Toledo

[faltin2001]

Hi Oscar,

are the many question marks an expression of disbelief or a sign that 
you are unclear about the content of my comment?

Just to clarify, there is really no doubt today that the Visigoths 
who settled in Spain after 507 didn't speak Gothic, but Latin or 
better a Latin military pidgin that included Germanic terms. The fact 
that all royal documents issued by Visigothic kings are in Latin 
shouldn't surprise. The same is true for Italy. Yet, even in private 
and Arian church documents there is no use and not even a reference 
to an other language, let alone Gothic. In Italy at least some 
private and clerical documents use Gothic, albeit in a static, archic 
and formulaic way that shows that the language was more or less dead 
already in daily use. 

Also, like in Italy, Visigothic kings never seem to have need for 
interpreters. They can speak freely communicated with the natives, 
which would at least require them to have been bilingual. Finally, 
the Frankish Tabula Gentes of 550 AD suggests directly that the 
Visigoths of Spain were Latin-speakers. 

I suppose the federate army under Wallia who entered Spain in the 
early 5th century would have been mostly Gothic/Germanic speaking. 
Yet, in the subsequent 3 or 4 generations in Gaul Gothic was no doubt 
abandoned in favour of Latin. When the Gothic kingdom was destroyed 
by the Franks in 507, the remaining refugees who fled to Spain would 
have ben Latin/Romanic speakers. And again, the documentary evidence 
of the subsequent decades allows for no other conclusion.

Cheers,
Dirk






--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, OSCAR HERRERA <duke.co at ...> wrote:
>
> ????????????
> 
> faltin2001 <d.faltin at ...> wrote:          --- In gothic-
l at yahoogroups.com, "Abdoer-Ragmaan Lombard" 
> <manielombard@> wrote:
> >
> > Perhaps I've used an unsuitable font, so here a repost:
> > 
> > Could Tulaytula, the Arabic form of Toledo, have 
> > been derived from *Tôlêtula", a Gothic hypocorism of *Tôlêtô < 
Latin 
> > Tôlêtum? Perhaps *Taúlêtô should be regarded as the Gothic etymon 
> > (long unstressed "ô" having merged in Vulgar Latin with 
short /o/, 
> and 
> > seeing that Arabic uses a short "u" preceded by an emphatic t, in 
> > order to reproduce an "o"; long "ê" is given as "ay" [= "ê" in 
spoken 
> > Arabic]), which would give *Taúlêtula.
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I don't think so, because the Goths in Spain didn't speak Gothic, 
but 
> Latin or some vulgar Latin with a few Germanic/Gothic remnants. The 
> Tabula gentes of about 550AD suggests so, and there is no hint that 
> they had any difficulties communicating with the local population 
in 
> Romanic without interpretors.There is also no indication that 
written 
> Gothic was used in Gaul or Spain. After all, the Goths in Gaul and 
> Spain were a Roman federate army, which also included many Roman 
> provincials and Latin was no doubt the lingua franca of the various 
> western Gothic groups since the 5th century. 
> 
> Cheers,
> Dirk
> 
> >
> 
> 
> 
>          
> 
> 
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>


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