Ains, twai, threis, fidwor, fimf, saihs, sibun, ahtau, niun, taihun.
Yep, that’s how the historic Visigoths counted to ten. Next time you’re caught in a ‘I’m more goth than you’ situation I suspect that this might be the gothic verbal equivalent of an H-bomb. Be the envy of gothic friends and learn this today!
Source: Thanks to my friend Patrick over at http://deadtech.co.uk/ (maker of fine cyber-gothy T-shirts).
Interestingly enough I was thinking about this the other day, as I was in a lecture on history of language. The lecturer was using French, English, German, Hindi and Gothic for 1,2,3 and comparing them to Finnish. The first 5 languages are very similar and thus closely related; as opposed to Finnish, which comes from a different root.
And no, I’m not a language student. Not do I live anywhere near Newcastle, which is where the lecture was.
He wasn’t using Hindi as an example, it was one of the examples he used as being a North Indian language that’s related to the other PIE languages. He used English, Welsh, Irish, German, French, Spanish, Latin and Gothic, in contrast to Finnish.
I also think you mean ‘Nor’ in that last sentence.
A friend of a friend has something of a trump card in an ‘I’m more goth than you’ fight; he refused to eat a doughnut with sprinkles on it, because they were colourful, and it therefore was ‘not a goth enough doughnut’.
Really? Well, you’re the language student.
And yes, I meant nor.
Who was the donut eater?!