Old Gutnish


Old Gutnish or Old Gotlandic was a North Germanic language spoken on the Baltic island of Gotland. It shows sufficient differences from the Old West Norse and Old East Norse dialects that it is considered to be a separate branch. While vastly divergent from Old Gutnish and closer to Modern Swedish, a modern version of Gutnish is still spoken in some parts of Gotland and the adjoining island of Fårö.
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 lamb.
The Old Norse diphthong au 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 bain remained in Old Gutnish while it in Old West Norse became ei as in bein and in Old East Norse it became é Old Gutnish had oy.
Proto-GermanicOld GutnishOld West NorseOld East Norse
*augô augaaugaauga > ǿga
*bainą bainbeinbæin > bén
*hauzijaną hoyraheyrahøyra > hǿra

Most of the corpus of Old Gutnish is found in the Gutasaga from the 13th century.

Language sample

Citation:
Standardised Old Gutnish:
Employing normalised Old Norse orthography:
Translation in Icelandic:
Translation in English: