Kicking Roman Butt

[P. Lilius Frugius Simius]

I learned some very interesting things here.
I read a magazine article last that I couldn´t verify its sources but I hope people in the forum might enlighten me.
The author was claiming the the Gotland penisula in Scandianvia was the origin of the Goths.
He claimed that Ulfila or Wulfila was half Goth he could understand Latin and Greek from his mother´s side and he used the structure of Greek and Latin grammar to give or modify the stracture of the Gothic and late Germanic dialects. OK I am no linguist so I am keen to hear from the experts.

It may have been that way, we don't have (m)any "barbarians'" texts of any extent before Ulfila's "gothic" bible, (and not so many until much later) so I don't think there's a lot of surprises in here. Even nowadays latin grammar keeps creeping here in there in English grammar discussions :-) )

Latin was a very important language, and it's influence was far and deep in most of the known world by then (and was transported with the invaders to their colonies throughtout the whole world, think Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, all of them had enormous colonies all over the world; the other big colonial empires being of germanic origins). Greek was as important for the East as latin was for the West. The Oikumene's franca lingua was greek, and I think it remained so until the Byzantine empire went down.

That latin and greek affected Ulfila's bible, and even barbarians' languages, is a given. What is probably much harder to determine now is the way it affected them and the extent of this "affection".

On the other hand, in the past, History walked hand by hand with civilization, and the best way of not being a barbarian was to have a long History for your People. As presented in the discussion above, there are many that suspect that Cassiodorus's, Iordanes's and even Tacitus's accounts on the Goths and Germanic tribes in general were far from the Real Thing.

The problem is that we only have disconnected cultural artifacts and scientific disciplines to try to get a coherent idea of what was really happening by then, and christian historians having a very clear "agenda" isn't helping. (By this I mean that, unlike Greek and pagan historians that gave us precise (if often exaggerated) militar accounts, which may give us lots of information about them, as military was omnipresent those days even more than it is today), christians despised pagans, and tended to speak pejoratively; and battle descriptions are less precise, if present. This is something I am starting to discover only now, that I am studying CE Ancient History for my novel; it is really frustrating.)

As for the baltic elements claimed in the Gothic language can any body claim that there is any language that has not infusion of other linguistic elements?

Goths could have traveled as mercenary war bands allong various armies before they became known under their own name this might expalins the import of foreighn words.

I think the claims are different. If we didn't know English language history, proper, we would have to conclude that it is a germanic language with strong connections to latin (very strong!).

However, History shows that English was actually not even officially talked (Old French was) by "englishmen" for a long time, and that latin influence is actually that people was probably talking, for that long time, a kind of "pidgin" between Old English and Old French to the point where, when English gained official status, the French influence was intervowed with the fabric of the language in a way it couldn't be removed.

If germanic and baltic roots are present close to 50/50 proportion, it means that the Goths (if Germanic) talked Baltic languages for a long time; if Baltics, they talked Germanic for a long time; or that Ulfila did wrote in an obscure pidgin himself (which is perfectly possible, for all we know: he didn't write for himself, but for a small Goth-related tribe, we lack enough information to make generalizations, that were done nevertheless).

As for the mercenary idea, it would explain several things, but whole populations cannot be mercenaries, and the Goths were entire populations. I cannot see a way to reconcile all this, but it's perfectly plausible.

There is a tendency to reject the 19th century works but my opinion is not that all these things must be rejected out of hand.

Kind regards

I'd say that XIX historians had more "agendas" than nowadays historians; they had less tools, and less methodologies. I dunno if they are being rejected out of hand, but they should be carefully evaluated. The liar of today may be the "historian closer to the events" for 1000 years from now historians (with our current technology, those would probably be the press and books, and blogs, if they survived that long, instead of individuals, though). Closer to the events than fourth millenium historians? sure, but not to be trusted, anyway.

thanks for your thoughts!