Grammar of the Gothic Language, and the Gospel of St. Mark: Selections From the Other Gospels, and the Second Epistle to Timothy, With Notes and Glossary

by Joseph Wright

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Genres: Language, Gothic, Nonfiction, Linguistics

398 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1910

About the author

Joseph Wright FBA was an English philologist who rose from humble origins to become Professor of Comparative Philology at Oxford University.

Wright was born in Thackley, near Bradford in Yorkshire, the seventh son of Dufton Wright, a woollen cloth weaver and quarryman, and his wife Sarah Ann (née Atkinson). He started work as a "donkey-boy" in a quarry at the age of six, leading a donkey-drawn cart full of tools to the smithy to be sharpened. He later became a bobbin doffer – responsible for removing and replacing full bobbins – in a Yorkshire mill in Sir Titus Salt's model village. Although he learnt his letters and numbers at the Salt's Factory School, he was unable to read a newspaper until he was 15. He later said of this time, "Reading and writing, for me, were as remote as any of the sciences".

By now a wool-sorter earning £1 a week, Wright became increasingly fascinated with languages and began attending night-school to learn French, German and Latin, as well as maths and shorthand. At the age of 18 he even started his own night-school, charging his colleagues twopence a week.

By 1876 he had saved £40 and could afford a term's study at the University of Heidelberg, although he walked from Antwerp to save money.

Returning to Yorkshire, Wright continued his studies at the Yorkshire College of Science (later the University of Leeds) while working as a schoolmaster. A former pupil of Wright's recalls that, "with a piece of chalk [he would] draw illustrative diagrams at the same time with each hand, and talk while he was doing it".

He later returned to Heidelberg and in 1885 completed a Ph.D. on Qualitative and Quantitative Changes of the Indo-Germanic Vowel System in Greek.

Reviews

[Volsung]

This is the only (English language) reference book on Gothic to have. The grammar is covered fully, as is the historical development of the Gothic language (which is the chief reason for studying this: it is the oldest Germanic language and contains older Indo-European inflections and forms which even the oldest forms of the other Germanic languages do not have); also there is the excellent addition of a full text of Wulfila's Gothic Bible, with facing-page Greek originals. For learning or teaching Gothic, as well as for up-to-date historical information, Lambden's recent book is the way to go; but for a reference grammar on Gothic, there is none better.

[Eule Hagar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very thorough but unfortunately outdated in its reconstructions of Proto-Germanic and P.I.E. forms.