Re: cardinal points

>If we count the fact the Goths settled for a while
>South of Danube too, this is not a very solide
>argumentum.

Moreover, Serbian archeologists have shown (e.g.
at the site called Gradiska, South of Belgrade)
that Germanic people (esp. Gepids) lived together
with the local vulgo-Latin speaking population;
- that's what the necropoles suggest.

>If indeed there shouldn't be no germanic loans
>then the Romanians have been either North, nor
>South of Danube onto this criterium.

Another explanation might be the fact that
those Germanic tribes (Goths, Vandals and esp.
Gepids in what's now the Western part of Romania)
stayed there (N & S of the Danube) for a time
span too short for leaving lexical traces.

>The separate living in this case should be the
>only reliable answer if one don't intend to move
>the proto-romanians somewhere outside of Balcans.

I'm afraid it is too early - AFA that time period
is concerned - for "proto-Romanians" to call'em
as such.

>There are some works around this topic (Latin
>loans into the Gothic prior 4 century).

What matters here is whether the Romanian
vocabulary includes or not Germanic loanwords
(i.e. Germanic, and not German=Deutsch later
than the 13th century).

George