[Edit] Gothic compared to other Germanic languages

For the most part, Gothic is significantly closer to Proto-Germanic than any other Germanic language, excepting of that of the (very scantily attested) early Norse runic inscriptions. This has made it invaluable in the reconstruction of Proto-Germanic. In fact, Gothic tends to serve as the primary foundation for reconstructing Proto-Germanic. The reconstructed Proto-Germanic conflicts with Gothic only when there is a clearly identifiable evidence from other branches that the Gothic form is a secondary development.

Gothic fails to display a number of innovations shared by all later-attested Germanic languages. Most conspicuously, Gothic shows no sign of morphological umlaut. Gothic fotus, pl. fotjus, can be contrasted with English foot : feet, German Fuß : Füße, Danish fod : fødder, Swedish fot : fötter. These forms contain the characteristic change /o:/ > /ø:/ (> Eng. /i:/, Germ. /y:/) due to i-umlaut; the Gothic form shows no such change.

Proto-Germanic *z remains in Gothic as z or is devoiced to s. In North and West Germanic, *z > r. E.g. Gothic drus (fall), Old English dryre.

Gothic retains a morphological passive voice inherited from Indo-European, but unattested in all other Germanic languages, except for the single fossilised form preserved in, for example, Old English hātte "is/am called".

Gothic possesses a number of verbs which form their preterite tense by reduplication, another archaic feature inherited from Indo-European. While traces of this category survived elsewhere in Germanic, the phenomenon is largely obscured in these other languages by later sound changes and analogy. In the following examples the infinitive is compared to the 3rd person singular preterite indicative:

"to sow" Gothic saian : saiso. Old Norse sá : seri < Proto-Germanic *sezō.

"to play" Gothic laikan : lailaik. Old English lācan : leolc, lēc.

[Edit] Gothic and Old Norse

Jordanes, writing in the 6th century, ascribes to the Goths a Scandinavian origin, and there are indeed some linguistic similarities between Gothic and Old Norse, which set them apart from the West Germanic languages. The hypothesis that Gothic and Old Norse share a common ancestor language distinct from West Germanic is known as the Gotho-Nordic hypothesis.

Significant points of agreement between North and East Germanic include:

1) The evolution of the Proto-Germanic *-jj- and *-ww- into Gothic ddj (from Pre-Gothic ggj?) and ggw, and Old Norse ggj and ggv ("Holtzmann's Law"), in contrast to West Germanic where they remained as semivowels. For instance, the genitive of the numeral "two" appears in Old High German as zweio, but in Gothic as twaddje and Old Norse tveggja. Compare Modern English true, German treu, with Gothic triggws, Old Norse tryggr. However, it has been suggested that this is in fact two separate and unrelated changes.^[2].

2) The existence of numerous inchoative verbs ending in -na, such as Gothic ga-waknan, Old Norse vakna.

3) 2nd person singular preterite indicative with the ending -t and the same root vowel as the 1st and 3rd persons singular. E.g. Gothic namt (you received), Old Norse namt, versus Old High German nāmi, Old English nāme, nōme. In West Germanic, the 2nd person preterite indicative ending -t is restricted to preterite-present verbs.

4) Absence of gemination before j, or (in the case of old Norse) only g geminated before j. E.g. Proto-Germanic *kunjam > Gothic kuni (kin), Old Norse kyn; but Old English cynn, Old High German kunni.

5) The dative absolute formed using the preposition at with a participle: Gothic at urrinnandin sunnin, Old Norse at upprennandi sólu (at sunrise, when the sun rose); Gothic at Iesu ufdaupidamma (when Jesus had been baptised), Old Norse at liðnum vetri/vintri (when the winter had passed).

However, point 1 is disputed (see the article on Holtzmann's Law), and points 2 and 4 are shared retentions and therefore not sufficient evidence for a subgroup. Furthermore, other isoglosses have led scholars to propose an early split between East and Northwest Germanic. It must in any case be borne in mind that that features shared by any two branches of Germanic do not require the postulation of a proto-language excluding the third, as the early Germanic languages were all part of a dialect continuum in the early stages of their development and contact between the three branches of Germanic was extensive.

Without necessarily accepting either Gotho-Nordic or Northwest Germanic unity, Gothic is also important for the understanding of the evolution of Proto-Germanic into Old Norse through Proto-Norse. For instance, the origin of the final -n in Old Norse nafn (name) is shown by Gothic namo, genitive plural namne. Sometimes Gothic casts light on word-forms found on the oldest runestones, e.g. gudija (see gothi) found on the runestone of Nordhuglo in Norway, for which a Gothic cognate gudja (priest) is attested.

Old Gutnish (Gutniska) shows a number of similarities with Gothic which are not shared by other Old Norse dialects: a complete lack of a-umlaut in short high vowels (e.g. fulk, as in Old Swedish which also often lacked a-umlaut, vs Old Icelandic folk), lowering of u to o before r (e.g. bort), the use of lamb with the sense "sheep", the appearance in both of an early Germanic loanword from Latin lucerna (Gothic lukarn, Old Gutnish lukarr), and, arguably, the preservation of the Proto-Germanic diphthongs *ai and *au (but see above). It is debated to what extent these similarities are due to coincidence or ancestral connection. Elias Wessén went as far as to classify Old Gutnish as a Gothic dialect. But such a proposal should be understood in strictly historical terms; that is to say, it properly refers to the precursor of Old Gutnish contemporary with the Gothic texts. By the time Old Gutnish came to be recorded in manuscripts, it possessed most of the characteristics which distinguish Old Norse from Wulfilan Gothic (in terms of vocabulary, morphology, phonology and syntax), as can be seen in this text sample from the Gutasaga about a migration to southern Europe (Manuscript from the 14th century written in Old Gutnish):

siþan af þissum þrim aucaþis fulc j gutlandi som mikit um langan tima at land elptj þaim ai alla fyþa þa lutaþu þair bort af landi huert þriþia þiauþ so at alt sculdu þair aiga oc miþ sir bort hafa som þair vfan iorþar attu... so fierri foru þair at þair quamu til griclanz... oc enn byggia oc enn hafa þair sumt af waru mali

over a long time, the people descended from these three multiplied so much that the land couldn't support them all. Then they draw lots, and every third person was picked to leave, and they could keep everything they owned and take it with them, except for their land. ... They went so far that they came to the land of the Greeks... they settled there, and live there still, and still have something of our language.