--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...>
wrote:
>
> There were innumerable Germanic-speakers all along and around the
course
> of the Danube in Roman times. There were also contacts between
> Germanic-speakers and Slavic-speakers as the latter expanded
towards the
> Danube.
It is important to realize that Gothic was just about the most widely
used language in the multilingual Hunnic state. We would not know
this but for Priscus, to whose account of his visit to Attila's court
I referred to just now in another posting (the translation is by J.B.
Bury):
"As I waited and walked up and down in front of the enclosure which
surrounded the house, a man, whom from his Scythian dress I took for
a barbarian, came up and addressed me in Greek, with the word
Xaire, "Hail!" I was surprised at a Scythian speaking Greek. For the
subjects of the Huns, swept together from various lands, speak,
besides their own barbarous tongues, either Hunnic or Gothic, or --
as many as have commercial dealings with the western Romans -- Latin;
but none of them easily speak Greek, except captives from the
Thracian or Illyrian sea-coast"
Wish we had more of that!
Willem