[gothic-l] Re: Vandal (was: Goths of North Africa)
llama_nom
penterakt at FSMAIL.NET
Fri Sep 10 15:28:51 UTC 2004
Hi Vladimir!
> I dare add a couple of small comments-questions that
> may appear interesting though not very useful.
>
> 1. The diphthong <ai> in modern Lithuanian sounds for my
> (i.e. Russian) ear rather closer to /ej/ than to /aj/.
> Supposing some common features in East Germanic and Baltic
> (or influence of the first upon the latter), might this be
> an explanation of the alternating /ails/ and /eils/
> in Latin reproductions?
/ej/ and /aj/ (/ei/ and /ai/) are all very close. Changes of this
sort have happened in many languages. In Norse, /ai/ > /ei/. In
High German /ai/ > /ei/ > /ai/. I don't know much about German
dialects, but the southern pronunciation of <ei> usually sounds
like /æi/ to me - higher than the standard Buehensprache
pronunciation, but not as high as standard Dutch. Maybe the
Gothic/Vandal <ai> was something like Lithuanian or South German,
somewhere between /ai/ and /ei/? I guess the lesson is that
diphthongs are often the most unstable of vowel sounds, and very
liable to mutate. I supposed it would be strange if there weren't
variations in East Germanic. I don't think we can read too much into
the occurrence of the same diphthong in two languages at such a
remove of time and space. Take, for instance, the sound-change /ai/
> /e:/, which has occurred in the history of both Swedish and Arabic,
presumably quite independently. (Not that there weren't trade links
in the Viking Age!)
> 2. In modern Ukrainian the letter <i> (applied only
> at the beginning of a word or after a vowel) is pronounced
> with a fricative consonant before <i>, something between
> /ji/ and /gi/. Of course, the use of the same letter <i>
> by both old Gothic and new Ukrainian is a coincidence,
> but may be the fact itself of "iotation" of <i> after
> an open syllable a reflection of some East Germanic trends?
> Vladimir
An intersting detail in itself, but again, I think the whole thing's
a coincidence. In Gothic there is sometimes a <j> inserted after
<ai> where the latter represents (according to the usually
reconstructed pronunciation) a long open /e:/ before another vowel.
Thus: saian/saijan (I'm not sure if those exact forms are attested,
but just to illustrate the idea...). But it's an easy change to
make, and I'm sure similar things have happened independently in many
different languages.
Llama Nom
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: llama_nom [mailto:penterakt at f...]
> Sent: Thursday, September 09, 2004 10:16 PM
> To: gothic-l at yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [gothic-l] Re: Vandal (was: Goths of North Africa)
>
>
>
> 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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