Use of Gothic language in Spain

[llama_nom]

1. Leo Wiener: Commentary to the Germanic Laws and Medieval Documents:
"In Spain the Gothic language existed as late as the year 1091, for it
was in that year prohibited by a decree of the Synod of Leon."  "'Et
interfuit etiam Renerius legatus, et Romanae ecclesiae Cardinalis,
ibidemque celebrato concilio cum Bernardo Toletano primate, multa de
officijs ecclesiae statuerunt, et etiam de caetero omnes scriptores
omissa litera Toletana, quam Gulfilas Gothorum Episcopus adinuenit,
Gallicis literis vterentur,' Roderici Toletani (Rodrigo Ximenes)
Chronicon, lib, VI, cap. XXX. See Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, 2nd
ed., vol. V, p. 201. The assertion made somewhere that the reference
is to a calligraphy and not to the Gothic language is without any
foundation, for the Gothic alphabet was never used for anything but
Gothic."  Admittedly Wiener expresses some eccentric views elsewhere
in this book and disputes the generally accepted chronology of the
surviving Gothic manuscripts, but I'd be curious to know what people
make of this quote.  Of course, even if this does indicate the
survival of the Gothic written language, it doesn't necessarily mean
that it was still spoken.

2. Tabula gentes, 550.  I'd be interested to know more about this
document and the context of the term Valagothi.  Is it used anywhere
else in texts of this time and place?  Is the prefix Vala- used
elsewhere in a similar context?  Is linguistic 'Romanisation' the only
possible interpretation?  The Valagothi also are named in the Historia
Brittonum, in a passage tracing the supposed descent of contemporary
peoples from the Hebrew patriarchs of the Bible, I:17: "Armenon autem
habuit quinque filios: Gothus, Valagothus, Gebidus, Burgundus,
Longobardus. [...]. ab Armenone autem quinque: Gothi, Valagothi,
Gebidi, Burgundi, Longobardi."  This text may go back to the 11th c.,
although it has traditionally been attributed to Nennius, d. 809.

3. Lack of contemporary reference to interpreters or difficulties of
comprehension.  This could also be accounted for by bilingualism among
Goths, Romans or both.  But how does this compare with comparable
situations?  Would we expect to find such documentary evidence?  Does
it exist for other Germanic successor states of this period where we
know that the invaders still retained their language?

4. Lack of Gothic manuscripts.  Given the sparse remains of written
Gothic generally, we probably can't put too much weight on this.  As
discussed previously on this list, there are indications that the
Gothic Bible was much more extensive than the extracts that survive. 
There are also indications that it was in use at some time among
widely scattered East Germanic peoples, even though almost all of of
what survives is associated with Italy.  For example, Silvianus of
Massila (Marseille), in 'De gubernatione dei' c. 440-450, writes at
some length about the scripture current among the Goths and Vandals,
which he probably encountered in southern France (see Friedrichsen:
The Gothic Version of the Epistles 1939, pp. 215, 233, 268-272).  His
opinion of the faults specific to the Gothic text as it existed at
this time is "amply confirmed" by Friedrichsen's study (ibid. p. 233),
although his unfavorable comparison with the Latin Bible is less
convincing (ibid. p. 269).

5. Isidore of Seville in 625 credits Wulfila with translating the Old
and New testaments.  Shows awareness of the Gothic language, though
not necessarily its survival.

6. Loanwords.  As has been mentioned, there are a fair number of
loanwords in the Romance languages of Iberia and southern France which
are usually attributed to the Goths.  In some cases, the form of the
word (e.g. survival of certain diphthongs) shows that it hasn't been
inherited from earlier stages of Vulgar Latin but more recently
adopted.  But this doesn't give a precise dating, and it's hard to
know the effects of an intermediary creole, supposing such a language
ever existed.  The words might have been retained by the Goths
themselves when they came to speak Romance / Latin as their native
language, and only been disseminated into the wider Romance speech
community at a later date.

7. The laws survive only in Latin texts.  Whether Gothic versions ever
existed is unknown.  Against the complete lack of evidence for Gothic
versions, we might have to take into account possible later legal or
religious pressure to dispose of texts written in Gothic (see point 1
above).  A number of Gothic words survive in the laws.  But by the
time they were codified in writing, we can't rule out the possibility
that they survived only as fossilised technical terms, just as Normal
French terms survive to this day in English law.

8. Placenames.  A complex issue, obviously.  It seems that there are
placenames in Iberia and France attributed to the Goths, but we
haven't come to any agreement about what their distribution might show
about how long the language survived.  We might have to consider that
naming traditions could have outlasted the Gothic language, and that
placenames could have been formed by analogy with other placenames
using Gothic elements, even by Romance speakers.  Compare the use of
-ville as a suffix in US placenames.

9. What exactly is known about the provenance of the epigram 'De
conviviis barbaris' which Ualarauans mentioned?  I've seen it located
in Ostrogothic Italy, but more often in Vandal North Africa.  Although
the vocabulary is familiar from the Gothic Bible, the specific idiom
'skapjan' +inf. "let's start ..." isn't attested there, whether by
chance, or because it represents a different, more colloquial, register.

LN

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