[gothic-l] Re: Goths and Vandals

Tue Aug 24 09:31:40 UTC 2004

Hi Jim,

There are some early Greek loanwords in Slavonic, for example Russian 
KORABL' < Gk. karabi(on), a sort of boat.  According to Entwhistle & 
Morison's "Russian & the Slavonic Languages" this must have been 
borrowed before the Greek Beta became a fricative, because later 
borrowings have _v_.  Do you know when that happened?  Wright, and 
Streitberg I think, both say that it was before the time of the 
Gothic Bible, but I don't know how long before.  (The same word was 
borrowed later into Norse, giving Old Icelandic KARFI).  On the other 
hand, the presumed fricative Gothic b/f > b in loanwords to Slavonic 
(e.g. chl'eb < hlaifs...

Maybe a bilabial fricative sounded closer to B than to V in Slavonic 
ears.  I've always assumed that Greek B went through a bilabial stage 
on its way to the modern V sound, but I don't know about the timing 
of any of this.

Another Greek loan to Slavonic, OB. kopije 'spear' < Gk. 
koopion 'haft', is said to have been transmitted via the Germans (?
Goths).

Given such words, maybe we shouldn't read too much into Priscus's 
comment beyond the immediate situation at Attila's court, or maybe it 
didn't apply at an earlier time.  If it was true though, the 
following article might explain it:

http://www.kortlandt.nl/publications/art198e.pdf

Here Frederik Kortlandt argues that the Goths migrated not directly 
from the Vistula to the Ukraine, but along a more westerly route, 
along the Danube.  This, he says, explains certain Latin & Celtic 
influences on Gothic.  I'm a bit wary of some of his conclusions 
though.  He seems very definite about certain things, and doesn't 
mention alternate explanations, e.g.:

"The words Kreks `Greek' and dat. pl. marikreitum `pearls' also 
betray the influence of an Upper German dialect without voiced 
obstruents (cf. Kortlandt 1988: 9)."

Usually Got. Kreks, OE. crecas, etc. are explained as an earlier 
borrowing, with K for G due to the lack of voiced stops in Germanic.  
Kortlandt's idea assumes a very early date for this distinctively 
Upper German consonant shift, pre 350!  Also, that the Germanic 
tribes had no established name for Greeks before this time.

"Gothic phonology resembles that of Latin and Romance more than that 
of the other Germanic languages" - is a curious statement.  I wonder 
what exactly he has in mind here.  The other Germanic languages are 
only recorded extensively in much later forms.  In the mid fourth 
century the runic evidence suggests that they were much closer to 
Gothic, with a simpler set of phonemes.

That said, I don't know enough to comment on the overall hypothesis.  
Maybe there is something in it.

"It seems to me that gen. pl. skaurpjono `scorpions' almost suffices 
to show that the Goths entered the Balkans from the west, not from 
the north."

Almost suffices, I don't know, but Gk. skorpios (accute accent on i) 
versus Lat. scorpio, does suggest that the Goths took the word from 
Latin rather than Greek.  Another reason for the Latin influence 
might be the prevelance of Latin in the military, even in the East.  
I'm not sure of dates or sources for this, but I've read that Latin 
persisted longest in the Eastern Empire as the official language of 
the army.

Llama Nom

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, James Young <daddio52 at s...> wrote:
>  
>  
> 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 f...> 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
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> You are a member of the Gothic-L list.  To unsubscribe, send a 
blank email to <gothic-l-unsubscribe at egroups.com>. 
> 
> 
> Yahoo! Groups SponsorADVERTISEMENT
> 
> 
> ---------------------------------
> Yahoo! Groups Links
> 
>    To visit your group on the web, go to:
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gothic-l/
>   
>    To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
> gothic-l-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com
>   
>    Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of 
Service. 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> 
Make a clean sweep of pop-up ads. Yahoo! Companion Toolbar.
Now with Pop-Up Blocker. Get it for free!
http://us.click.yahoo.com/L5YrjA/eSIIAA/yQLSAA/wWMplB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~-> 

You are a member of the Gothic-L list.  To unsubscribe, send a blank email to <gothic-l-unsubscribe at egroups.com>. 
Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gothic-l/

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
    gothic-l-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
    http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/