From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 2008
Date: 2000-04-02
----- Original Message -----From: Sergejus TarasovasSent: Sunday, April 02, 2000 6:36 PMSubject: [cybalist] NordwestblockWell, as long as the Germanic pronunciation of initial "ch" was [x] (a velar fricative), the Romans usually transcribed it as CH (rather than H and C; cf. Chatti, Cherusci, Chauci, and also a few centuries later in early Frankish names). Tacitus uses TH consistently in Thumelicus and several other Germanic names, and in late Latin (5th c.) we have Theodoricus (Theodoric the Great) = thiuda-ri:k-. The reason why they were more meticulous than the Slavs is probably that they had an orthographic device allowing them to record the Germanic pronunciation accurately (no matter how faithfully they were actually able to imitate it). I can't blame the Proto-Slavs for not bothering to add a new phoneme to their language -- what else could our illiterate forebears do?For the benefit of those Cybalist members who don't know any Slavic language, reflexes of *tjud-jI- mean 'extraneous, someone else's'. By contrast, Germanic *thiud-isk-az was 'ours, of our people' (hence deutsch and Dutch).An average Goth is a rather late concept; the peoples later known as Gothic called themselves names like Vesi (a.k.a. Tervingi) or Greutungi (all in Latinised spelling). The Gutones/Gothae/*Gud- question is fascinating but so complicated that I'm going to devote a separate longish posting to it.Piotr
Thank you for timely self-correction which has substantiantly reduced the amount of letters I am to type in, but some questions still exists.Correct me if I'm mistaken, but an average Goth called himself guda (>, by the way, Slavic *gUdU 'Goth'), and this (rather late) Latin spelling (Gothae) seems mysterious to me. As for th for dental fricative in Latin, it seemes to be probable, but do we have any plausible examples? Why not just simplification like Teudones, and then assimilation like Teutones? Why Romans should make efforts to render fricatives as preicsely as possible while Slavs, whose proto-language renders thiuda- as *tjudjI, shouldn't?Sergei