Goths

[Hans-Werner Hatting]

[ moderator edited ]

On Thu, 1 Feb 2001 07:34:37 -0600 David L. White wrote:

>>I would not worry much about Latin /o/ for Gmc. /u/, as at that time short
>>/u/ and /o/ probably already had merged in Vulgar Latin.

>     According to what was said long back, the earliest attestation of
>"o" in Latin was 250 (or was that 150) B.C., which would (I think) be too
>early for this change.  However, I am not entirely sure that the "facts"
>are right here.   A brief look at Lehmann's work (while standing in someone
>else's office) showed that the earliest Latin form had "u".  Perhaps there
>has been some sort of slip here.  Can someone with access to Lehmann's work
>straighten us out here, if we need it?

Maybe I should not participate in a discussion without being able to check
the references, but I will be in this situation at least until the end of
March, and I will not be able to restrain myself for so long :-).
So I just went back on this thread to check the dates quoted for the first
mention of the Goths by Steve Long on Thu, 14 Dec 2000 22:55:11 EST :
>In a message dated 12/14/2000 3:48:07 AM, JoatSimeon at aol.com writes:

<< -- there were no Goths just north of the Danube in 250 BCE.  At that <<
time the ancestors of the Goths were in eastern Germany and Poland.

>My mistake.  And sorry for the confusion.  I should have written 250AD.  It
>is not at all clear where the Goths were or if they were at all in 250BC.
>It is Ptolemy who places the Gythones east of the Vistula circa 100AD.
>Archaeologist have associated these "Goths/Gythones" with the Wielbark
>culture in this area in that time.  Wielbark which arises between 100BC and
>1AD shares characteristics with the somewhat later Cernjachov culture,
>found in a wide area in the Ukraine and south of the Carpathians, and
>generally associated with the historical Goths.

So the first mention seems to be 100 AD, with /u/, and the later spellings
with /o/ are probably not earlier than the 3rd century AD. An attestation BC
is unknown to me.

This does not exclude the possibility of a (Western Gmc.?) "Other-form", but
the u/o variation could also be explained by developments in Latin. The
Greek sources seem to have all /u/, rendered by „y“ or „ou“.

Best regards,
H. W. Hatting