Re: [cybalist] Odp: Nordwestblock

Deat Piotr,

Thank you for TH examples, and it's a shame for me, a lazy one, who could well run a computerized search on Tacitus texts.

I'm lookimg forward to your posting on the Goth problem, and my two cents here is the note that both the Slavs and the Balts (at least those survived) show a strong consistency in rendering this LATE common name: both of them attest common *gudas. And both of them were may be the most familiar with the EARLY Goths.

Sergei

Well, 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