7 декабря 2015 г.

What Do We Know about the Real Burgundian Language

So, what do we know about the real language of the Burgundians? Even if it hasn't survived, the Burgundians played a notable role in the history of Europe in their time, so their language must have left some traces of existence. Gothic, for example, has quite a big corpus sufficient for a proper description and research of the language. Vandalic has several phrases like  'scapia matzia ia drincan' recorded by Roman authors. The Burgundian language, unfortunately, wasn't so lucky.

Nevertheless, the data that we have is sufficient to classify the Burgundian language as belonging to the East Germanic branch and even to have some idea of its specific features.

The only surviving text in Burgundian is a short phrase on a fibula found in Charnay. It has been read as uþ fnþai Iddan Liano, which supposedly means 'may Liano find Idda'. Of course, the reading is not one hundred per cent correct, and the inscription itself is not necessarily made in Burgundian.

Ammianus (325/330-391) gives two Burgundian words belonging to the administrative sphere: sinistus 'chief priest' and hendinos 'king'. The former is clearly *sinists (cf. Gothic sinista 'elder') while the latter is hard to reconstruct, unless it is connected with the Germanic root *hind- 'back, behind' (with the suffix *-īn-?) or the word *kinþiz 'kind, race'.

Some Burgundian words are present in the Latin text of Lex Romana Burgundionum, which was supposedly written during the reign of King Gundobad, including wittimon 'marriage', morginagiva 'morning gift' and some others.

Even with these modern sources some conclusions can be made. Thus, Burgundian clearly was an East Germanic, as it demonstrates features typical for Gothic and (as far as one can judge) Vandalic:
- lack of rhotacism, typical for all other branches (Gaisaldus, but English gar 'spear'),
- development of *e to i in all positions except before *r, *h and *hʷ (Gibica, but German geben),
- lack of umlaut,
- lack of development of the Proto-Germanic long *ē to *ǣ/*ā (Leubaredus, but German Rat).

So, we now see that Burgundian can be safely classified as an East Germanic language. Using the abovementioned sources, we can also say something about particular features of the Burgundian language:
Like in other East Germanic languages, voiced b, d, g were rendered as fricatives between vowels (morginagiva);
- Unlike Gothic, Burgundian preserved the Proto-Germanic diphthong *eu (Eudilana, Reudilo);
- Unlike Gothic and Vandalic, Burgundian preserved the long *ē, and *ō, which developed into ī and ū in those language (Wenaharii, Hrodehildis);
- Unlike Gothic, in Burgundian the sound *n did not disappear before *n, cf. Burgundian Hanhavald, but Gothic hahan 'to hang (akin with English hang);
- It seems that Burgundian preserved the Proto-Germanic diphthongs *ai and *au, which developed into ɛ and ɔ in Gothic (Gaisaberga, Baudulfum);
- Medial *-þ- was voiced to d in Burgundian (the are virtually no names with -th- between vowels).

There are also some words that are attested in Burgundian names but are absent from the Gothic corpus. Those include *hadus 'battle', *saims 'blood clot', *hroks 'crow', *gunds 'war, battle', *erps 'dark, brown' and a few others.

All these things were taken into account and played their part in the creation of the Neo-Burgundian language.

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