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Abstract. In 2006 Thomas O. Lambdin brought out An Introduction to the Gothic Language. Every lesson is followed by vocabulary notes that include etymologies. Most of them were borrowed from well-known dictionaries, but a few are new. The paper contains comments on those etymologies.
Thomas O. Lambdin, a distinguished semitologist, whose 1971 Introduction to Biblical Hebrew has been translated into several languages and whose introductions to Coptic and Classical Ethiopie, as well as studies of Panini, all of them written about thirty years ago, are equally well-known, brought out in 2006 An Introduction to the Gothic Language (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock), a textbook of approximately the same format as William H. Bennett's An Introduction to the Gothic Language (1980), except that it contains much more text material, shows little interest in historical grammar, and begins with sentences the author made up himself. Compilers of Greek and especially Latin manuals for grade schools often facilitate the first steps to beginners by composing short stories in those languages, but children do not study Gothic, while students are expected to go into it full tilt from the start. Lambdin' s was clearly a bold experiment.
For someone who has dealt with Hebrew, Coptic, and Sanskrit, Gothic is an easy language, a mere dialect of Old Germanic, as Brugmann and Meillet would have called it, but it is still surprising to see a Gothic textbook authored by someone who has never published anything on Germanic. Another surprise is the fact of this book's appearance. As far as the preparation of college students is concerned, historical Germanic linguistics is a dying area in the English speaking world. So who will use Lambdin' s Introduction, which, even though in a small way, competes with Joseph Wright's book, the numerous revisions of Braune's Gotische Grammatik, and Bennett's textbook? Did the publishers break even? WorldCat shows that only about twenty libraries bought the book. A new introduction to Gothic should have become a major event in Germanic studies, but it seems to have passed unnoticed. Lambdin, a true polyglot, has written a most usable "handbook." However, my aim is not to review it. Every lesson is followed by vocabulary notes interspersed with remarks on etymology, as a rule, borrowed from Feist,...