Gothic language
| Gothic | |
|---|---|
 The Codex Argenteus, a 6th-century Gothic manuscript | |
| Region | Oium, Dacia, Pannonia, Dalmatia, Italy, Gallia Narbonensis, Gallia Aquitania, Hispania, Crimea, North Caucasus |
| Era | Attested 3rd–10th century; related dialects survived until 18th century in Crimea |
| Dialects |
|
| Elder Futhark (3rd century to 4th century) Gothic alphabet (4th century to 6th century) | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-2 | got |
| ISO 639-3 | got |
| Glottolog | goth1244 |
| Linguasphere | 52-ADA |
Gothic is a now-extinct East Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from the Codex Argenteus, a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic language with a sizeable text corpus.
It is the earliest Germanic language that is attested in any sizable texts, but it lacks any modern descendants. The oldest documents in Gothic date back to the fourth century. The language was in decline by the mid-sixth century, partly because of the military defeat of the Goths at the hands of the Franks, the elimination of the Goths in Italy, and geographic isolation (in Spain, the Gothic language lost its last and probably already declining function as a church language when the Visigoths converted from Arianism to Nicene Christianity in 589). The language survived as a domestic language in the Iberian Peninsula (modern-day Spain and Portugal) as late as the eighth century. Gothic-seeming terms are found in manuscripts subsequent to this date, but these may or may not belong to the same language.
A language known as Crimean Gothic survived in Crimea as late as the second half of the 18th century. Lacking certain sound changes characteristic of Gothic, however, Crimean Gothic cannot be a lineal descendant of the language attested in the Codex Argenteus.
The existence of such early attested texts makes Gothic a language of considerable interest in comparative linguistics.