Sino-nymic (was Re: Haiku & Toponymics)

Sat May 20 08:32:40 UTC 2006

Fredrik <gadrauhts at hotmail.com> wrote:  
> Nothing will be around for ever. Countries will fall and new will

> rise during time. The countries at the time when gothic was spoken
  > arent the same as now. And in the future it wont be the same as now.

  - Well, that seems more to philosophy than to linguistix (the former being still less familiar field for me than the latter)... Just put in “languages” instead of “countries” and say isn’t that the view that would kill the very idea of reconstructing a dead language. “Why are you so much in for a language not spoken one and a half thousand of years?” shall we all be asked, “none of you being able to provide a Gothic pedigree, so that a comparison with modern language revivals (like that of Ireland or Israel) is definitely out of place in your case. Learn languages people speak now and don’t feel so helpless before the face of the all-devouring Time”. This could be really a discussion, and I’m almost sure this topic has been touched here more than once. What about names of countries – that’s a question of methodology. Peru and Zimbabwe could become *Igkaland and *Rodisland (or whatever Germanic etymology of Rhodes’ name can be) respectively, but it’s not what I’d like to
 point out now. Of course there will be much more countries with no hope to get a “true Gothic” name, but I think it can be a kind of fun to look into the country’s history and try what we could invent about it. When looking for a word not attested in the 4th century Bible, what’s your way to create a neologism? I guess most often you look how it is called in today’s Germanic languages and then you simply “play back” this form into Gothic, like *sahriballus (not **baskaitbaulls!). Or, if you feel discontent with it’s present pattern, you just invent a new one bearing in mind that it should be at least roughly understandable, let it be ridiculous, for the imagined “native speaker”, like wokrahansa “banking company” (not *bagkondei gamainduths and still less **bagkiggakumpanja). I’d fully agree with this process. But then, what’s so different about toponymics? Place-names are just another part of every language’s vocabulary, like nouns, adjectives etc. You can’t reconstruct
 verbs and let adverbs behave as they do now in, say, Swedish. Every language is a kind of autarkic system, I mean it has to be organic, not having its feet in the Wulfilan epoch and its head in the 21st century. If we gonna bring the 4th century Gothic over into nowadays, we better bring it as a whole, not just some parts of it we like more. Those huge holes in the attested vocabulary should be filled in so as to match the rest of the body rather than today’s stand of things which it can be later accommodated to. This is how I see it.
  - Well, abstract reasoning isn’t that I’m any good in, so I better try to get further with examples. The geographical horizon of the historical Goths would embrace that of Romans plus the countries they had wandered through or heard of from their fellow comrades like Gepids, Lombards etc. This could be a basis to create names for today’s countries of the same territories. I mean, converting the historical Germanic names into their Gothic form (as e.g. *Aggliland for England) and perhaps using names of Roman provinces for countries yonder the once-been Limes (as *Thrakiland for Lat. Thracia). Note I use -land as a default ending, it could be gawi, reiki or whatever fits the particular case. Sure there will be names which it’s impossible to carry through such a procedure, but it’s just here where we need our wits and feel of taste (and I’m certainly not the person to be proud for a “gout irreprochable”). There will be countries “with several possibilities”, as for instance
 Italy, which can be another *Walhaland (cf. Polish name for Italy Wlochy which is plural of Wloch < Gothic *Walh), *Walhiskaland (NHG Welschland), *Italja(land) (cf. OE Eatule in Widsith which shows how Lat. Italia could be adopted and Germanized, for the seemingly superfluous -land cf. Iudaialand Mk. 1:5) or even *Rumaland. The reverse situation is quite possible, e.g. *Walhaland would fit Apennine Italy, Romanian Walachia and even Belgian Wallonia. This can produce some confusion, but at the same time it’s a great source of poetic synonyms! Besides, we can still see a lot of confusion even in modern languages around the names of countries, and to use their Roman names could be a way to avoid misunderstanding and conflicts. For example, there’s a country in the Balkan which calls itself Makedonija, and, luckily, we have Makidonja attested. But when its singer was performing in the semi-final of Eurovision (*Aiwrosiuns?) she was introduced as a representative of “Former
 Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia”. Cause the Greeks would claim that “Macedonia” is a part of their historical heritage and not a Slavic-speaking country, I guess. Also, if taking modern names be the only official policy to create toponymics, a question arises which of the modern names to choose as a start point. For instance, is it English “Hungary”, German “Ungarn” or Hungarian “Magyarorszag”? Why *Fragkareiki and not *Fragkja or even *Frantsja (< France). Every resident of a particular modern country would prefer his own language as the best source of names to be gothicized, wouldn’t he? A pluralism here is by no means bad, but there should perhaps be a pluralism of approach as well. I don’t know what your ultimate dream of a revived Gothic is, mine is that the (neo-)Gothic language would become able to execute all the functions any other modern European language does and be in current use among enthusiasts over the world (like Esperanto in fact is), but to hope it
 would one day replace another language in a particular territory as a means of everyday communication or even as a birth language (btw, did anyone try to teach babies Gothic?) – this hope I think is quite unreal. Gothic will always be a “second (third, fourth etc) language” whatever success we’ll have achieved in our work. The basic moving reason to learn it will stay either scholarship or just hobby and not a practical need to communicate with people around you. So maybe it shouldn’t be so “totally logic” and correspond so precisely to “our knowledge of the world” as it is today.
  Excuse my chaotic way to express thoughts, but I hope you’ll get an idea of what I tried to say.
  u.A.w.g.
  Ualarauans

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