[gothic-l] Re: Vandal (was: Goths of North Africa)

Fri Sep 10 15:12:31 UTC 2004

Hi Vladimir,

the tendency to diphtong assimilation is such an universal linguistic 
feature (attested independently in several Indo-European branches, 
but also in many non-Indo-European languages) that the pronounciation 
of "ai" as [ei] in modern Lithuanian is not necessarily conected to 
such a tendency in other languages.
Regarding the "iotation" of i in Ukrainian, I don't know about such a 
tendency in any Germanic language.

Francisc

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, åÇÏÒÏ× ÷ÌÁÄÉÍÉÒ <vegorov at i...> wrote:
> *****<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-
com:office:office" />
> 
>  
> 
> Hi Francisc and Llama Nom!
> 
>  
> 
> I dare add a couple of small comments-questions that 
> may appear interesting though not very useful.
> 
> 1. The diphthong <ai> in modern Lithuanian sounds for my 
> (i.e. Russian) ear rather closer to /ej/ than to /aj/. 
> Supposing some common features in East Germanic and Baltic 
> (or influence of the first upon the latter), might this be 
> an explanation of the alternating /ails/ and /eils/ 
> in Latin reproductions?
> 
> 2. In modern Ukrainian the letter <i> (applied only 
> at the beginning of a word or after a vowel) is pronounced 
> with a fricative consonant before <i>, something between 
> /ji/ and /gi/. Of course, the use of the same letter <i> 
> by both old Gothic and new Ukrainian is a coincidence, 
> but may be the fact itself of "iotation" of <i> after 
> an open syllable a reflection of some East Germanic trends?
> 
>  
> 
> Vladimir
> 
>  
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: llama_nom [mailto:penterakt at f...]
> Sent: Thursday, September 09, 2004 10:16 PM
> To: gothic-l at yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [gothic-l] Re: Vandal (was: Goths of North Africa)
> 
> 
> 
> Hi Francisc,
> 
> According to Streitberg, FROJA ARMES (as reconstructed) comes from 
a 
> letter of St Augustine, possibly written to Vigilius of Thapsus, c. 
> 400.
> 
> http://www.wulfila.be/lib/streitberg/1920/HTML/B038.html
> 
> Does the letter quote Florentinus?  I don't know.  I haven't yet 
> found anything about inscriptions in the Vandal language itself - 
> that would be exciting! - but there are inscriptions in Latin from 
> the Vandal kingdom, which contain Vandal names, e.g. Gebamunde 
(Latin 
> vocative = Got. *Gibamundu) & Geilamir.  The name Geilamir also 
> apprears on coins, and is presumably closer to the real name of 
this 
> the last Vandal king than the form Gelimer often cited.  
> Unfortunately, for our purposes, the coins of Vandals and Gothic 
> rulers used Latin spelling conventions, for example *Thiudareiks 
> becomes Theodoricus/Theodericus (or something like that...), so we 
> have to be careful here too.  The same goes for the inscriptions, 
of 
> course.  In Popular Latin short /i/ moved from being a high tense 
> front vowel, to a lower or laxer vowel more like English /i/, and 
> finally to a close /e/. So <i> and <e> are often interchangeable in 
> Latin spellings of barbarian names.
> 
> All of the phonetic features mentioned by Reikahardus can be 
> accounted for by Latin influence, I think.  The palatalisation, or 
in 
> some regions simply affrication, of /tj/ > /tsj/ was a feature of 
> Latin.  Gothic names with the combination <frauja> are invariably 
> spelt <froja> in Latin, not unnaturally as Latin /au/ had 
become /o:/ 
> in popular pronunciation.  The evidence, such as it is, of the very 
> latest Gothic - namely the Vienna-Salzburg Codex - still shows a 
> diphthong in Noicz, for Nauths, although Reda appears for *Raida.
> 
> Behagel believed that the High German shift /t/ > /ts/ occured in 
> Ostrogothic between 553 & 580.  Priebsch & Collinson cite a Gothic 
> name spelt Gk. Boutilinos, Lat. Buccelenus.  I don't know if there 
is 
> any more evidence than this?  It seem a bit of a leap to talk 
> about "tendencies in post-Wulfilan Gothic".  I'm certainly not 
aware 
> of any evidence for such a shift in the Gothic manuscripts - which 
do 
> show some post-Wulfilan tendencies, of course, just not these ones, 
> as far as I know.
> 
> <ei> in <eils> could just be due to the lack of a diphthong /ai/ in 
> Latin at this time.  Or maybe it does indicate a higher 
> pronunciation.  I notice, no suggestion here that this is evidence 
> for a loss of /h/ in Vandal!  <ei> and <ai> appear interchangeably 
in 
> Latin transcriptions of Gothic personal names, suggesting at least 
> that it was a diphthong in some positions.  I don't know if there 
is 
> any diachronic or geographical pattern in the use of <ei> or <ai>.  
> Even if not, it would be surprising if there wasn't some variation 
or 
> fluctuation in pronunciation over the history of East Germanic.
> 
> Given the many corrupt forms of the manuscripts: shroia armen, 
kuroia 
> armes, fhrota/fhroti armes - I don't see any reasons for supposing 
> uniquely Vandal grammar or sound-changes on the basis of this.  The 
> Vienna-Salzburg Codex specifically says that <ai> in <libaida> is 
> equivalent to long <e> in Roman script.  Arman belongs to exactly 
the 
> same class of weak verbs as liban.  My guess, at the moment, is 
that 
> Vandals and Goths both wrote FRAUJA ARMAIS, and said: /frauja 
arme:s/.
> 
> Llama Nom
> 
> 
> 
> --- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "Francisc Czobor" 
<fericzobor at y...> 
> wrote:
> > Hi, Dirk and Llama Nom
> > 
> > In the Gothic-l message no. 1389 of December 18, 1999, Ryszard 
> > Derdzinski ("Reikahardus") wrote:
> > 
> > "...we have only one or two attested Vandalic sentences coming 
from 
> > North Africa.
> > They should be known to all the East Germanic linguists. I met 
them 
> > in J. Strzelczyk's "Wandalowie i ich afrykanskie panstwo" (in 
> > Polish). The first sentence can be treated as Vandalic without 
> doubt -
> >  in Florentinus' poem we read: _Frója armés!_ translated in Latin 
> > as 'Domine miserere' - it was called from the Arian altars in 
North 
> > Africa.
> > The second sentence is usualy treated as Gothic text (and should 
> find
> > interest in the list), but can be Vandalic as well. It comes from 
a 
> > North African poem entitled "De conviviis barbaris". We read 
there: 
> > _Inter eils goticum skapjamatzjajadrincan_ / Non audet quisquam 
> > dignos edicere versus_. The Gothic (or Vandalic) sentence is 
here: 
> > _Eils! Scapjam matzja(n) ja drincan_.
> > In pure Gothic it could be: _Heils! Scapjam matjan jah 
drigkan_..."
> > 
> > In fact, in classical (Wulfilan) Gothic these sentences would be:
> > 'Frauja armeis'
> > and respectively:
> > 'Hails! Skapjam matjan jah drigkan'
> > These sentences could be Gothic, not Vandalic (even the first one 
> > could be a Gothic formula used by the Arian Vandalic priests, 
> taking 
> > into consideration that for the Germanic Arians, Gothic played 
the 
> > same role as Latin for Catholics or Arabic for Moslems). If they 
> are 
> > Vandalic, than we have to consider that Vandalic was very close 
to 
> > Gothic (or that it was just a Gothic dialect). They differ from 
> > classical Gothic in the following respects:
> > assimilation of diphtongs: ai > ei, au > o
> > the opening  ei > e
> > the palatalization tj > tzj
> > But these tendencies of evolution are observed also in post-
> Wulfilan 
> > Gothic, so they can not be considered as characteristic for 
> Vandalic.
> > 
> > Francisc
> > 
> > 
> > --- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "faltin2001" <dirk at s...> wrote:
> > > --- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "llama_nom" <penterakt at f...> 
> wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > Hi Dirk,
> > > > 
> > > > > In fact, only a handful of Vandalic words have been 
recorded 
> > > > > on artefacts in North Africa.
> > > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > I'm intrigued.  Apart possibly from the Codex Gissensis, 
which 
> > was 
> > > > discovered in Egypt, I didn't know there were *any* Vandal 
> words 
> > > > recorded on artefacts in North Africa (or elsewhere).  Do you 
> > have 
> > > > any more information about this?  As far as I was aware, 
> Vandalic 
> > > is 
> > > > only attested through personal names and the two more or less 
> > > garbled 
> > > > quotes in Latin texts.
> > > > 
> > > > Llama Nom
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > Hi Llama Nom,
> > > 
> > > you are right most of the Vandalic words are in fact names, but 
a 
> > > couple of inscriptions have been found in Tunesia, I think. I 
> > > remember the word 'frauja' as address to 'The Lord' on a stone, 
> > > perhaps somebody else can list a few more examples.
> > > 
> > > Cheers
> > > Dirk
> 
> 
> 
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