CHARACTERISTICS

 

Special characteristics in Gutnish are the ancient diphtongs ai, oy and au, and usage of triphtongs as iau. The au-diphtong is also found in Icelandic and Norweigan but only in writing - the sound is not preserved as in Gutnish. Even several newer diphtongs have developed in Gutnish. The special music and sound of Gutnish makes a very old and rustique impression.

 

Many words and forms have changed very little or not at all at over a thousand years. The amount of words is relatively large – especially in older Gutnish – but in 19^th and 20^th century a great deal of these words came out of use and was replaced by Swedish ones.

 

Many of the old words are found also in Icelandic and Norweigan. The Baltic languages have also put certain traces in Gutnish as the guths had strong connections with these people. Especially near to Gotland seems the couronians have been. Many gutnish placenames and words are found in Courland as well as the other way around. For example ”mauso”/”mausa” which in Gutnish means (a) fly. In Latvian the word for fly is  – ”musa”.

 

One special characteristic of Gutnish is the word for she, which is “ha” or in older Gutnish “han”. This form does not exist in any other Scandinavian language where the forms are either “hon” or “hun”. This “han”-form is probably the oldest and linguists believe it to go back so far as to Proto Scandinavian.