Talk:East Germanic languages

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 * The author should review the latest article "Ostgermanisch" in the Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde on this subject. This article summarises the latest research on this issue and argues:

It claimed in the article that Crimean Gothic survived until 18th century(no citations by the way). Where did survived, interesting. The Crimea was Turkic region at least from the conquest by the Golden Horde in 13th century.85.101.18.9 (talk) 15:57, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

East Germanic closer to North Germanic or to West Germanic
Why not look up Kortland's interesting article? http://www.kortlandt.nl/publications/art198e.pdf

78.48.188.195 (talk) 08:35, 21 November 2008 (UTC) Wojciech Żełaniec

1. East Germanic is not closer to North Germanic than either is to West Germanic. 2. East Germanic separated out of the Germanic language group much earlier than North and West Germanic split, which is why linguists now refer to "North-West Germanic". 3. Archaeological evidence shows that the Goths, i.e. the carriers of the Wielbark culture did not come from Scandinavia, but developed authochtonously from the Okcywie culture. 4. The name "Burgundarholmr" is a learned reconstruction. The name of the island Bornholm simply means the "high island". This meaning was lost in the middle ages and scholars thought to link the name with the Burgundians and created the name "Burgundarholmr". Archaeology cannot link the Burgundians (i.e. Lebus-Lausitz culture) with Bornholm. See. R. Kaiser "Die Burgunder" 2004.

In conclusion: About everything in this article is wrong or outdated. The article should be revised.


 * Your objections are interesting. In 1 and 2, you talk of one way of classifying Germanic languages based on the fact that N and W Germanic had a great deal of areal influence while Gothic was relatively isolated from N and W Germanic. In 3 you contradict even Kokowski (who is the main supporter of a development from the Oksywie culture to the Wielbark culture but state that it happened during a Scandinavian immigration). In 4 you contradict medieval Scandinavian sources, which are quoted in the article. I am afraid that I will have to follow your contributions.--Berig 11:38, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

I removed Lombardic as east germanic language and added it to West Germanic languages. Lombardic underwent the second germanic sound shifting and hence is a upper german dialect. This wrong classification is ubiquitious throughout wikipedia. So, please, watch out for it. THX. --Zinnmann 13:48, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * What do you mean? When this sound shift took place the Lombards lived in Northern Italy and in contiguity with upper German dialects in the north. IMHO, it shows phonological influence (like that of German on Danish), not their origins. I'll reinsert them.--Wiglaf 08:55, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Mr. Zinnmann was correct to remove Lombardic from the Eas Germanic entry. Lombardic was most closely related to Bavarian. See for example the B-P rotation. The special volume on "Trümmersprachen ..." of the Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde is the definitive source and it shows without doubt that Lombardic was West Germanic, which shouldn't surprise either since the Langobards were an Elbe Germanic tribe classified by Tacitus as belonging to the Suevi.

Period III
Since the term Period III is used in this article but no link is provided, I'm going to admit my ignorance and ask what it means. Will one of the editors please tell me? Thanks.

Wanderer57 (talk) 21:28, 25 July 2008 (UTC)


 * It must be period III of the Nordic Bronze Age, i.e. c. 1200BC.--Berig (talk) 21:48, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Alternate name: "llevionic"
2. Oder-Vistula Germanic or East-Germanic or "Illevionic" (Gothic, Vandalic, Burgundian)

https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/gothic-l/conversations/messages/4791 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.252.150.211 (talk) 20:21, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

When did East Germanic reach the Black Sea Area?
The map implies that it hadn't, until the emergence of the Goths in the 3rd century, but if the Bastarnae were East Germanic speakers, then it had. 108.48.94.155 (talk) 22:50, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Altering referenced information and WP:CRYSTAL
I actually have a copy of a referenced source in my bookshelf and discovered that it had been misrepresented or that the information had been altered. I have been on WP since 2003, and I have many times seen Wikipedians assert that this or that is "outdated", and I have actually believed them until finding the "outdated" information in newer publications and then I have felt tricked. Britannica of 2021 still informs us that the Goths came from Scandinavia in spite of certain Wikipedians asserting as long as I can remember that the "theory is outdated". Some information may feel outdated to certain Wikipedians, but wikipedia is not a crystal ball. Information from referenced sources is not "outdated" until we have reliable references that inform us that there is a new international consensus on it. Moreover, until recently the so-called migrationist and invasionist theories were often considered "outdated" by Wikipedians, but now with archaeogenetics I wonder how long that kind of POV-pushing can continue.--Berig (talk) 06:04, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
 * As we indeed have no crystal ball, and have to wait for archaeogenetics or whatever, we can only use the best sources we have for now. Brittanica is not one of them. See WP:TERTIARY.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:47, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Burgundian status reference
Currently, the article says the status of Burgundian as an EG language is debated, referring to:
 * Wolfram, Herwig (1997). The Roman Empire and Its Germanic Peoples. University of California Press. p. 259. ISBN 978-0520085114. "For a long time linguists considered the Burgundians to be an East Germanic people, but today they are no longer so sure."

First of all, it is pretty annoying that there is no extra explanation why linguists no longer think so. Here's how Wolfram explains it himself on page 259 of this book:
 * 'For a long time linguists considered the Burgundians to be an East Germanic people, but today they are no longer so sure. It is true that the Burgundians were occasionally counted among the “Gothic peoples,” probably because most of them were Arians for a long time. But in the eyes of the Gaul Sidonius Apollinaris they came from the land east of the Rhine and were therefore a Germanic people, a classification that no ethnographer of late antiquity would have applied to the Gothic peoples.14'
 * [footnote 14: WG=Wolfram, History of the Goths, 43 f. Compare, for example, Sidonius Apollinaris, Epistulae, 5: 1 and 3.]

So the point Wolfram makes here is that East Germanic did not really exist in antiquity. The classification would have been 'Gothic'. But the Burgundians were instead called 'Germanic' by Sidonius Apollinaris. And since he would never have called the Gothic peoples 'Germanic', the Burgundians were perhaps not Gothic (that is 'East Germanic' in present-day terms) at all.

Moreover, on pages 8 and 9 of this same book Wolfram cautions for the idea of dividing the Germanic 'peoples' into Northern, Western and Eastern groups simply based on its 'linguistic assumptions.' 2001:1C02:1990:A900:39DA:DC28:F0EA:1FA8 (talk) 09:35, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I think that the current text is a bit of a placeholder until someone has time to work more on it. I don't think Wolfram is an ideal or sufficient source for this point, but just one that one of us had to hand to make sure this point was left unmentioned. I don't remember where I read everything just off hand but we also have to remember that the Burgundians of Sidonious were unlikely to have been very recognizable to the eastern European Burgundians centuries before, and even those early Burgundians might not have spoken what we now call Eastern Germanic. (In the time of Tacitus the language which Goths later used might have been the Germanic language which Tacitus seems to indicate that the Bastarnae and Peuci were speaking in that region, in his time. This is a possibility I recall even Peter Heather explicitly and rightly leaves open, despite his belief that the Gothic name aristocracy had come from the Gothones living at the mouth of the Vistula in the time of Tacitus.) We also know the Burgundians had been living close to the Rhine for a long time before they were moved deeper into the empire and Sidonius met them. I believe it has also been proposed that when Sidonius used Germani-type terms he would be using it in a classical way to indicate peoples from the Rhine area. The only really clearly attested Eastern Germanic language is Gothic, and while Graeco-Roman sources gave a name for their language, which was also being used by other peoples, and within various military and administrative institutions in the empire itself (e.g. Italy), they didn't ever say that Burgundians spoke it. When Sidonius I think somewhere speaks of Germanic language, he is perhaps therefore implying that Franks and Burdungians spoke a similar language? These are all just notes as a placeholder. We'd obviously need to see what more recent secondary sources really say.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:33, 13 January 2024 (UTC)