Getae were not Goths: linguistic evidence



Getae were not Goths: linguistic evidence

The Romanian language has evolved from the Latin spoken in the
Roman province of Dacia. A large number of words has come into
Romanian from the language of the neighbouring Slavonic people.
For example we say "da" for "yes".
As a contrast to this, the Gothic language had no impact on
Romanian. This would be hard to explain if the Getae had been
Germanic speaking Goths, as some people claimed in the past,
before there was a proper understanding of historical linguistics.

Romanian has a large number of words which do not come from
Latin or Slavonic. The accepted explanation for these words is
that they come from the Dacian/Getic substratum, that is to
say, the Thracian speaking people who lived there. These words
are studied in details in page 241-426 of "Etnogeneza Romanilor"
by Ion Russu (Bucuresti, 1981).

The evidence of the ancient historians is quite clear. The Getae
spoke the same language as the Daci.

See Strabon VII, 305: homoglottoi eisin hoi Dakoi.

See Iustinus XXXII 3, 16: Daci quoque suboles getarum.

See Appian prooem. 4: Geton ton hyper Istron, hous Dakous
kalousin.

Further, the language of the Daci and Getae were related to
Thracian and these people were described as Thracian tribes by
the ancient historians, as I said in my first message. Apart from
Herodotos, Strabon and Diodorus, this is also stated by Scymnos
(659 sqq.).

Inger has no explanation for all these unanimous sources.
Anyone who want to prove that the Goths are the same people
as the Getae must demonstrate why these reliable historians are
wrong, and why we should instead believe the much later
Jordanes when he mixes legends about the origin of the Goths
with data taken about the Getae from earlier classical historians.
Inger must also give plausible Germanic etymologies for Getic
names in these sources: Zalmoxis, Zeuta, Dicinius, Tanausis,
Lampeto, Marpesia, Tomyris, etc.


There is other linguistic evidence which Inger will need explain:

The names of the Goths and Getae are not related.
First let us look at the Germanic ethnonyms. The names of the
two peoples come from the root Gmc *geut-, meaning 'pour' or
'cast' (cf. Dutch 'gieten', German 'giessen'). The vowel in the
root also occurs in the IE o grade (regularly becoming Gmc a)
and gives the ethnonym Gaut- (Ptolemaios Goutai, Procopios
Gautoi, Old Norse Gautar).
In Old English the diphthong au regularly became ea, thus
Geatas, but this happened only in Old English, probably not long
before the first recorded texts in the middle of the 1st millennium
AD. The long vowel sound in Old English Geatas is not the same
as the short e in Getae.

The Germanic root with the zero grade gives a different
ethnonym, Gutan-, an n-stem, which was applied to a different
people from the Gautar. This is found in the name of the island
of Gotland and the people we know as Goths (Guttones,
Gotones, Gythones in classical writers).
These two peoples, Gautar and Goths, are not necessarily the
same, even if their names ultimately come from the same root.

There is no way that this Germanic root could give the ethnonym
Getae with a short e in the root. And there is no reason why a
Germanic u or o sound would be incorrectly heard as an e.
The ending of Getae is moreover completely different from the
ending of both Gautar and Guttones.


The only conclusion to draw from all this linguistic evidence is
that the Getae were a Thracian speaking people living in present
day Romania, and that the Germanic speaking Goths who settled
there in the 3rd century AD were a different people. I have cited
ancient sources and modern scholars in support of this
conclusion.

Against this, the only academic work Inger has cited is her
unpublished student essay (grade C), and the only evidence
presented so far is the distribution of a sticky weed and a map
showing abandoned Iron Age settlements in a small part of
Sweden. The relevance of these maps can be question.
Even if Inger proves her case that there were contacts /
migrations between Sweden and Central Europe / Black Sea, this
does not imply that there were no indigenous people in these
regions before these contacts.
Inger seem to wants to exterminate the Getae and other people
from the record, to steal their history and trace the origin of
everything back to East Sweden.

I still wait to see the evidence ...


Marian I
.

Relevant Pages

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