1. № 7.The morphological structure of the word in CG.
To understand the grammatical and lexical features of the Germanic
group it is necessary to consider the morphological structure of the word
in CG. In all periods of history, words in Germanic languages could be
devided into 3 types according to the number and character of their
components: simple, derived and compound words. The root-morpheme
together with the word-building affixes and some form-building affixes
is termed the stem. The stem may be equal to the root, as in simple
words (a), may contain word-building affixes as in derived words or
may have a more complicated structure: it can contain more than one
root-morpheme and word-building affixes in addition (c). When we
analyse the words from the diachronical point of view (historical point
of view), it is not easy to distinguish between the three main structures,
because derived words could change into simple by losing the affixes
(OE fiscian and NE fish) while compound words could develop into
derived ones, if their second root-morpheme was transformed into a
suffix or fused with the root. Consider the simplification in OE scēap-
hyrde „herdsman of sheep‟, NE-shepherd.
It has been discovered that the Early Germanic morphological structure
of words was more complicated that of written periods. In Common
Germanic the stem consisted of 2 basic components: the root-morpheme
and the stem-forming suffix; and to these 2 elements a third morpheme,
the grammatical ending was added. Thus the CG „fykaz‟ (theprototype
of theGothicword „fısks‟,OE „fısc‟, NE „fish‟) consisted of
thefollowingmorphemes.
Morpheme-grammaticalaffixorauxiliarywordhaving.
Stem Grammatical ending
Root Stemsuffix
Fisk -a- -2-
Stem-forming suffixes originally performed a word-building (sometimes
a form-building) function. In such a way the Gothic noun fiskja, was
formed from the root fisk with the help of the CG suffix –jan which
showed that the noun denoted a personadoer (a fisherman). The same

2. root with the Germanic stem suffix –a- (dropped in Gothic and Old
English) meant fish.
Stems could be formed by separate vowels or consonants or by their
combinations. Stems ending in vowels are called vocalic stems e.g. a-
stems, I-stems, and others. Stems whose suffixes were made up of
consonants are termed consonantal stems, e.g. n-stems, nd-stems.
In later CG and in OG dialects the morphological structure of the word
was considerably simplified: the stem-suffix disappeared as a separate
morpheme in the word structure. It fused with the root-morpheme or
with the original grammatical ending and the 3 basic components were
thus reduced to 2. Compare the CG fisk-a-z and the Gothic fisk-s.
№ 25 Sound alteration in the root-morpheme with special reference
to Ablaut.
A characteristic feature of the Germanic group is the variability of the
root-morpheme which is rather changeable as far as vowels are
morpheme at one and the same historical period. The differences
between the variants of the root-morpheme must be attributied to vowel
alterations, which differentiate between grammatical forms of the word.
Compare the word-forms with the CG root ‘ber’
OldGermanic Modern Germanic
Forms GT OISL OE Swedish German English
of bairam bera beran bära gebären Bear
theverb bar bar bær bar gebar Bore
„to bērum bárum bæron buro --------- ---------
bear‟ baúrans borinn boren buren geboren Born
birst ber birp bär --------- Bears
The earliest and the most vividly and systematically employed
interchange preserved in the Germanic group from ancient I-E was a
vowel interchange called „ablaut‟ or „vowelgradation‟. It was a Common

3. Indo-European not a specific Germanic feature, it was found in other I-E
languages tor. The examples in the Russian language prove this.
e -o (e alternates with o)нести – ноша, носит
беру – сбор
This kind of gradation is called qualitative, because only the quality of
the vowel is changed, the other kind of ablaut, known as quantitative is a
difference based on quantity – long vowel alternate with short ones and
with the reduced or zero grade, meaning that the vowel is neutral or lost.
Prolonged grade Normal or full grade Reduced grade, Zero
(long vowel) (short vowel) grade (neutral vowel or
loss vowel)
Ē e -----
Latin lēgi ”elected” lego “elect” -----
Russian ō o “сбор” ----
Брал
№ 8.Form – building means.
All the O I-E languages were synthetic, that is they showed the
relations between words in a sentence by adding, inflections and
changing the stem rather than by word order or auxiliary words (which
are employed in languages with a more analytical structure).
Varions means of form-building were employed, all of them being
synthetic means such as:
1) Sound alteration. At the beginning it was applied to verbs, later is
spread to other parts of speech. It stood second among other form-
building means in OG.
2) Grammatical endings or suffixes were the most widely used means
of form-building in all parts of speech both alone and in
combination with other means. The formation of a grammatical
ending was a very complicated process, the old ending fused with
the stem-suffix and both elements together were reduced.

4. Correspondence of Case-Endings
singular GT O.Icel. OHG O. Saxon OE
Nominative walfs ulfr, ulf wolf wulf wulf
and NE-wolf
Accusative
Genetive wulfis ulfs wolfes wulfes Wulfes
Dative wulfa ulfe wolfe wulfe Wulfe
3) In contrast to endings, grammatical prefixes were hardly ever
employed. They were confined to the verb system used to mark
Participle 2 or to express a perfective meaning associated with the
category of aspect.
4) Another means of form-building, supplitive forms, was inherited by
Germanic forms IE. In Germanic it was restricted to some personal
pronouns, a few verbs and adjectives.
Supplitivism means the formation of a form of one and the same word
from different roots or stems, the differences are seen far beyond
alternations.
Я – my, mine, me
Хороший– лучший
Иду– шел
Later a new kind of forms, analytical, developed in addition to synthetic
ones.
The tendency to analytical form-building was very strong. It functioned
in all the subgroup of Germanic and is an important distinguishing mark
in the group. Nowadays the proportion of synthetic and analytical forms
in the languages of the group varies.
Parts of speech and their grammatical categories.
The Germanic languages a group of the IE family, have
approximately the same division of words into parts of speech as other
groups.

5. The following parts of speech could be found throughout the history :
the noun, the adjective, the pronoun, the numeral (declinable parts of
speech, or nomina ), the verb, the adverb, the conjunction and the
preposition. All the inflected parts of speech were characterized by
grammatical categories.
A) The noun and the adjective.
In CG the noun, pronoun, and adjective had the grammatical
categories of gender, number and case.
The Germanic languages had 3 genders: masculine, feminine and
neuter, which sometimes, though not always corresponded to the natural
gender or sex. The Old Germanic dialects of the early written records
preserved that distinction, some of them, e.g. English, have lost or
transformed them to a considerable degree.
As to the category of number it should be said that some Old Germanic
dialects had 3 numbers ( singular, plural, and dual), others 2. Thus
Gothic, OE, O. Icelandic had some dual forms of personal pronouns, the
Gothic language had dual verb forms that agreed with these pronouns.
Perhaps the dual number existed in CG but it was not preserved for a
long time. Germanic had lost a number of cases which as it is assumed
was equal to 7 or 8 in ancient IE. CG must have kept the original
number of 4 cases other dialects increased the number to 5 ( adding
Vocative or instrumental case, Dative and Accusative).
The peculiar characteristic of the adjective in Germanic differed from
the IE language by having twofold declension: they were inflected for
case, number and gender and could be declined according to the weak
and strong declension. In the first case they had the same endings as n-
stems ( noun ), the second had a great variety of endings.
B)The grammatical categories of the Verb.
The finite forms (forms that could fulfill the function of
a predicate ) agreed with the subject through the
categories of number and person, could show the

6. relation of the action to reality through the contrast of
Indicative, Imperative and Conjunctive ( Subjunctive)
forms, making in such a way the category of mood.
Reference of the action to time within the Indicative and
Subjunctive moods by present and past forms made up
the category of tense ( there were no future forms in the
Old Germanic dialects), aspect distinctions ( such as
continuous, perfect, perfect continuous etc.) were shown
very irregularly, more by lexical than grammatical
means, that is why aspect could not be considered as a
grammatical category at that period of time.
Referring to voice, it did not exist in CG as in the meaning and
form as it is today, i.e. opposition active/passive. In Old
Germanic dialects voice distinctions proceeded in different
directions: Gothic developed forms of “medio-passive”, shoving
that the subject was not the active doer of the action (e.g. Cf(
compare) – “I dress – I dressed” . The North Germanic subgroup
developed reflexive forms. In most dialects of Western
subgroup regular distinctions developed much later with the
help of analytical forms.
In the way of non-finite forms the difference between
Participle1 and 2 can be determined and interpreted as that of
voice Participle1 expressed active meaning, Participle2 was
active only for the forms built from intransitive verbs, for
transitive verbs it was passive. There existed only 2 forms of the
non-finite:the Infinitive – kind of verbal noun and Participles1
and 2, were verbal adjectives, agreed with the noun they
modified in case, number and gender. Later the number of

7. grammatical categories of the verb grew, number of forms f
each category increased and became more complicated.
One of the most distinctive features of Germanic languages was
the division of the verbs according to the means of form-
building. All the forms of the verb were built from principal
forms or stems: the Present tense, the Past tense stems and
Participle2.
Strong verbs had their principle forms built by means of vowel
gradation, i.e. vowel alteration, sometimes of consonant in the
root-morpheme as well. There were 7 classes of strong verbs in
CG and in Old Germanic dialects, in each of them a series of
certain gradation was applied e – o and a-ā. Weak verbs formed
the Past tense stem and Participle2 adding the suffix-ð – to the
stem of the Present stem tense almost, without any modification
of the root-morpheme.
Let‟s follow strong and weak verbs.
Present tense (infinitive) Past tense Participle2
Strong helpan (help) healp, hulpon (Ʒ e) holpen
Weak macian(to macode (Ʒ e) macod
make)
Lecture 5.General characteristic of Germanic languages, the
comparative historical method.
1. History of Germanic Philology.
2. The appearance of the comparative-historical method.
3. Concept on related languages and on the parent language.
4. Further development of the comparative-historicalmethod.
5. Comparative-historical analysis.

8. 1.In the 16-17th centuries during the epoch of nations and
national languages formation, great interest arose to national
languages in European countries. The first descriptive grammars
of native languages, including Germanic ones – English, Dutch,
German, Danish, Swedish, were made up. The grammarians
discussed the problems of orthography, pronunciation, grammar,
vocabulary, the demands on purifying the native language from
foreign borrowings were advanced.
In England dictionaries of “difficult” words appeared, the
etymological dictionary of the Dutch language was published. In
Germany the explanatory dictionary of the German language
was issued.
The growth of national self-conscionsness accompanied by the
development of capitalist relations awoke the interest to national
values, to written monuments in native languages, so the most
precious manuscripts in Old and Middle. German languages
were published at that period.
The theoretical linguistic conception of that period was
influenced by the philosophical trends of that period-rationalism
and empiricism. The supporter of the first trend was R. Decarte
who made attempts to elaborate rational, logical grammars. A
bright representative of this trend was the famous German
mathematician and philosopher G. W. Leibniz, F. Bekon, G.
Gobbs and D. Lock paid much attention to empirical
investigations and aimed at the live use of the language, at the
natural live speech.
Among the 18th century scientists who advanced the idea of
genetical connections of languages and their historical changes

9. were G. Leibniz and the great Russian scientist M. V.
Lomonosov.
2.The appearance of the comparative-historical method.
The elaboration of the comparative-historical method in the 19th
century gave the possibility of explaining many similiarities of
IE languages and follow the process of their development. The
foundersof this method were the German linguist Franz Bopp
and Rasmus Rask, a Danish scientist F. Bopp was the first to
describe the system of conjugation of Sanskrit Old Indian
language in comparison with Greek, Latin, Persian, and
Germanic languages. He convinangly showed that the systemic
similiarity in the conjugation of the verb in these languages
could be explained only by one reason-their common origin. R.
Rask proved the community of Germanic languages. The book
“German grammar” by Jacob Grimm had great importance in
working out the comparative-historical method. In his book for
describing the German language grammar he used the method of
comparison with other Germanic languages. The founders of
the comparative-historical method not only grounded basis of
the concept on the relationships of languages but laid the basic
of scientific approaches of the comparative-historical analysis of
facts of related languages.
3. Concept on related languages and on the parent language.
The prerequisite of applying the comparative historical
method is the possibility of dividing the languages and
determining their origin. The common language from which
related languages developed got the name of parent-language. In
separate cases the parent language is known, as for example
Latin for the Romance group, but more often the parent-

10. language is a restored language model obtained with the help of
the comparative-historical method. On the basis of the
comparative-historical method the following Indo-European
languges and language groups are distinguished:
1) Hettylanguage,
2) Tokharian,
3) Indian group,
4) Iranian group,
5) Greek group,
6) Celtic group,
7) Italic (the main member representative is Latin),
8) Romance group,
9) Germanic group,
10) Baltic group,
11) Slavonic group,
12) Albanian language,
13) Armenian language.
The classification of Indo-European languages is genetical as it
is based on the principle of the origin from a common Indo-
European parent-language.
4. Further development of the comparative-historical method.
In the second half of the 19th century the philologists-
comparativists concentrated their attention on the investigation
of concrete phonetical, grammatical and lexical phenomena and
considerably improved the method of comparative-historical
analysis.
The grammatical advanced the idea that each phonetical change
took place according to laws without any exceptions, but if there

11. still occurred deviations, then they were caused by the action
(function) of some other law. In search of explanations to
exceptions in phonetics laws, the grammarians turned their
attention to the influence of analogy in the development of
languages, as well as to the borrowings from other languages.
These principles were stated in G. Paulus book “ Prinzipien der
Sprachgesichte”. In the last third (period) of the 19th century the
scientists started paying special attention to the questions of
syntaxis and lexical semantics, mainly from the historical point
oof view.
One can‟t but mention the contribution of such great
researches as B. Delbruck with his collection of materials
“SyntaxtisheForschungen”; Breal who published “Essai de
semantique”. In 1879 the work of the famous Swiss linguist F.
de Saussure “Memoirs on the very first system of vowels in
Indo-European languages” was published.
In 1916 the work of A. Meillet “The main particularities
(characteristics) of the Germanic group of
languages”(Caractersgeneraus des languesgermaniques” was
issumed). He tried to restore the real dynamics of language
development and show what the specificity of German
languages consisted in.
After applying the comparative-historical method in practive
some weak points were pointed out:
1) The method is good for investigating the similiarities but
it is little effective for studying differences between
languages.

12. 2) Comparing facts of related languages very often facts of
different periods project on one period of the parent
language.
3) Some peculiarities (features), traced in several related
languages and which ae probably innovations, can
wrongly be taken for characteristics (features) inherited
from one common origin.
4) Not all the levels of the language system can be
analysed, with the comparative-historical method, to the
same exsent.
In the 20th century the comparative-historical method was
closely connected with other trends, first of all linquistic
geography and historical typological investigations. Both these
directions (trew are based on the facts found by using the
comparative-historical method, which opens great possibilities
for undertaking typological investigations of Germanic
languages at different stages of their development.
5. Comparative-historical analysis.
Let‟s analyse several ways of the comparative-historical
method.
1) Proof material relationship of language facts.
A decesive importance for proving this has the regularity and
systemic correspondences. The above said can be illustrated
through an example in comparative phonology, that is the law of
consonant shift in Germanic languages, which states the
following correspondence: “bh” was determined in one Indo-
European language – Sanskrit – in other Indo-European
languages other consonants corresponded it. Inspite of this these

13. correspondences are regularly repeated in the same order, that is
in a systemic way. The more the number of exact
correspondences is the more convincing is the proof.
E.g.
Sanskrit Greek Latin Russian Gothic
bhrātār phrātor frāter брат brōƥ ar
2) External, or comparative, reconstruction and internal
(inner) reconstruction prototip, archetype .
The comparison of the first source, archetype is done by
comparing language units of related languages (external
reconstruction) or of different facts of one language (internal
reconstruction).
E.g.
Sanscrit Greek Latin Old German
khēn (h)ancer Gans
hamsa
This permits us to suppose that the archetype of the initial
consonant in the Common Indo-European was phoneme “gh”.
A precondition of using the method of inner reconstruction is
the irregularly of the development of the system of a language.
As a result a lot of archaisms are kept in a language.
As an example one can see the forms of the singular and plural
of the root change in Old English: man(sing.) and men(plural).
Knowing the conditions of transfer of “a – e” under the
influence of “i” in Germanic languages, one can suppose, that

14. there was once “a” in the root of the plural, and “i” as an ending.
That‟s why for this form the archetype was “manni”.
3) Determination of chronology, that is the succession
(sequence) or simultaneity of language facts according
to each other (one another). For example, the voiceless
consonants “p, t, k” in Germanic languages passed to
voiced “ð, ƀ , ǥ ” depending n the stressed syllables,
as at that time the rule of free stress acted.
4) Determination of the area of language phenomena.
Each language phenomena has its boundaries of
spreading and the determination of area of the
language spreading features is one of the requirements
of the comparative-historical method.
Let‟s compare the following words in Germanic languages.
Old Dutc Old Old Old
Gothi Germani h Englis Frisia Scandinavia
c c h n n
uns ons ūs ūs ūs
uns
Here we can follow the area of dropping out “n” before “s” and
the prolongation of the preceeding vowel.
History of Germanic writing.
One of the proofs on the existend of Germanic languages in the
prewritten period may serve the Common Germanic , giving the
possibility to Germanic tribes to communicate and understand
each other, that is use the oral speech.
Writing (orthography) is the most trustworthy (authentic)
evidence of the language the most reliable and first-hand source

15. of information about it. To have a clear imagination about the
wordstock and grammatical system of a language in the
prewritten period, the scientists-philologists apply different facts
about the character of the investigated language or reconstruct
the language material using the comparative-historical analysis.
It was so, that the comparativists dealt with the reconstruction of
the Germanic parent-language in the first half of the 19th
century.
The runic alphabet.
The earliest Germanic written records were runic writing or
runic alphabet. The first monuments are inscriptions on hard
material made in a special alphabet known as “the runes”.
The word “rune” originalty meant “secret”, “mistery” and was
used to denote inscriptions believed to be magic. The runes were
imployed by many Germanic tribes on the continent, especially
in Scandinavia. They were used as letters in an alphabet, each to
denote a separate sound. Besides, a rune could also denote a
word beginning with that sound and was called by that word,
e.g., the rune “Þ” denoting the sound [Ɵ]and[ð] is known as OE
ƿ orn, NE thorn [Ɵɔ :n]. The rune “ƿ ” denoting [w]is called by
the OE word wynn “joy”. In some inscriptions the runes were
found arranged in a fixed order which made up a sort of
alphabetical order. After the first six letters this alphabet is now
commonly known as “futhark” or “futhorc” (alphabet runic).
The runic alphabet is a specifically Germanic alphabet , not to
be found in other languages. The letters are angular, straight,
lines are preferred, curved lines avoided. This is due to the fact
that runic inscriptions were cut in stone, bone, or wood. The

16. shapes of some letters resemble those of the ancient Greek or
Latin alphabets, others have not been traced (found) to any
known alphabet.
The number of runes varied in different Germanic dialects. As
compared to most continental runes the number of runes in
England was greater (larger), it increased as new sounds
appeared 28 in OE runic alphabet against 15 or 24 on the
continent, but in the 9th century it reached a maximum of 33.
Neither on the continent nor in Britain were the runes ever
used for everyday writing or for putting down poetry or prose
works. Their only function at the all times was to make
inscriptions on objects, tombstones, rings, coins, amulets
(talisman). The oldest texts are an inscription on a box made of
whale – balena chit bone called “Franks casket” – and a short
text on a stone cross known as “Ruthwell Cross” near the village
of Ruthwell. The Franks Casket was discovered in the early
years of the 19th century in France and was presented to the
British Museum by a British archeologist, Franks (hence the
name). The Casket is a small box made of whale bone; there are
pictures on its 4 sides with runic inscriptions. The alliterate
verse tells the story of the whale bone of which the casket is
made. Translated into English it is as follows:
“The flood lifted up the fish on the cliffbank, The whale became
sad, where he swam on the shingle whale‟s bone”
The Ruthwell Cross is a 15-feet(1 feet=30,479cm) tall stone
cross inscribed and ornamented on all sides. The runes went
completely out of use by the end of the OE period.

17. Runology, as an independent scientific discipline appeared in
the 70th=19th century. Its founder was the Danish scientist
LudvigVimmer. Sufus and Magnus Wesen: Norwegian
scientists made a great contribution too.
Carl Marstrander said that “to decipher inscriptions, it is
necessary to use several sciences such as: linguistics,
archeology, mythology, paileography - a branch of geology”.
The origin of the Runic alphabet is not quite clear. Some runes
have similiarity with the letters of the Latin alphabet, others with
the Greek. That‟s why some scientists tried to show the origin of
the Runic alphabet as coming from Latin others from Greek. It
was in the 19th century when the idea was advanced that the
“Runes” came from one of the North Italic alphabets. According
to this hypothesis, the runes appeared in the north of Italy in the
second-third centuries, then it were taken by the southern
Germanic tribes and gradually they spread to the north passing
from one tribe to the other.
The Latin alphabet
The wide spreading of the of the alphabet in the German
languages refers to the Early Middle Ages (the 6th-11th
centuries) and is connected with the process of Christianity of
the Germans. Latin was the language of the church and also the
language of writing and teaching in monastic schools. The
monks were practically the only people who could read and
write, soon they began to use Latin letters to write English
words. But the large masses of people and even the
representatives of the leading class of the early feudal society
did not know the language and met difficulties.

18. The Latin alphabet began to be employed in many countries of
Western Europe to record texts, in their own dialects.
Everywhere the scribes modified it to some degree; they
changed the shape of some letters; added new symbols to
indicate sounds for which Latin had no ecvivalents, used some
letters with differentat present, the alphabets of Germanic
languages which have the Latin alphabet at their base differ both
by the number and the composition to some degree, from the
Latin. The same letters can render different sounds in various
languages and the same sound can be rendered by various
letters.
The traditional orthographies of the German languages formed
during many centuries, they have differ, there are a lot of
unpronounced letters and there is no clear rule by what letters
some sounds are rendered.
The British scribes used a kind of script called “insular
minuscule”. In this script the shape of some letters is altered.
1. Several Latin scripts replaced one another during the
Middle Ages: during the whole Roman period and in the
early Middle Ages capital uncial were used reaching almost
an inch(2,54cm), in height; in the 5th-7th centuries the
uncial became smaller and the cursive script began to
replace it in everyday-life while in book-making a still
smaller script, minuscules, was employed. The minuscule
used in Britain is known as the Irish or insular variation. In
this script the scape of some letters is altered; d, f, g, and
others; of these only the altered shape of “g” is often
preserved in modern editions of OE manuscripts – “Ʒ ”.

19. Out of 23 Latin letters British scribes distinguished; nor were
“v” and “u”; “k”, “q” and “x” were not used until many years
later, “w” was formed later out of 2 letters “u”(hence its name
“double “u” ”); “a” was combined with “e” in a separate letter
“æ”; some letters had altered their values. A most interesting
characteristic of the OE alphabet is the addition of some letters
from the runic alphabet: the rune “Þ”(thorn) to indicate [Ɵ]or[ð]
and “Ƿ ”(wynn) used until “w” was introduced. Occasionally
other runes occur in OE manuscripts not as letters but to indicate
words which were their names: “ ” for “day”, “ ” for “man”,
for “ homeland”. The minuscule alphabet differed from the
previous by its clarity and good order of writing and it was used
up to 12th century when it was displaced by the Gothic alphabet.
At the end of the 15th century, in the period of Renaissance, a
script for printing was created in Italy. It was called “antiqua”. It
was a variant of the Latin script the letters were rounded, and it
was a return to “minuscules”, considered at that time a model of
classical Latin letters.
From the 16th century “antiqua” was widely spread in the
countries of West Europe and in the course of time differed
variants of “antiqua” appeared.
Even at present the Latin script, which spread with Germanic
and Romanic languages far beyond West Europe is represented
as different variants of antiqua. It was used preferentially for
printing foreign texts (in Germany) and foreign words in the
German texts. The first English words written down with the
help of Latin letters were names or place-names inserted in
Latin texts.

20. The Gothic alphabet
Around the 11th century on the basis of the Latin alphabet there
appeared in Italy a new type of writing –pointed writing, which
began its spreading to other countries of Europe. In the 13th-
14th centuries a new style of architecture replacing the Roman
one appeared in West Europe. It appeared as a style of cult-
buildings catholic churches and cathedrals. Its aim was to
express by means of architecture the Christian idea of
renouncing everything earthly thus addressing the ideas and
hopes up, to the Heavens to God. This style gave to world
culture such masterpieces like Notre-Dame in Paris, St. Stephen
in Vienna, Westminster Abby in London, Cathedrals in Koln,
MelanPraque.
In the Middle Ages the epoch of Renaissance came into being
and as its representatives-the humanists , considered the
Germanic tribes (the Goth, Vandals, and others), as a symbol of
barbarism, they began calling the church style of architecture
contemptuously “Gothic”. Neither the Gothic style in
architecture nor the Gothic alphabet, has anything to do with the
Goths. The further development of the Gothic alphabet in the
15th century was the so-called “fracture”. It appeared first in the
manuscripts of the imperial office in Prague. As a printed script
“fracture” was introduced early in the 16th century with the help
of the famous painter of German Renaissance A. Dropep-Durer.
In the Middle Ages it was more or less used in Germany,
England, France, and with time was displaced by the Latin
alphabet. Only in Germany it rooted firmly and for long to a
great extent displacing Latin. It was taught at school, books

21. periodicals were printed using it, it was used in correspondence,
more often personal.
Up to 1945 it remained the principal alphabet in Germany. In
the period of fascist dictatorship the Gothic alphabet was
announced “indigenous German”-primordial. After the Second
World War the Gothic alphabet gradually yielded (gave way to)
to the Latin alphabet almost all its positions. The main reasons-
to make all printed German literature more accessible to the
foreign reader. The Gothic alphabet is nowadays used in
different countries – partly by tradition, thanks to its
decorativity,- in writing the headlines, announcements, posters
etc. The Gothic alphabet consists of 27 letters.