Re: Scandinavia and the Germanic tribes such as Goths, Vandals, Angl

On 2008-11-02 19:18, tgpedersen wrote:

>
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com <mailto:cybalist%40yahoogroups.com>,
> Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:

> > *Guta- ("Goth") and *Gauta- ("Geat, Gaut") may be related, but they
> > are both certainly different from *euta- ("Jute"):
>
> If those are Germanic words then that is certainly true;
> if not, not necessarily.

If you want to relate them via unknown sound changes in unknown
languages -- well, in that way you can relate anything to anything else.
No big deal if you have no data to constrain your fertile imagination.

> In the sense that they didn't speak a Germanic language before it was
> imposed on them, or that (proto-)Germanic became a lingua franca used
> by them in the upheavals of the time.

Again, you're in the realm of fantasy. Why should we assume that the
Goths or the Jutes acquired their historically known ethnic names before
Germanic "was imposed on them"? The name *Gauta- _can_ be Germanic. The
verb stem *Giut-i-/*Geut-a- < *g^Heud- 'pour' is well-attested in
Germanic languages; OE even has <le:ad-gota> 'lead-founder'. Whether the
Goths were known as metallurgists, drinkers or "pourers of semen" we may
never learn, but we have an embaras de richesse rather than a shortage
of possibilities.

Piotr