Use of Gothic language in Spain

[Leonard Blunk]

  By whose standards are we judging their intelligence?
    Back then you had a caste system in which merchants, politicians, musicians, writers, artists and the like actually did have some brains. Oh, and lets not forget the mariners who also had to have some intelligence in order to navigate--or is that some sort of innate ability we lowly Germans are gifted with?
                                         DR. ORIENT ROHMER

OSCAR HERRERA <duke.co at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
          i think most of german tribes back then were probably illiterate and there is hardly any history to says they wrote subject matters in their own languages though they probably did, so there is more history in the unknowst arena.....oscar

ualarauans <ualarauans at yahoo.com> wrote: --- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "llama_nom" <600cell at ...> wrote:
>
> 
> 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.

It's very difficult, though tempting, to think that Gothic was 
spoken up to the 11th century. My first impression of the quote is 
that it says about a single letter (litera Toletana vs. Gallicis 
literis) which had been borrowed from the Gothic (or maybe some 
other forgotten alphabet) into the mode of writing of Iberian 
scribes. It could be the letter for þ, for example. Like Old English 
scribes who retained several runic letters (þ and w, if I remember 
right) in the Latin-based alphabet of their manuscripts.

> 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.

There was a name Valgautr which Cleasby-Vigfusson lead back to val-
"Roman", not to val "slain". I don't know if it's relevant here.

[...]
> 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.

The city of Burgos – is it a Gothic name (baurgs)?

Ualarauans

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