brief headings of one or two documents. Still, we have enough
to pass judgment upon. The translation has been made directly
from the Greek, as the construction shows, but not from our re ceived text. Thus in Luke i. 3, the Gothic reads: galeikaida
jah mis jah ahmin veihamma, "it hath seemed good to (literally
translated, it hath ye-liked) me and to the HIoly Spirit," whereas
the Greek text that we know has only the words, "it hath
seemed good to me," cdo$e xdajoX The rendering is through out close. As to the language, it cannot be described, but must
be studied; it is simple, chaste, elegant. It has its limits, imposed upon it by its origin; like the other Teutonic dialects, it
has only a present and a past tense. It shows the remains of a
dual and of a middle voice, and an attempt at a passive. Of
course it cannot be compared with Greek for richness; but
within its limits it is harmonious, symmetrical, regular, and
highly polished. As Gothic, it is better than the Greek original; it is as classic, in this sense, as the Memorabilia of Xenophon.t After toiling through the tangled mazes of Anglo-Saxon
and Old German, and returning to Gothic, the student always
breathes a sigh of relief; he feels as though he had reached a
spot where he could rest and take a calm survey. Gothic is an.
* The stem skeir- is to be found in English in the word sheer (An. Sax. scw/),
meaning originally clear, pure.
t The only fault that we can find with the IUlfilas version is that it conforms too
closely to the Greek construction. Thus, in Mark i. 7, the passage, "the latchet
of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose," reads in Gothic,
thizei ik ni im vaiiths anahneivaids andbi,dcan slceadarai.) skoke is, literally translated "whose, (of whom), I not am worthy kneeling to unbind the strap of the
shoes of hihm." The entire construction, especially the use of both relative and personal pronoun, (thizei and is) at the beginning and end of the sentence, is nothing
more than a slavish imitation of the Greek: ot o' 4idu z'irao;' i' b
Aigaz rO'y Z/Jvra rcv oj6r//arcoy a'rozY. Another instance of
the Greek construction occurs in the use of the conjunction "that" to introduce a
quotation in the third person, o'rz in Mark i. 15: "saying (that the time is fulfilled," q;thands thatei usfulhnoda thata mel, Al') C z rl tA7lpcor7z of
x7azpo5. The true syntax of the Teutonic languages demands one of two constructions in such cases; either the conjunction "that" must be omitted and the
following verb used in the present or perfect, or, if " that" be used, the following
verb must be put in the imperfect or pluperfect, "saying, the time is fulfilled," or
"saying that the time was fulfilled."