[gothic-l] Re: Goths and Vandals

[James Young]

Thanks llama_nom, 
 
That was a solid answer. Ovid after being banished by Augustus to Tomis, later called Constantia, complained about the Getan barbarization of Greek for about a year, but later seemed to get used to it. I know that was maybe a hundred and fifty years before the Goths moved into the Black Sea region, and that the Getans were probably a non-German Sarmation group with distant Iranian (Arian?) roots; but I thought Greek was the trade language for the Eastern free tribes as well as for the Eastern Empire. And the idea of Jordanes' reference to ancient kings from the south. Oh well.
 
Thanks again, 
 
Jim

llama_nom <penterakt at fsmail.net> wrote: 

> 
> James Young <daddio52 at s...> wrote:
> 
> 
> If small groups of Vandals and Goths met on the steppe or along the 
Majorcan coast, could they understand one another's native language; 
and what about non-Germans? Was there a sign language, smoke signals, 
flashing mirrors, or was everything Greek, Latin, and fisticuffs? Did 
the Gothic Bible sell into the other germanic communities?


Hi James,


Between Vandals and Goths, all the indications are they had more or 
less the same language.  The same sorts of personal names are 
recorded for both peoples, although the process of transcription into 
Greek and Latin will have obscured any fine differences in 
pronunciation.  Also naming traditions were probably conservative, 
and might not reflect innovations in the spoken language.

On the other hand, some people think that there were significant 
differences even among the dialects of the various Gothic tribes, and 
that the language of the Bible was an artificial standard, relatively 
incomprehensible to all!

Here are the two Vandal sentences recorded by Latin writers:

FROJA ARMES! "Lord have mercy!" = Got. frauja armais (Recorded in 
verious garbled forms as a prayer of the Arians (Vandals) in North 
Africa: Sihora armen, Shroia armen, Kuroia armes, Fhrota/Froti armes -
see Schreitberg §15.5b, http://wulfila.be ).  This comes from one of 
St Augustine's letters.

(H)AILS! SKAPJA(M) MATJA(N) JA(H) DRINKAN! (Recorded in a wry Latin 
verse De Conviviis Barbaris "On Barbarian Feasts" c. 390: Inter eils 
Goticum scapiamatziaiadrincan / non audet quisquam dignos educere 
versus "between the Gothic 'hail! let's get eating & drinking' no one 
dares utter any worthier verses".)  Apparently the restored letters 
are actually needed to make this line scan as a regular hexameter 
according to the rules of Latin verse.

http://www.univie.ac.at/indogermanistik/quellentexte.cgi?5

This last quote comes from North Africa and is thought to reflect the 
speech of the Vandals, so it's interesting that the Roman author 
makes no distinction between Vandalic and Gothic.  Admittedly this 
could be part of the attitude of distain.  Goths, Vandals: he doesn't 
know, does't care...  The differences between the phrase as recorded 
and its reconstructed form can be accounted for by aspects of Latin 
pronunciation, rather than differences between Gothic and Vandal.  
The same goes for FROJA ARMES, which might well have been spelt 
FRAUJA ARMAIS by the Vandals themselves, and pronounced the same as 
the Gothic words - however that was.

As Arian Christians, the Vandals may well have used the Gothic 
Bible.  The Codex Gissensis was a fragment of Luke's Gospel, with 
parallel Latin & Gothic text, discovered in Egypt in 1907.  Did it 
originate in the Vandal kingdom?  If so, the language shows no 
difference to Biblical Gothic.  Of course, even if Vandalic did 
diverge to some extent from Gothic, the Gothic language may have been 
used for religious purposes.

http://germa.germsem.uni-kiel.de/gotisch/gissensis.html


Information about linguistic conditions at an earlier date is harder 
to find.  I don't know about the steppes, but when Priscus visited 
Attila's court, he was surprised to find a man who greeted him in 
Greek: CHAIRE!  Hunnish, Gothic and Latin were more the norm.  The 
only Greek speakers among the barbarians, he says, were Thracian 
captives.  Not sure about fisticuffs - but lots of cricifixions & 
impalings mentioned...

Llama Nom







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