Re: [tied] Vanir

--- In cybalist@..., george knysh <gknysh@...> wrote:

> ****GK: You've misunderstood me Sergejus. I don't
> doubt this. I asked specifically about attested
> borrowings from Baltic into Gothic.*****

Let me ask why are you interested in this specific direction (X ->
Gothic)? What was the point of your question?

>
> *****GK: Until yesterday I was actually only aware of
> one: the Gothic word for "dance" or "to dance" (I
> don't have my notes at hand so forgive me the
> barbarism: I remember it as "PLINSJANS" or something
> close to this.) As I surfed through the messages on a
> Gothic list I encountered a claim that there were
> actually two more borrowings from Slavic (I think one
> pertains to "cloth") but didn't jot them down since I
> intended to return to this archive soon.*****

But Slavic *ple,sati is itself problematic as to its etymology, and
Slavic > Gothic plinsjan can't be considered proven. By the way,
there's indeed a number of putative Slavic loans from Gothic. Again,
why this only direction?

> *****GK: I think that we should try to focus on what
> might have been the situation in the mid 4th c. AD.

Why? Balto-Gothic contacts could have started much earlier (Klaipe.da
- Gotland is a normal yachtsmen route :) ), they could also meet the
Balts soon after their famous landing at the Vistula's mouth.

> The Proto-Balts were both gaining and losing ground at
> that time. In the south they were retreating before
> the Slavic expansion. But in the north they had just
> made some gains at the expense of the Ugro-Finns,
> especially the Galindian push into the Moscow river
> basin.

I have second-hand information that some works have appeared recently
proving the Galindians were _not_ the first Balts in the region -
they seem to assimilate some other Baltic predecessors.

> At any rate the various Proto-Baltic groups
> still possessed much more territory in the time of
> Hermanaric than do the Balts of today. One thing I've
> always been curious about. Do the Balts of today have
> a special (Baltic) name for the Dnipro/Dnepr?*****
>

No, though there is a number of speculations, like those that
Ne~munas is the Dnieper-name re-applied. Curiously enough, Duno~jus
is The River in Lithuanian folklore.

Sergei