Re: [tied] Plinius and Tacitus

It is hard to tell what language was spoken in Gotland and coastal Sweden at the time the Goths occupied the Vistula basin; the cognacy of tribal names seems suggestive in this case, but such links often prove deceptive; and remember that the names, though related, are not formally identical. Still, the traditional account of the origin of the Goths favours the idea of trans-Baltic migrations and contacts, and I understand that there is some archaeological support for them as well.

 

Remember, however, that Old Guthnish did not derive from Gothic; it was unmistakably an East Scandinavian dialect, albeit a conservative-looking one (the effect of insularity) in comparison with its closest relatives, Swedish and Danish There's little to connect it with Gothic except for shared archaisms of no probative value. In terms of genetic relationship, it is more closely related to English, Dutch and German (all of them members of the Northwest Germanic taxon) than to Gothic. In other words, the expansion of North Germanic ("Dansk") did not leave an East Germanic enclave in Gotland but engulfed the island as well. Old Guthnish was _imposed_ rather than "left" there!

 

Piotr