Sino-nymic (was Re: Haiku & Toponymics)

Sat May 20 10:12:26 UTC 2006

Being of mixed Boer/German descent I abhor the idea of calling Zimbabwe 
after that jingoist Rhodes!!! Shock! Lieber den ausdruck Zimbabwe 
("steinerne Burgen/Häuser") ins Gotische übersetzen.

Liebe Grüße

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Guenther Ramm" <ualarauans at yahoo.com>
To: <gothic-l at yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, May 20, 2006 10:32 AM
Subject: Re: [gothic-l] Sino-nymic (was Re: Haiku & Toponymics)

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

Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

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

------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> 
Get to your groups with one click. Know instantly when new email arrives
http://us.click.yahoo.com/.7bhrC/MGxNAA/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/