In point of fact, he was very shallow in the Gothic
dialects. I must say, all that _decantata fabula_ about the genders of the
sun and moon in German seems to me great stuff. Originally, I apprehend, in
the _Platt-Deutsch_ of the north of Germany there were only two definite
articles--_die_ for masculine and feminine, and _das_ for neuter. Then it
was _die sonne_, in a masculine sense, as we say with the same word as
article, _the_ sun. Luther, in constructing the _Hoch-Deutsch_ (for really
his miraculous and providential translation of the Bible was the
fundamental act of construction of the literary German), took for his
distinct masculine article the _der_ of the _Ober-Deutsch_, and thus
constituted the three articles of the present High German, _der, die, das_.
Naturally, therefore, it would then have been, _der sonne_; but here the
analogy of the Greek grammar prevailed, and as _sonne_ had the arbitrary
feminine termination of the Greek, it was left with its old article _die_,
which, originally including masculine and feminine both, had grown to
designate the feminine only. To the best of my recollection, the
Minnesingers and all the old poets always use the sun as masculine; and,
since Luther's time, the poets feel the awkwardness of the classical gender
affixed to the sun so much, that they more commonly introduce Phoebus or
some other synonyme instead.
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