[gothic-l] Re: Totila etymology

[edmundfairfax@yahoo.ca [gothic-l]]

It seems highly unlikely to me that the Goths were Germanized Celts. The presence of loanwords in a given language simply means that some words, for whatever reason, were adopted into that language at a given point in the past. It would be wrong to claim that the English are really Anglicized Frenchmen simply because English contains a large number of words ultimately of French origin. 

 The early Germanic languages in fact contain relatively few words of Celtic origin. By far, the greatest number of loanwords in early Germanic are arguably from a non-Indo-European language, adopted at some very early phase, seemingly before Germanic was Germanic, that is, when it was simply a dialect of Proto-Indo-European. By way of a short introduction to such loans, see, for example, F. Kuiper's article "Gothic 'bagms' and Old Icelandic 'ylgr' (>NOWELE<, 1994, 25: 63-88).
 

 Although there is no attested Gothic word *marhs, it most likely did exist, and yes, it is likely of Celtic origin, but it was almost certainly borrowed into Proto-Germanic rather than into Gothic, if a loanword, hence the presence of reflexes thereof in Old English, Old Norse, etc. Again, we use the Latin-derived adjective 'equine', but this does not mean were are Anglicized Latins. Languages borrow words just as people borrow money and never return it!
 

 Edmund
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