Greetings

[Francisc Czobor]

Hi, Eros,

Gothic is indeed a beautiful language, and to learn it means for sure 
more than memorizing declension and conjugation. It has also its own 
syntax, of course strongly influenced by the Greek model in the case 
of the most important extant Gothic text - the Bible translation, 
which is also the main source for our knowledge of Gothic.
I'm not a historian, so I'm not the most qualified to give an answer 
on why, in Visigothic Spain, they gave up Gothic in favor of Latin.
The main reason would be that the Romanic population was more 
numerous than the Gothic invaders, so the later became naturally 
assimilated (the same thing happened with the Germanic Franks who 
became romanized in Gaul, with the Germanic Ostrogoths and Langobards 
who became romanized in Italy, or with the Turkic Old Bulgarians who 
became slavized in Bulgaria).
Another reason is the fact that when the Visigoths changed Arianism 
for Catholicism, Gothic was replaced by Latin as a church language 
(and consequently as an official and literary language). 
The question of your PS, regarding larger vocabularies of Gothic 
words, was already answered by Llama Nom.

Francisc

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "in_odium" <in_odium at y...> wrote:
>
> Thank you Francisc, I went to the URL that you gave me.  So far I 
> find it easy(I'm on lesson 2).  Does it get any harder than just 
> memorizing how to conjugate and inflect words?  Either way it is a 
> very beautiful language, even more beautiful when written in it's 
> own alphabet.  I don't understand why they gave it up in favor of 
> Latin.  I know the Roman ifluence was strong in Hispania, but 
still, 
> why did they adopt their language.  I can agree that i was time to 
> adopt more Roman-esquish laws as opposed to "barbaric" laws.  I 
know 
> that exchange of culture is bound to happen no matter what, but 
what 
> would force a people to give up their own language in exchange for 
> another when not under foreign rule?  Oh well.......  atleast 
> Castillian, Catalan, Galcian, Portuguese and Áranes are beautifull 
> languages too.........  somewhat.
> 
> Ex Odium
> Eros
> 
> Post Scriptum - Is there a larger vocabulary of gothic words on 
that 
> same site?  I haven't had much time to look at it thouroghly since 
> I'm actaully doing all this stuff using a PSP since my computer 
> broke and it loads pages so damned slow, many thanks.
> 






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