[gothic-l] Re: Yiddish is based on Ostrogothic

[czobor at CANTACUZINO.RO]

--- In gothic-l at y..., dirk at s... wrote:
> --- In gothic-l at y..., czobor at c... wrote:
> > Hi Dirk,
> >
> > I said only "The failure of the Franks to be converted to Arianism
> is
> > explained, **among other reasons**, also by the fact that,
> Franconian
> > being a West-Germanic language  considerably different from
Gothic,
> > the Franks had difficulties in understanding the language of the
> > Gothic Bible." This is not my idea, I have read it somewhere,
> probably
> > in Wolfram's "Die Germanen". In any case, this was not presented
> > there as the principal reason for the Franks to prefer the
> > Catholicism, it was just "among other reasons". The idea was that
> > because of their West Germanic language the Franks had less
> linguistic
> > affinity to Wulfila's Bible than, let's say, the Vandals or the
> > Burgundians.
>
>
> Hi Francisc,
>
> that maybe right, but I still think that linguistic affinity played
> virtually no role in the decision to convert to Catholicism or
> Arianism. The Burgundians may be a good example, as they were East
> Germanics but switched very early (I think under King Sigismund) to
> Catholicism. On the other hand, it has been pointed out that some
> (West Germanic) Alamanni may have initially turned to Arianism. Many
> Alamanni fled under Ostrogothic protection after the battle of
> Zuelpich and the Ostrogothic kingdom included Alamannic areas like
the
> Vorarlberg at the Bodensee. Also, the use of so called gold leaf
> crosses in Alamannic graves has been interpreted as indication for
> Arian influence. Finally, a linguist on the Germanic-L has recently
> pointed out that by the 4th/5th century East and West-Germanic were
> likely still very close and mutually intelligible.
>
> cheers
> Dirk
>

Hi Dirk,

I am not a specialist in such matters, only quoted what I read.
Maybe the language was indeed not relevant for the decision for
Arianism or Catholicism (in fact, this is also my point of view, and I
found somehow surprisingly the assertion of Wolfram. See the case of
Serbians, Croatians and Bosniacs, who speak the same language, but are
Ortodox, Catholic, respectively Moslem; the Polish, Czech, Slovaks,
Slovenians and Croatians choose for Catholicism, despite their
language affinities with the Slavonic Orthodox Bible of Cyrill and
Methodius; on the other hand the Romanians choose the Orthodoxism,
despite their Romance language).
Regarding East and West-Germanic in 4/5th century (before the
occurence of the second consonnant shift in High German), I agree that
they could be, at least in part, mutually inteligible (maybe on the
border of the dialect/language distinction; very hard to make
presumptions, since we have very scarce attestations of West Germanic
of that time).

Francisc


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