Talk:Crimean Gothic

vocabulary in Busbecq's letter:

[305]
19       Broe. Panis.
20       Plut. Sanguis.
21       Stul. Sedes.
22       Hus. Domus.
23       Wingart. Vitis.
24       Reghen. Pluvia.
25       Bruder. Frater.
26       Schvveſter. Soror.
27       Alt. Senex.
28       Wintch. Ventus.
29       Siluir. Argentum.
30       Goltz. Aurum. 

[306]

1       Kor. Triticum.
2       Salt. Sal.
3       Fiſct. Piſcis.
4       Hoef. Caput.
5       Thurn. Porta.
6       Stein. Stella.
7       Sune. Sol.
8       Mine. Luna.
9       Tag. Dies.
10       Oeghene. Oculi.
11       Bars. Barba.
12       Handa. Manus.
13       Boga. Arcus.
14       Miera. Formica.
15       Rinck. ſiue.
16       Ringo. Annulus.
17       Brunna. Fons.
18       Waghen. Currus.
19       Apel. Pomum.
20       Schietê. Mittere ſagittâ.
21       Schlipen. Dormire.
22       Kommen. Venire.
23       Singhen. Canere.
24       Lachen. Ridere.
25       Eriten. Flere.
26       Geen. Ire.
27       Breen. Aſſare.
28       Schvvalth. Mors.
29    Knauen tag erat illi Bonus dies: Knauen
30    bonum dicebat, et pleraque alia cum no/ſtra 

[307]
1       Kor. Triticum.
2       Salt. Sal.
3       Fiſct. Piſcis.
4       Hoef. Caput.
5       Thurn. Porta.
6       Stein. Stella.
7       Sune. Sol.
8       Mine. Luna.
9       Tag. Dies.
10       Oeghene. Oculi.
11       Bars. Barba.
12       Handa. Manus.
13       Boga. Arcus.
14       Miera. Formica.
15       Rinck. ſiue.
16       Ringo. Annulus.
17       Brunna. Fons.
18       Waghen. Currus.
19       Apel. Pomum.
20       Schietê. Mittere ſagittâ.
21       Schlipen. Dormire.
22       Kommen. Venire.
23       Singhen. Canere.
24       Lachen. Ridere.
25       Eriten. Flere.
26       Geen. Ire.
27       Breen. Aſſare.
28       Schvvalth. Mors.
29    Knauen tag erat illi Bonus dies: Knauen
30    bonum dicebat, et pleraque alia cum no/ſtra 

[308] 
1    Iuſſus ita numerabat. Ita, tua, tria,
2    fyder, fyuf, ſeis, ſeuene, prorſus, ut nos
3    Flandri. Nam vos Brabanti, qui vos Ger/manice
4    loqui factis, hic magnifice vos ef/ferre,
5    et nos ſoletis habere deriſui, ac ſi
6    iſtam vocem pronunciemus rancidius, quam
7    vos Seuenffertis. Proſequebatur deinde,
8    Athenyne, thiine, thiinita, thunetua, thu/netria,
9    etc. Viginti dicebat ſtega, triginta
10    treithyen, quadraginta furdeithien, centum
11    ſada, hazer mille. Quin etiam cantilenam
12    eius linguæ recitabat, cuius initium erat
13    hujuſmodi:
14       Wara Wara ingdolou:
15       Scu te gira Galizu.
16       Hœmiſclep dorbiza ea.

sada, hazer?

does that make it a Satem language? ;) dab (ᛏ) 17:12, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

more interestingly, is there a translation to the song fragment?

Wara Wara ingdolou:
Scu te gira Galizu.
Hoemisclep dorbiza ea.

dab (ᛏ) 17:13, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

No. Rursus 14:38, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Appears CG borrowed several numerals. Busbecq didn't give a translation for the song lyrics, frustating the tokhes off modern scholars left with bare nothing else to analyze the syntax of the language. 惑乱 分からん 13:57, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

By all appearances, sada and hazer are borrowings from (Scythian/Sarmatian/)Alanic (compare Ossetic). I remember reading that the song has been interpreted as Turkic, which sounds anything but far-fetched, but I can't remember where at the moment. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:23, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Austrian-Gothic connection

I have heard the storry from a hungarian count that some of the gothic may have come to middle europe with them and where settelt together with jews ( chasars ?) on the eastern border of hungary, today the middle part of Lower Austria and Styria. It would explain why the bavarian colonialisation in this area was going so smoothly without wars. The Austrian would than be a bavarian gothic mixture and the background of jiddisch ,witch i as Austrian can understand very easely, would rather be gothic and not german, as the Chasar inhabited the former gothic areas. It would explain too, why their is no genetical evidenz of the chasars in the jewish genes.

Thinking of this a prooved my own Austrian dialect to the gothic words and i must say that 60 % is very close some words only exist in Austrian. So ist the Austrian word for speaking angrily "meutern" witch is close to the gothic word of speaking. I am not a linguist, but I dont know any german dialect witch uses this word like this. The concept of the articels is close to the Austrian dialect witch use "te" (e like ending) for women and plural and "tea" (a like bar )for man. All other wordforms can at least exist in forms of the Austrian dialect.

J.

Never heard it before, it sounds dubious, and without any linguistic background to back it up, it'd anyway classify as original research. 惑乱 分からん 01:16, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Meutern sounds similar to English "mutter" of roughly similar meaning, btw. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 00:57, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

East Goths: The lost Swedes of Russia and the Ukraine

The East Gothic/Crimean Gothic language may been extinct for two centuries, until recent times has ethnic anthropology accepted the idea of East Goths survived well into the 20th century. The question of how the Estgotes came to Eastern Europe and thrived with their language, a relic of the once-existent East Gothic tribes of the 1000's AD, would remain unknown and theorized until the answer is discovered.

There was speculation of the "lost Swedes" of western Ukraine (as well in Estonia, Belarus, Russia and the Crimea under Greek rule) are direct descendants of the Vikings or Scandinavians whom managed to retain a separate ethnocultural identity, but in small villages and isolated from the Slavic linguistic majority until the late 1800's. In Gotland, there are Lutheran church bells that actually came from the Ukraine in 1913 or 1914 serves as a reminder of a people whom returned to their ancestral homeland.

I've read the National Geographic August 1973 article Gotland, Sweden's treasure island had a brief mention of a few thousand Gotlander Swedes arrived to their "homeland" from the former USSR in the 1920's. In the 1921 Soviet census, about 900 Swedish-Russians (or Ukrainians) lived in one village, Gammalsvenskbi (Gamelsvinsk) became abandoned in World Wars I and II, when the Soviets expelled the "German" inhabitants who happened to be Swedish-speaking of East Gothic descent.

Gammalsvenskbi was settled in 1780 by a small wave of "Estegote" settlers from Estonia and northwest Russia. Due to ethnic conflict in the 19th and early 20th century, the village's residents disliked introducing themselves to their Russian and Ukrainian neighbors, whom would call them "bloody Germans". But when they say "I'm an Estgote Swede", they get insults on how the great Russians defeated King Charles VIII in the battle of Poltava and threatened the "barbarian Goths" to leave the country.

If any remnants of Estgotes, Swedish-Russians and Crimea Goths are around in the 21st century may get never known, but their language is well documented and preserved in writing for research in Crimean Gothic myths, stories and notes on their daily lives. The Soviet Union's policy of history denial and misinformation of ethnic and national minorities, and the "Russification" of Tsarist Russia followed by an equally intolerant "Sovietization" forced an doctrine of assimilation that killed many languages and ethnic identities across the large country, the Crimean Goths were the policy's victims. + 63.3.14.1 18:47, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

This seems like a mixup of goths and gutar. 惑乱 分からん 13:14, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Exactly. The Swedes in Ukraine, many of whom emigrated to Gotland, have no connection to the Crimean Goths. Another language, another people and another history. While the text by the user is of interest regarding the Gammelsvenskby, it has no relevance whatsoever to this article. JdeJ 00:11, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Or possibly a mixup of goths and geats. The Charles that the Russians knocked the sh*t out of in the battle of Poltava, was more probably Charles XII, an infamous Swedish king that was shot to death at the battle at Fredriksten ... to the relief of many peoples, including the Swedes themselves. Said: Rursus ☻ 19:45, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

In which case, JdeJ's point remain valid. 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * 11:57, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Writing system?

Should we really mention an alphabet? 1st, it seems uncertain that Goths would write in runes at that time, 2nd, there's no attested (native) Crimean Gothic writing, anyway, so the information seems to be pure speculation. By checking out relevant Wikipedia articles, it seems Arabic writing was common in the area at the time, so it doesn't seem too improbable guessing that Crimean Gothic would occasionally be written in that script. 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * 07:02, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

People tended (even into the 20th century) to use alphabets according to their religious affiliation. Thus Turkish-speaking Christians used the Greek (if Greek Orthodox) or Armenian (if Armenian Orthodox) alphabets even when writing Turkish. Similarly, Jews used the Hebrew alphabet even when writing German, Spanish, Arabic (ultimately incorporating Hebrew grammar and vocabulary and leading to Yiddish, Ladino, and Judeo-Arabic, among others). It is very unlikely that Christian Crimean Goths wrote in the Arabic alphabet. Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 19:53, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I think Busbecq related to the Crimean Goths as illiterate. Sadly. Said: Rursus ☻ 19:34, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Aah. That's another possibility. Should be easy to find a citation for, if somebody knows Latin. Anyway, my main point was that an explicitly mentiond alphabet wasn't necessary, particularly if the only source claims the people to be illiterate. 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * 11:55, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

busbecq also mentioned, the goth man he encountered wasn't very good at his native tongue and speaks greek better. a greek man who was with him knows gothic better. probably, crimean goths were bilingual and lived in interaction with greek co-religionists. so they probably write with greek letters if they write at all in their native tongue. most likely they used greek as literary language. it is a probablity that they may eventually assimilated to crimean greeks or urums. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.238.204.165 (talk) 04:09, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Stub class

I assess this article to the stub level. I think the article contains all necessary to be rised to the start level, except proper headings to make it easy to read. If you disagree, then edit the {{WP Languages|class=Stub}} uppermost on this page to your liking. Said: Rursus (☻) 09:33, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Or add headings and improve the article to your liking. Said: Rursus (☻) 09:34, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

There is very little attestation of the language, itself. Except for a vocabulary listing, how much more could be added without refraining to guesswork? (Of course, we could always source others' guesswork.) 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 19:17, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Razn

What's the source for "razn" being loaned from Crimean Tatar? Razn is indeed found in Wulfila's Gothic: [1] [2] 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 15:44, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Indeed, razn is considered an inherited Germanic word, compare Old Icelandic rann with the same meaning. The entire paragraph is a highly dubious and wholly unsourced IP addition of no discernible merit (to phrase it politely). It seems unsalvageable given that the IP is not likely to return and provide a source (and just in the event they should really return after all, they can simply enter the information anew, or complain on the talk page; thanks to the revision history, nothing is lost anyway, after all). I've gone and removed it. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:49, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Or would the editor mean that razn has been loaned into Crimean Tatar? Anyway, it would probably need sourcing, anyhow. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:32, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

i know crimean tatar and i didn't heard a word like "razn". it is inompatible with kypchak phonetics and even if loaned from gothic, it would have transformed into another vocalization.

'Malthata' and its cognates

In the second table, no Dutch or German cognates are listed for malthata, 'said'. Malthata looks remarkably similar to the first and third person singular preterite of the verb melden, "to announce", which appears as meldete in German and as meldde in Dutch. Are there any specific reasons why these forms are not listed? Iblardi (talk) 02:07, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

It wouldn't do any harm to recheck these cognates, but I think the answer to this specific question is that melden is not a cognate - Kluge gives the source as a WGmc root *meld-, which cannot be cognate with a Gothic form in -th-. --Pfold (talk) 11:26, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I now see that malthata is usually linked to Gothic mathljan. Iblardi (talk) 21:55, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Influence of Busbecq's native language/dialect

Concerning the statement that "there is the possibility that Busbecq's transcription was influenced by his own language" (which has gone unsourced thus far), it is probably more accurate to speak of Flemish (as a Dutch dialect) rather than Dutch in general. This is based on the results of a simple Google Book search (I know, an imperfect method):

• "Some CG forms could have been influenced by either German or Netherlandic orthography" (MacDonald Stearns, Crimean gothic. Analysis and etymology of the corpus (1978))[3]
• "Flemish or German"; although the term "néerlandais" is also used, the article concentrates especially on the phonetics of the region Busbecq came from (Hugo Ryckeboer, "Le flamand de Busbecq et ses interférence avec le gotique de crimée", in: André Rousseau (ed.), Sur les traces de Busbecq et du gotique (1991), p. 167-178)[4]

The author notes that the current spellings, to be sure, are based on a printed edition, not on Busbecq's original handwriting, which is not extant.

• "the interpretation of Busbecq's spelling conventions is difficult, as he uses Flemish and German orthographic conventions" (Jonathan West, in Encyclopedia of the Languages of Europe (2000), p. 107)[5]

Also note that Busbecq makes a point of opposing his own Flemish dialect to Brabantian here: [6], stating that Crimean Gothic seuene corresponds exactly to his own Flemish seuene, whereas they, the allegedly more "Germanic" Brabantians, who use to ridiculize the Flemish for their odd forms, have seuen.

• Iblardi (talk) 10:34, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

The material on the dificulties of interpreting B's account is summarised from Stearns. --Pfold (talk) 12:33, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Without presuming and assuming too much, the problem is as followed. Busbeke was an educated man who would have commanded multiple languages. The idea that his native language/dialect might have influenced his transcriptions of Crimean Gothic, is possible and suggested as a possibility by the sources above. However the assumption that Busbake would have been able to speak Latin and French but would only be able to express himself in West Flemish natively ... is quite far fetched in my opinion. He would have also been able to speak the 'High Dutch'/cultuurtaal of his age; which was highly influenced by Western Brabantian. Ask yourself the question: If I'd encounter a foreign language and sought to describe it (for 'the people at home')... would I use my native dialect or use the standard form?

In truth, we cannot be sure if he based his transcriptions on contemporary West-Flemish, High Brabantian, or a mix of both. Therefore, it is most accurate (or in any case, safe) to state that his transcriptions might have been influenced by Dutch; which covers all possibilities, as opposed to specifying which we cannot (ever) know for sure. G.Burggraaf (talk) 15:23, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

All this would be fair enough if it were up to us to decide this, but it isn't -our job is to reflect the literature. The statement at issue is taken directly from Stearns, as far as I remember. You may personally believe Stearns can't be right, for the reasons you've given, but none of us here has the standing to alter it on that basis - second guessing one of the few experts on the subject on the basis of what "must have been" is not our job. The only basis for changing "Flemish" to "Dutch" here is if you can show that the article's statement does not accurately represent the preponderant view in the scholarship. --Pfold (talk) 17:34, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

From the literature provided above, I cannot know with certainty what is meant with 'Flemish'. Is it West-Flemish? East-Flemish? West- + East-Flemish? Southern Dutch? Dutch? It is impossible, at least not with the current sources. To use Dutch, is the safest solution. G.Burggraaf (talk) 18:10, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

The correct solution is to use the terms found in the literature, anything else is presumption. And if you think "Flemish" is too non-specific, "Dutch" is rather obviosuly even more so! --22:41, 31 December 2010 (UTC)