Getae and Dacians? Are they the same? Or is this unknowable?

[Robert Vermaat]

Hi Drago?,

Thank you for your input but I'm arguing for Gothic (focusing on their early centuries, when Goths ruled the territories north of lower Danube) armies having no Heeressprache (my actual claim being that there was no common language covering the entire ?ernjachov culture - see map above), so I find Xenophon's account quite relevant.

I know you do, and that's where I disagree - when the Goths emerge into Roman history, they do not seem to have been anything other than predominantly germanic, at least the dominant part of the group that we notice. The ?ernjachov-Sîntana de Mure? culture ranged from the late 3rd to the early 5th century - that's almost the entire period on the Goths attacking the emoire from the outside. If the Goths have anything to do with that culture, the germanic part must have been dominant as well in that culture, not just one of many languages on an equal footing. Which is why I think that all soldiers fighting in their armies knew the Gothic army language.

They may not have understood every word, just what the commands meant. Like in the later Roman armies:

An important question would be if in this case the soldiers actually understand a language or just use some codes with limited functionality. I have my doubts that all Roman soldiers around 600 were fluent in Latin, as the language was already fading from public usage in the east. Forgive my analogy (it's not meant to offend, just to illustrate the difference), telling a dog to roll over, it doesn't mean the dog actually understands or speaks English, even if it performs the action it was ordered to. I find no reason to assume such "meta-linguistic" commands weren't used in multilingual armies, regardless if they were words in some language, shouts, whistles, or virtually any signal which could be unequivocally perceived by soldiers as a specific order. But this is not a common language being spoken and understood.

Ah, but then I never argued that Latin was a common language that was understood by everyone in the, say, 6th c. Roman army. I don't think they did - they just understood the meaning of each command, regardless if the command itself was in proper Latin (which Latinists ad nauseam tell me it wasn't).

I believe the common language of the Late Empire barbarians was in most cases Latin.

I don't think that the common language of the barabrians was Latin. Why would it? Only those barbarians within the Roman sphere of influence would have had any use for it for economic or military purposes. But that would hardly be of neccesity for the common man. Germanic barbarians, I have little doubt, spoke germanic languages amongst each other. Maybe if enrolled in the Roman army they learned to speak Latin.

I mean, even among the citizens of the Empire, Latin was not the common language! Sure, to treat with the government it was, but then most people might not have to, and then I speak of the West only. The Roman government in the East spoke Greek first, and only then Latin.

The traces of written Germanic dialects are scarce. It's weird that even few runic inscriptions are known from ?ernjachov space, there are none (to my knowledge) in Ostrogothic Italy. The mentions of spoken Gothic in Italy are also few, and in most cases it's about bilinguals anyway. Italy was mostly Latin speaking and most probably the Ostrogothic armies had also local recruits. I find rather the Goths using Latin than everybody else learning Gothic.

I don't find it strange . Runes were for the literate, and only a few would have used them. Plus, how many Goths actually settled in Italy? It's not like the peninsula was flooded with them, and by then the group, heterogeneous to begin with, would already have been receiving other newcomers for generations.

I agree that the Gothic armies in Italy would most likely have been Latin speaking rather than impose a germanic language.