[gothic-l] Re: Gothic influence on Baltic Prussians

[dirk at SMRA.CO.UK]

--- In gothic-l at y..., keth at o... wrote:
> Dirk wrote :
> 
> >So, if Wolfram is correct
> >and the Goths dominated the (proto-)Prussian Galindi etc. the
> >Prussians may have borrowed words from them, while the influence of
> >Baltic on Gothic may have remained small. But these are just 
guesses.
> 
> Lehmann's Gothic dictionary gives a list of 230 Old Prussian words
> that have counterparts in Gothic. So maybe this tells us something
> about how much the Prussians influenced Gothic.
> 
> I looked at one instance of Gothic taking up foreign words the other
> day. This was Wulfila's use of the word "gaiainna" in his Bible
> translation. Here he simply took the Greek *) word gamma-epsilon-
> epsilon-nu-nu-alpha and created a new Gotic word that corresponded 
to it.
> [funny why he chose the diphtong(?) "ai" for a Greek epsilon btw -
> maybe this tells us something about Gothic phonetics - anyone any
> comments?]
> 
> *) The Greek word is of course in its turn a Hebrew loan word.
> 
> 
> But whether Lehmann's list of 230 Old Prussian words tells us
> that these were absorbed from Old Prussian into Gothic, I
> doubt (see Lehmann, page 575). Some of them, such
> as 'catils' were no doubt borrowed from Latin into both Old
> Prussian as well as Gothic. Whether the word then came into
> Old Prussian via Gothic, or vice versa, might be impossible to
> answer. To me it seems likely the Latin word was borrowed
> independently by both.
> 
> Another Old Prussian word from Lehmann's list is "percunis"
> (thunder), which is found in the main body of Lehmann's dictionary
> as "fairguni" (mountain), and was used by Wulfila as translation
> of Greek "óros" (see Luke 4-29 & 19-37; in the last instance it
> is the "Mount of Olives" that is being mentioned).
> 
> And so I am not sure how suitable Lehmann's list is as an
> aid to determining how Gothic influenced Old Prussian.
> I have mentioned it because his list does deserve a closer look.
> Perhaps someone more knowledgable than I could then find better
> examples among these 230 words. How many words are known of
> Old Prussian? Does Wolfram give any information?
> 
> Best regards
> Keth


Hello Keth,

thanks for the info, I must admitt that I didn't know about this 
wordlist by Lehmann. (I seem to remember the word laupins/soon as 
another example, but may be wrong). With regards to your last 
question, I know of a religious text (Katechismus) translated into Old 
Prussian in the 16th century, which is probably the longest text that 
survived. Also, there are a number of other religious texts and some 
glossaries compiled by the Teutonic Order of Knights in the 14th/15th 
centuries as well as numerous personal names many of which still in 
existance in Germany. Overall, there should be quite a lot of material 
for linguistic comparisons. 

cheers
Dirk


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