Dean Toth, age 16, of Bowling Green, Ohio, for his question:

WHERE DO WE GET INFORMATION ON THE GOTHIC LANGUAGE?

The Gothic language is one of the dead languages of the world. Most knowledge of Gothic is derived from fragments of a translation of the Bible made by the 4th century Gothic bishop named Ulfilas. The largest and most splendid of these fragments is the Codex Argentius, containing about half of the Gospels.

Gothic is the only well documented member of the extinct eastern branch of the Germanic languages. Gothic was spoken by the Ostrogoths of ancient Germany and Italy and by the Visigoths of eastern Europe and Spain.

Gothic was replaced by other Germanic and Romance tongues in the period between the 7th and 9th centuries A.D. Except for a few Norse inscriptions in ruins, records of Gothic are older than those for any other Germanic language.

The Gothic alphabet, according to tradition it was devised by Ulfilas, consists of 27 characters, 25 modified Greek symbols and two runes. A rune is a script character.