Toledo

[ualarauans]

Hi,

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, macmaster at ... wrote:
>
> A lot would depend on the nature of the settlement;
> if the Visigoths settled in communities and farmed themselves, the
> language is more likely to have survived than if they were widely
> scattered as 'lords of the manor' surrounded by romance speaking 
servants,
> neighbors, etc.
> The 'barbarian' groups that kept their language after entering the 
former
> empire were largely those who were of the first sort (the Anglo-
Saxons,
> Slavs, Alemanni) while those of the second sort (Bulgars, Franks,
> Burgundians, Normans) have long since disappeared and would seem 
to have
> been absorbed quickly.

I heard the Franks did colonize what is now Northeast France and 
Belgium in the way you call the first sort – monolingual communities 
of farmers, but nevertheless they lost their language in a few 
generations. I guess if Britain were a part of the continent or if 
there were a tunnel under the channel built by Caesar or William the 
Conqueror we'd probably know now of "British Romance" or "North 
French" spoken over there. Look how the Celtic languages were 
preserved in Britain while they totally disappeared on the continent.

raul catalan ramos wrote:
> I have "argued" about this point with my friends several 
times.From my
> point of view, according to the number of words inherited from east
> germanic, it is very unlikely the employ of gothic by goths in 
Hispania,
> becasuse most of germanic words in nowadays spanish is limited to 
only a
> handful examples (as "guerra" (written "Werra"  in the ancient 
sources ,
> meaning "war") or "bosque" meaning "forest", both of them nearby 
the same
> as the italian words for war, "guerra", and   forest,"bosco"). On 
the
> other hand, the lack of written sources in gothic can't be used to 
deny
> the employ of gothic among goths in hispania, because the written 
sources
> from this period are closely related to the highest elites of 
society,
> whose focus was the roman (and then bizantine) culture and the 
employ of
> Latin. I agree with the idea that
> gothic vanished in a few generations, but I think that it must 
endured for
>  some time in rural areas far from the cities.

Spanish guerra is almost surely a loan from Frankish werra via Old 
French. As are many other Germanic words in Ibero-Romance.

Still, there are a few words which seem really Gothic and which 
could rather dispute Dirk's thesis that no Gothic was spoken over 
the Pyrennees. I mean words which preserve Visigothic diphthongs and 
which therefore could not enter Ibero-Romance from a Latin-based 
military pidgin because Vulgar Latin did not have these sounds. 
Ergo, they must have been borrowed directly from Gothic.

Ualarauans

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