[gothic-l] Re: Vandal (was: Goths of North Africa)

Thu Sep 9 18:15:34 UTC 2004

Hi Francisc,

According to Streitberg, FROJA ARMES (as reconstructed) comes from a 
letter of St Augustine, possibly written to Vigilius of Thapsus, c. 
400.

http://www.wulfila.be/lib/streitberg/1920/HTML/B038.html

Does the letter quote Florentinus?  I don't know.  I haven't yet 
found anything about inscriptions in the Vandal language itself - 
that would be exciting! - but there are inscriptions in Latin from 
the Vandal kingdom, which contain Vandal names, e.g. Gebamunde (Latin 
vocative = Got. *Gibamundu) & Geilamir.  The name Geilamir also 
apprears on coins, and is presumably closer to the real name of this 
the last Vandal king than the form Gelimer often cited.  
Unfortunately, for our purposes, the coins of Vandals and Gothic 
rulers used Latin spelling conventions, for example *Thiudareiks 
becomes Theodoricus/Theodericus (or something like that...), so we 
have to be careful here too.  The same goes for the inscriptions, of 
course.  In Popular Latin short /i/ moved from being a high tense 
front vowel, to a lower or laxer vowel more like English /i/, and 
finally to a close /e/. So <i> and <e> are often interchangeable in 
Latin spellings of barbarian names.

All of the phonetic features mentioned by Reikahardus can be 
accounted for by Latin influence, I think.  The palatalisation, or in 
some regions simply affrication, of /tj/ > /tsj/ was a feature of 
Latin.  Gothic names with the combination <frauja> are invariably 
spelt <froja> in Latin, not unnaturally as Latin /au/ had become /o:/ 
in popular pronunciation.  The evidence, such as it is, of the very 
latest Gothic - namely the Vienna-Salzburg Codex - still shows a 
diphthong in Noicz, for Nauths, although Reda appears for *Raida.

Behagel believed that the High German shift /t/ > /ts/ occured in 
Ostrogothic between 553 & 580.  Priebsch & Collinson cite a Gothic 
name spelt Gk. Boutilinos, Lat. Buccelenus.  I don't know if there is 
any more evidence than this?  It seem a bit of a leap to talk 
about "tendencies in post-Wulfilan Gothic".  I'm certainly not aware 
of any evidence for such a shift in the Gothic manuscripts - which do 
show some post-Wulfilan tendencies, of course, just not these ones, 
as far as I know.

<ei> in <eils> could just be due to the lack of a diphthong /ai/ in 
Latin at this time.  Or maybe it does indicate a higher 
pronunciation.  I notice, no suggestion here that this is evidence 
for a loss of /h/ in Vandal!  <ei> and <ai> appear interchangeably in 
Latin transcriptions of Gothic personal names, suggesting at least 
that it was a diphthong in some positions.  I don't know if there is 
any diachronic or geographical pattern in the use of <ei> or <ai>.  
Even if not, it would be surprising if there wasn't some variation or 
fluctuation in pronunciation over the history of East Germanic.

Given the many corrupt forms of the manuscripts: shroia armen, kuroia 
armes, fhrota/fhroti armes - I don't see any reasons for supposing 
uniquely Vandal grammar or sound-changes on the basis of this.  The 
Vienna-Salzburg Codex specifically says that <ai> in <libaida> is 
equivalent to long <e> in Roman script.  Arman belongs to exactly the 
same class of weak verbs as liban.  My guess, at the moment, is that 
Vandals and Goths both wrote FRAUJA ARMAIS, and said: /frauja arme:s/.

Llama Nom

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "Francisc Czobor" <fericzobor at y...> 
wrote:
> Hi, Dirk and Llama Nom
> 
> In the Gothic-l message no. 1389 of December 18, 1999, Ryszard 
> Derdzinski ("Reikahardus") wrote:
> 
> "...we have only one or two attested Vandalic sentences coming from 
> North Africa.
> They should be known to all the East Germanic linguists. I met them 
> in J. Strzelczyk's "Wandalowie i ich afrykanskie panstwo" (in 
> Polish). The first sentence can be treated as Vandalic without 
doubt -
>  in Florentinus' poem we read: _Frója armés!_ translated in Latin 
> as 'Domine miserere' - it was called from the Arian altars in North 
> Africa.
> The second sentence is usualy treated as Gothic text (and should 
find
> interest in the list), but can be Vandalic as well. It comes from a 
> North African poem entitled "De conviviis barbaris". We read there: 
> _Inter eils goticum skapjamatzjajadrincan_ / Non audet quisquam 
> dignos edicere versus_. The Gothic (or Vandalic) sentence is here: 
> _Eils! Scapjam matzja(n) ja drincan_.
> In pure Gothic it could be: _Heils! Scapjam matjan jah drigkan_..."
> 
> In fact, in classical (Wulfilan) Gothic these sentences would be:
> 'Frauja armeis'
> and respectively:
> 'Hails! Skapjam matjan jah drigkan'
> These sentences could be Gothic, not Vandalic (even the first one 
> could be a Gothic formula used by the Arian Vandalic priests, 
taking 
> into consideration that for the Germanic Arians, Gothic played the 
> same role as Latin for Catholics or Arabic for Moslems). If they 
are 
> Vandalic, than we have to consider that Vandalic was very close to 
> Gothic (or that it was just a Gothic dialect). They differ from 
> classical Gothic in the following respects:
> assimilation of diphtongs: ai > ei, au > o
> the opening  ei > e
> the palatalization tj > tzj
> But these tendencies of evolution are observed also in post-
Wulfilan 
> Gothic, so they can not be considered as characteristic for 
Vandalic.
> 
> Francisc
> 
> 
> --- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "faltin2001" <dirk at s...> wrote:
> > --- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "llama_nom" <penterakt at f...> 
wrote:
> > > 
> > > Hi Dirk,
> > > 
> > > > In fact, only a handful of Vandalic words have been recorded 
> > > > on artefacts in North Africa.
> > > > 
> > > 
> > > I'm intrigued.  Apart possibly from the Codex Gissensis, which 
> was 
> > > discovered in Egypt, I didn't know there were *any* Vandal 
words 
> > > recorded on artefacts in North Africa (or elsewhere).  Do you 
> have 
> > > any more information about this?  As far as I was aware, 
Vandalic 
> > is 
> > > only attested through personal names and the two more or less 
> > garbled 
> > > quotes in Latin texts.
> > > 
> > > Llama Nom
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > Hi Llama Nom,
> > 
> > you are right most of the Vandalic words are in fact names, but a 
> > couple of inscriptions have been found in Tunesia, I think. I 
> > remember the word 'frauja' as address to 'The Lord' on a stone, 
> > perhaps somebody else can list a few more examples.
> > 
> > Cheers
> > Dirk

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