Old Gutnish

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Old Gutnish was a stage in the development of the North Germanic language Gutnish, spoken on the Baltic island of Gotland and Fårö. The extant body of Old Gutnish is small, and Gutalagen and the Guta saga constitute its majority.

Distribution

Old Gutnish was spoken on Gotland and Fårö, which lies to its north, during the Viking Age and Middle Ages.Template:Sfn

Linguistics and relation to other languages

Old Gutnish is ancestral to Modern Gutnish.Template:Sfn

The root Gut is identical to Goth, and it is often remarked that the language has similarities with the Gothic language. These similarities have led scholars such as Elias Wessén and Dietrich Hofmann to suggest that it is most closely related to Gothic. The best known example of such a similarity is that Gothic and Gutnish called both adult and young sheep Script error: No such module "Lang"..Script error: No such module "Unsubst".

The Old Norse diphthong au (e.g. Script error: No such module "Lang". "eye") remained in Old Gutnish and Old West Norse, while in Old East Norse – except for peripheral dialects – it evolved into the monophthong ǿ, i.e., a long version of ø. Likewise the diphthong ai in Script error: No such module "Lang". ("bone") remained in Old Gutnish while in Old West Norse it became ei as in Script error: No such module "Lang". and in Old East Norse it became é (Script error: No such module "Lang".). Whereas Old West Norse had the ey diphthong and Old East Norse evolved the monophthong ǿ Old Gutnish had oy.Script error: No such module "Unsubst".

Proto-Germanic	Old Gutnish	Old West Norse	Old East Norse
Script error: No such module "Lang". (eye)	Script error: No such module "Lang".	Script error: No such module "Lang".	Script error: No such module "Lang". > Script error: No such module "Lang".
Script error: No such module "Lang". (bone)	Script error: No such module "Lang".	Script error: No such module "Lang".	Script error: No such module "Lang". > Script error: No such module "Lang".
Script error: No such module "Lang". (to hear)	Script error: No such module "Lang".	Script error: No such module "Lang".	Script error: No such module "Lang". > Script error: No such module "Lang".

Extant texts

The body of Old Gutnish is smaller than that of the other attested Old Norse dialects. It includes runic inscriptions on Gotland such as G181 and G 207. Old Gutnish runic calendars have also been collected, including one dating to 1328 and one dating to 1578 which is now lost but is partly preserved in Analecta Gothlandensia Walliniana, compiled in the 1740s. The majority of Old Gutnish text is in the manuscript Holm B 64, which includes both Gutalagen and Gutasagan, and AM 54, Template:Not a typo from the Arnamagnæan Manuscript Collection which contains a version of Gutalagen with substantially more Danish linguistic influence.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn