--- In cybalist@..., george knysh <gknysh@...> wrote:
> *****GK: Some follow-ups on this. (1)I remember that
> there are two or three borrowings from Slavic in
> Gothic. Are there any attested borrowings from Baltic?
Balto-Scandinavian and Balto-Gothic contacts are indisputable, at
least you seem to be the first to doubt.
First af all, there are borrowings _into_ Baltic.
It's sometimes hard to distinguish North Germanic borrowings from the
Gothic ones. Consider, at any rate:
Lith. gu`das 'Belarusian', dial. 'foreigner' and Goth. Gud- 'Goth'.
Goths (Pontic or even their part that hasn't crossed Pripyat, see
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/8073) have been the
Balts' southern neighbours for some time.
Lith. klie~pas, Latv. klaips 'loaf' and Goth. hlaifs 'bread'
Lith. kviety~s, Latv. kvies^i 'wheat' and Goth. hwaiteis 'id.'
Lith. ga~tve. 'street', Latv. gatve and Goth. gatwo: 'id.'
OPruss. sarwis, Lith. s^arvas 'armour' and Goth. sarwa 'weaponry'
Lith. midu`s 'honey' and probable Gothic *midu (note i-vocalism)
'mead'
OPruss rikijs 'lord' and probable Goth. *reikeis 'id.' (cf. OHG
ri:hhi 'mighty')
y'la 'awl' < probable Goth. *e:la 'id.'
By the way, Lith. vo'kietis, Latv. va:cietis 'a German' < 'from south-
eastern Scandinavia' is related to Jordanes' Vagoth.
As for the borowings into Gothic, I'm not aware of them, but nearly
the only our source of Gothic is some biblical fragments, and we
can't state there have been no of them for sure. Cf. Swedish dial.
va^k 'child' and Lith. dial. (Samog.) va:ks 'id.', Standard Lith.
vai~kas, Swedish dial. mutur 'kerchief' and Lith. mu`turas.
By the way, what Slavisms in Gothic do you mean?
> (2)This "gold-mining" would be somewhere to the west
> of the enumeration, since Ves' Merya Mordva point to
> areas west to east and "inauxis" precedes this. Any
> such area known in the nearer Balticum?
First of all, this direction is yet to be proven. And what lies to
the west of VesI in your opinion? Looks like the Gulf of Finland :)
Again, the historical Baltic territory can be outlined as Central
Estonia - the Upper Volga - Oka basin - the upper reaches of Seim -
Kiev - Bug - Vistula, its north-eastern part not being far from
Vepses - Mari - Mordovians territory. In turn, a question to an
archeologist: is (large-scale) gold-mining registered in that
territory in the beginning of the first millenium?
Sergei