Re: [tied] Plinius and Tacitus

----- Original Message -----

From: Tore Gannholm

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Friday, January 04, 2002 9:18 AM

Subject: Re: [tied] Plinius and Tacitus

> I understand this is a difficult area.
What is your view about the late professor Elias Wesséns statements
that the language of the Gutnish people on Gotland and the Goths in
the Vistula area were almost identical at the beginning of CE.

As we know nothing concrete about the state of either language at the time, one can only speculate. It is quite likely that something like Gothic was spoken in Gotland about the year zero, but a language shift occurred later (much later), erasing the East Germanic substrate. What I said is that Old Gutnish as we know it (attested centuries later) was not related to Gothic more closely than it was to Danish and Swedish.

> There is a tendency to confuse Gotland with Sweden but their cultures
are completely different.

Sure enough, but my comments refer only to language. People speaking the same langue or closely related languages may have very different cultures and different ethnic identities (think of German, English, etc.)

Piotr