Re: Gothic prestige and borrowing

--- In cybalist@..., x99lynx@... wrote:

> English has for a long time inhaled new elements from other

languages without

> blinking an eye. Whether it had prestige or not at any particular

point,

> English has shown that it will pick up and use practically anything

that

> looks half-way useful. And American English certainly hasn't

borrowed as

> wildly as it has because of low prestige.

Imperial languages borrow terms for local articles and phenomena from
the languages of their colonies. That is also the reason for many
Celtic, Thracian etc loans in Latin. In Danish <anorak> was borrowed
from Greenlandic Inuit (and exported?). My ex father-in-law used to
have an important job as chief of trade in a major town in Greenland.
That family used several Inuit words as a "family language"

>
> Whatever a language's value as a marker of status or ethnic
>identity, it
> would still be pretty useless without its primary value as a tool

of

> communication and information transmittal. That was the power of
>early Greek
> and English in my mind, the ability to adapt to a changing world

and input

> new information.
>
> From that perspective, it simply looks like there was something

wrong with

> Gothic and that Slavic was coming on strong. (And with hindsight

that Gothic

> would end up a dead language and Slavic would spread like it did.)
>
> And, of course, Ulfila's Goths are not described as being in a

particularly

> prestigious position by Jordanes (I think he calls them poor cow

herders) or

> within the roman concept of civitas.

I can't seem to find your "cow herders" in Jordanes

http://www.luth.se/luth/present/sweden/history/lit/jordanes/jordgetiII
.html

On the contrary Jordanes describes an almost French situation.
Quote:
"
39) To return, then, to my subject. The aforesaid race of which I
speak is known to have had Filimer as king while they remained in
their first home in Scythia near Maeotis. In their second home, that
is in the countries of Dacia, Thrace and Moesia, Zalmoxes reigned,
whom many writers of annals mention as a man of remarkable learning
in philosophy. Yet even before this they had a learned man Zeuta, and
after him Dicineus; and the third was Zalmoxes of whom I have made
mention above. Nor did they lack teachers of wisdom. (40) Wherefore
the Goths have ever been wiser than other barbarians and were nearly
like the Greeks, as Dio relates, who wrote their history and annals
with a Greek pen. He says that those of noble birth among them, from
whom their kings and priests were appointed, were called first
Tarabostesei and then Pilleati. Moreover so highly were the Getae
praised that Mars, whom the fables of poets call the god of war, was
reputed to have been born among them. Hence Virgil says:

"Father Gradivus rules the Getic fields."

"

>Again I wonder if we are not catching
> the Gothic lexicon when it is attested in some kind of restoration

phase,

> when it is grasping to maintain its identity in a formal exposition

like the

> New Testament. Perhaps Ulfila was trying to demonstrate that the

language

> was unique and distinctively foreign to the powers in

Constantinople and Rome

> by minimizing the use of loans, in order to justify using the

vernacular.

> Perhaps he was making it consciously archaic in order to give the

authority

> of time and tradition to the new religion. Gothic just could not

have been

> that immune to the world around it and still remain functional.

(Or perhaps

> that was its demise.)

Priscus tells us that Gothic was used as a lingua franca in Hunnic
times. That was the reasons for its temporary success. And as for its
demise I think that was caused by demographic reasons in their new
Romance environments. English is not faring much better in Southern
California for the same demographic reasons, whatever its intrinsic
values. The state of affairs you describe for English is a result of,
not the cause of, the economic and military might that backed it up.

> Regards,
> Steve Long

Torsten