Crimean Gothic

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

In a message dated 4/30/2001 12:17:38 AM, edsel at glo.be writes:

<< Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq (= van Buisbeek), ºKomen 1522-+Rouen 1592,was
actually Flemish, from the presently Belgian border (France-Belgium) city of
Komen (Fr. Comines), nowadays predominantly French speaking, but with 'language
facilities' for the remaining Dutch speaking population [He lived before the
southern part of Flanders was annexed by France's Louis XIV]. Actually, he was
probably educated in French.

He also brought the tulip to the Low Countries. >>

I take it he was the first.  Otherwise it would be coals to Newcastle.

As a sidebar, this is Nancy Tuleen's POV on Crimean Gothic as it appears on
the web:

"The Crimean Gothic attestations transcribed by the Flemish nobleman Busbecq
are fascinating for their historical value: that a small enclave of
Ostrogoths survived in the Crimea, nearly to the modern age, is truly
amazing. Linguistically, however, relatively little is to be gained from
Busbecq's transcription. Firstly, he was no linguist, and his orthography is
quite peculiar, showing corruption from his native Flemish as well as from
German; so too, his primary informant was not a native Gothic speaker, but
rather a Greek who claimed to be fluent in the language. In addition, we no
longer have Busbecq's original manuscript, but only a bad copy of a printed
edition, full of errors and confusion. In short, scholars have managed to
place this dialect into the Eastern Gothic family, showing as it does
remnants of nominative -s endings, however dubiously attested. As such,
Crimean Gothic does not tell us much about Wulfila's Gothic,..."

http://members.cts.com/crash/n/nthuleen/papers/755gothfinal.html