[gothic-l] The Letter H

[keth at ONLINE.NO]

Hi Troels!
>Hi Matþaius, Francisc and Keth
>
>I am sorry to bring this thread up again so late, but I had to return 
>to my books from my holiday before asking, as I have no knowledge 
>about the linguistic part of this topic:
>
>I understand Matþaius' arguments in this way: The "H" used in Latin 
>(a.e. "Heruls") might be a form symbolizing a classical name and not 
>necessarily a sound because of the silent "H" in Latin. An earlier 
>Roman author knowing the Heruls himself would probably know how to 
>pronounce the name, but even he might use the silent "H" though 
>the "H" was not pronounced by the Heruls themselves. As the Heruls 
>disappeared from Southern Europe around 565, the following writers 
>writing in Latin would probably always spell "Heruls" with "H" having 
>no knowledge about the pronunciation.

Well, I am not sure I understood all the details of Matþaius' argument.
My comment to what you write, would be that the Heruls did not disappear
from Central and Southern Europe in the 6th century, because some
of them married into high positions in for example Bavaria, as Dirk
has shown. Also the Langobards continued to have much contacts with
the Bavarians through the next centuries. And the Bavarians never
gave up their native language, though they did settle in a former
Roman province, Raetia. I assume the situation was the same for the
Langobards, that they too continued speaking Langobard at least
until the Franks besieged them and took away their crown in 774.
It is in fact remarkable when you scrutinize the 10 or 12 manuscripts
we have of Paulus' "Historia", how remarkably consistent all the manuscripts
are in writing Herul with H. My idea is that it was the knowledge
of the Langobard language that was the "stabilizing factor" here. 
In fact, I think the knowledge of oral Langobardic gave the key
to the correct Germanic pronounciation of all these names. And
so he knew which names were spelled with H and which names without H,
as long as Langobardic continued its existence as a living language.
None of the other Germanic languages ever lost the initial H.
But Italian did!   Humberto --> Umberto.
Clearly, within Italian or vulgar Latin, initial H did disappear,
and thus, those who knew only vulgar Latin or early Italian, but
were not speakers of Germanic, they must have been the ones who
began dropping the initial H of Germanic names.
And I therefore will attribute the systematic occurrence of Herul
with H, in Paulus' "Historia Langobardorum" (in all Mss.) to
the fact that it was written by a Langobard writer, Paulus, whose
father's name was Warnefrid. So, since Paulus knew Langobard, he 
also knew where to put the H-es!   :)   (that is my argument)


>
>Therefore the "H" would also be used since 565 by authors educated in 
>Latin (a.e. by the church) writing names referring directly to the 
>Heruls, and therefore Keth's example from Paulus Diaconus does not 
>tell us if there should be a "H" in "Heruls" (Paulus is a later 
>writer in Roman tradition).

Paulus was not a "Roman", but a man from a Langobard family.
If the book had been written by Italians (=people not speaking
Langobard), you should expect they would drop the initial H,
just like it was dropped in Umberto.


>
>We also have to look at the authors before 565AD writing in Greek. 
>Procopius wrote in Greek in the 550ies - possibly also using sources 
>in Latin. He must have known how "Herul" was pronounced being the 
>secretary of Bellisarius using many Heruls in his army. I have only 
>the Dewing-version, where the apostrophe (down-left) is what Francisc 
>calls the "soft spirit" meaning no "H" before the "E". If this is 
>correct, the Latin "H" is most likely a misunderstanding because of 
>traditional classical spelling. Is this Greek spelling in "Gothic 
>Wars" correct according to more original sources? 

I do not have Procopius in Greek.
But the Greek manuscript that were quoted elsewhere, had the 
Greek "Herul" with the "hard espirit" in front of the epsilon.
(these were quotes from the Greek historian Dexippos (sp)
who met the Heruls several centuries earlier: in the 3rd century.
Now if Dexippos writes it with the "hard esprit" (=H), then surely
that must mean that that is the way it was prononced. What else could
it mean?


>The situation might be another in the Northgermanic and Westgermanic 
>regions where some of the Heruls disappeared from the sight of the 
>Roman authors in pagan times.
>
>Following Matþaius's theory the place-names in Austria/Germany from 
>the 9th century referring to the Heruls might be spelled with "H", as 
>the writers of such official documents at that time probably had a 
>classical (clerical) education – but only if they knew, that the name 
>referred to the Heruls, or if the name was pronounced with an "H".
>
Hm.. seems tenuous to me.
I would assume they wrote the place names either reflecting
local pronounciation, or Latin tradition.

But how can the H have "popped up" from Nowhere in Latin tradition?
After all the tendency was Humberto --> Umberto.
But never Umberto --> Humberto.
(unless you can provide examples, but I don't think
there are any. )


>In most other cases local (not learned) spelling in these regions 
>would be without "H" if the original pronunciation was "Erul" as 
>indicated by the Procopius-argument above. 

Do you have the Procopius text?

When did initial H start to disappear in vulgar Latin?
The emperor Hadrian still has it!
When did Hadrian --> Adrian?

Maybe Procopius had no contact with the Bavarians
or the Langobards who could have told him the right
pronounciation. Maybe he based his spelling upon Latin
verbal communication, that was already beginning to be corrupt.
And then he took it to Greek from there.
But how DID Procopius write it?
Reference please! Publication date and page number.

Procopius was born in Caesarea and educated as rhetor in 
a school that was probably in Gaza. So he was far away
from the Ostro- and Visigoths and other people who
might have informed him concerning Germanic pronounciation.



>If we assume the name to be the background for the OE word "eorl" and 
>maybe ON "jarl" the way of spelling is dependent on the later writers 
>knowledge of this background. However "eo" and the Nordic "j" might 
>indicate a sound before the vowels "e" or open "a" - if it is not 
>caused by the "r". Could this have been a faint Eastgermanic 
>aspiration or consonant contributing to all the above confusion? If 
>we assume the Herulian language to be similar to Gothic did such a 
>faint H/J-sound exist in Gothic? 

Well, if the returning Heruls (as supported by the written sources)
had forgotten their original language. But if they had kept
their original Germanic language, they would have kept H.
There is no loss of initial H in the Germanic languages.

Eril develops a breaking around that time.
Just like "Erde" -> Scandinavian IARD/ Old English EARTh
You see the breaking of the initial E-vowel occurring both
in Old Norse as well as in Old English.
But the breaking is not realized in the same way in the two
languages. In Old Norse initial e --> ja  and in
Old English the initial e --> ea.
Another example is "heart": Using German and Dutch as reference
(because the bereaking never occurred in those two languages)
We have German "Hertz", Dutch "hart".
But English "heart" and Norwegian "hjarta"
So that is rather a constand sound change rule in those languages.
Note also that the eample "heart" shows that initial h
is not affected by this change.

So according to this sound change rule we easily obtain
Old English    Eril  --> Earl    and
Old Norse     Eril --> Iarl.   (the "i" disappears through syncope)

So that is the easy part.
The difficult part is to explain the connection between
runic "Eril" and   Langobard/Gotic  "Herul".
Because the latter is rather well documented.

But maybe it is Procopius that is the source of the English 
scholarly usage of writing it as "Erul" without H.
The German scholarly tradition is to keep the H.
But I'd still like to see the Procopius reference.
(and why disregard Dexippos?)


>If the name was written in runes we should according to Keth expect 
>the name to be written as it was pronounced at that time and place. I 
>agree, but do we know how "erilaR" was pronounced in the 5th and 6th 
>century as you indicated, Keth? 

I think so. Because runic inscriptions are from wide areas.
And we know the approximate pronounciation of the vowels,
because the languages were recorded later, also over a wide area.
And some words found in runic inscriptions can also be compared
wit the the same words as recorded in contemporary Latin sources.
And since all words contain some vowels, and there aren't
too many vowels either in early Gemanic, I think we know what
sounds the runic vowels corresponded to.
At least the literature that discusses runes has given phonology
an especially important place, and the opinion seems to prevail
that the pronounciation is known quite well (within reasonable limits).
(example: the Kjølevik inscription: HadulaikaR ek Hagusta(l)dar
hlaaiwido magu minimo, SW Norway ca. 400 AD - lots of initial H !
Compare Hildebrandslied)

>
>If not there is as far as I can se no "H"-argument against the theory 
>about a connection between "Erilar" and "Herul" - if the Procopius-
>argument above is correct. 

Well, I trust Jordanes and Paulus much more than Prokop
because Jordanes must have known Gothic and Paulus Langobardic.
But Prokop was Greek (from Caesarea) and did not know Germanic language.

Best regards
Keth


"Einsam unter den deutschen Stabreimdenkmälern steht das  H i l d e -
 b r a n d s l i e d ; nicht angelsächsisch verflochten, sondern südlich, 
 gotisch-langobardisch, nicht kirchlich, sondern weltlich, und damit
 zunächst außerhalb des Generalnenners, unter dem alle deutsche Literatur
 bisher gestanden hatte: karolingische Bildungsarbeit." (Helmut de Boor)

>Troels
>
>
>--- In gothic-l at y..., keth at o... wrote:
>> Hails Matþaius,
>> 
>> You wrote:
>> >I suppose this argument will lead back to the original spelling of 
>(h)Eruls,
>> >as well as lend support for *Ala- over against *Hala-
>> >
>> >Keth, the only problem I see here with your theory concerning the 
>h in
>> >manuscript tradition is that because Latin no longer pronounced 
>the 'h' in
>> >the period, following a trend that had been ongoing since the 2nd 
>c. AD, its
>> >scribes could no longer recognize its proper place or proper 
>usage. It is
>> >thought that the h was kept in spelling out of tradition rather 
>than as a
>> >reflection of colloquial pronunciation, which was thus like 
>Spanish or
>> >Italian or French (or any other Romance language) in respect to 
>the 'h'.
>> >Since the h was not pronounced in spoken Latin, scribes often had 
>to do
>> >their best to remember when it should be written, and, in lieu of 
>the many
>> >errors, probably seldom resorted to ancient texts for correction. 
>H had
>> >become a vestige, a sort of symbol of antiquity, and therefore 
>perhaps also
>> >of learnedness. Whether the h was etymological, eventually, through
>> >ignorance or apathy, came to have diminished importance. The 
>evidence of
>> >such treatment is apparent in much of the vulgar latin texts of 
>the early
>> >medieval period.
>> 
>
>
>
>
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