Q: Chances of Gothic to became the prestige language of Medieval Western Europe instead of Latin?

[Mario]

Gothic language was associated to the Arian Church in both early Visigothic Spain and Ostrogothic Italy. However, the conversion of the first to Nicene Christianity and the conquest of the second by the Byzantines sealed the fate of the Gothic language in Western Europe.

However, in other circumstances could have Gothic language replaced Latin as the prestige language in Western Europe?

Maybe if:

- Visigoths keep Southern Gaul and stop the expansion of the Franks.
- Neither Visigoths nor Ostrogoths convert to Nicene Christianity and Gothic remains as the liturgical language of Arian Church.
- Latin is more strongly attached to Nicene identity and pressed negatively by both Gothic administrations.
- Obviously the Byzantines does not conquer Ostrogothic Italy; ideally also Vandals and Gepids survive and adopt Gothic as liturgical language
- Other minor Germanic kingdoms also stay or convert to Arian Christianity and adopt Gothic as liturgical language.

I am not asking for Latin/Romance languages to be replaced at population level, just at the administration, liturgical, elite levels (but maybe if this situation is prolonged in time, 'vulgar' Gothic might penetrate at popular level, even if partially or in bilingual situation).

 

[Madhukar_Shah]

See @DanMcCollum and his Amalingian empire for a TL where this happens- it's definitely possible and not asb, but does require the right things to happen, which aren't necessarily the most likely.

For example, Arianism was a Roman form of Christianity that was formulated by Romans for Romans in Greek and Latin- even should the goths arianise italy and Hispania, there isn't a solid religious reason for Latin speakers to use gothic as a liturgical language or for Goths to impose it as a liturgical language on non gothic speaking arian populations.

Furthermore, the structure of the Arian church in the gothic and vandal kingdoms wasn't really just a parallel hierarchy to the nicene pentarchy- there weren't archbishops, patriarchs or popes, just priests and priests attached to richer patrons or given special tasks by the king. The lack of a strict organisation means it's difficult to enforce any language standards or requirements- this changed in the Visigothic church slightly before their outright conversion to the Nicene creed, implying that there was something seen as inherently nicene about a hierarchical church independent of secular structures.


It's also difficult to have Latin become negatively associated with nicene Christianity given that the only real Nicene power is mostly greek speaking.

There's also no reason for the vandals to adopt gothic, considering their conversion to Arianism happened first.

 

[Gloss]

Furthermore, the structure of the Arian church in the gothic and vandal kingdoms wasn't really just a parallel hierarchy to the nicene pentarchy- there weren't archbishops, patriarchs or popes, just priests and priests attached to richer patrons or given special tasks by the king. The lack of a strict organisation means it's difficult to enforce any language standards or requirements

Did Arabic have/need this during the spread of early Islam?

 

[Fabius Maximus]

Did Arabic need this during the spread of early Islam?

Islam held that the Koran was the literal words of God as dictated to Muhammad, which naturally led to Arabic having a high prestige. In Christianity, although the Bible was held to be inspired by God, it wasn't thought that God had dictated it word-for-word. Even if you change this, the Bible was written in Greek and Hebrew, not Gothic, so Greek and Hebrew would become the prestige languages.

 

[Gloss]

Islam held that the Koran was the literal words of God as dictated to Muhammad, which naturally led to Arabic having a high prestige. In Christianity, although the Bible was held to be inspired by God, it wasn't thought that God had dictated it word-for-word. Even if you change this, the Bible was written in Greek and Hebrew, not Gothic, so Greek and Hebrew would become the prestige languages.

Arabic didn't immediately become an administrative language, it took generations for the switch to happen in Roman owned lands.

It really doesn't seem as simple as "language is valued religiously -> it takes over entire communities"

 

[Mario]

There's also no reason for the vandals to adopt gothic, considering their conversion to Arianism happened first.

Regarding this point, there is evidence that Irish did not adopt Latin as liturgical language at first (mostly because they were not part of the Roman Empire, so Latin was unfamiliar for the population) but they eventually did it when Latin later raised as the undisputed liturgical language of Western Christianity.

So Vandals might follow the same pattern: even if they embraced Arian Christianism earlier than others, they could well adopt Gothic as liturgical language if it is consolidated as the liturgical language in the Arian Gothic sphere. By the time of the Byzantine conquest, the Vandal kingdom had become peripheral to the Gothic kingdoms, so if the axis Gothic Spain - Gothic Southern Gaul - Gothic Italy/Dalmatia is consolidated it could happen that they would adopt Gothic at some point as 'the language of the common Arian faith'. Other satellital Germanic groups like the Gepids could do it as well.

More problematic thing could be for people like Burgundians which were more influenced by Franks, but this could change if the Goths manage to thrive and keep Southern Gaul.

 

[Madhukar_Shah]

Did Arabic have/need this during the spread of early Islam?

In as much as we're speaking about use as a prestige language in administration and religion and not about popular spread in this thread, it's a different situation.

In the early caliphate, Christian literate communities were simply sidelined, and the Arabs instituted their own administration. In gothic lands, they continued to use the Roman administrative structures and administrative classes- gothic speakers may have occupied military and government positions but Latin speakers remained the backbone of their bureaucracy and legal system.

 

[Gloss]

In as much as we're speaking about use as a prestige language in administration and religion and not about popular spread in this thread, it's a different situation.

In the early caliphate, Christian literate communities were simply sidelined, and the Arabs instituted their own administration. In gothic lands, they continued to use the Roman administrative structures and administrative classes- gothic speakers may have occupied military and government positions but Latin speakers remained the backbone of their bureaucracy and legal system.

So I guess we can postulate a scenario where they create a more segregated parallel system which slowly assimilates Romans around them into a Gothic speaking elite minority?

 

[Madhukar_Shah]

So I guess we can postulate a scenario where they create a more segregated parallel system which slowly assimilates Romans around them into a Gothic speaking elite minority?

We can for sure- in the Amalingian timeline above, Theodoric literally segregates the two ethnicities geographically by concentrating gothic settlement in Cisalpine gaul. If you have that, it's feasible- but it means you limit your own use of the massive pool of latin literate bureaucrats that could help you keep things organised.

Germanic groups did segregate themselves ethnically from Romans in the early middle ages through various law codes- but even the Germanic law codes were written in Latin, and you eventually just got a situation where people assimilate to the ruling group without changing their language. Unlike the Arabs, the goths weren't in the habit of creating military settlements solely inhabited by goths that would replace the great pre-existing cities either.

 

[Gloss]

We can for sure- in the Amalingian timeline above, Theodoric literally segregates the two ethnicities geographically by concentrating gothic settlement in Cisalpine gaul. If you have that, it's feasible- but it means you limit your own use of the massive pool of latin literate bureaucrats that could help you keep things organised.

Germanic groups did segregate themselves ethnically from Romans in the early middle ages through various law codes- but even the Germanic law codes were written in Latin, and you eventually just got a situation where people assimilate to the ruling group without changing their language. Unlike the Arabs, the goths weren't in the habit of creating military settlements solely inhabited by goths that would replace the great pre-existing cities either.

But it's not like Arabs didn't use non-Arab administrator, John of Damascus(and his father) for example worked for the Caliph.

 

[Madhukar_Shah]

But it's not like Arabs didn't use non-Arab administrator, John of Damascus(and his father) for example worked for the Caliph.

Both at least had Arab names, if not coming from an Arab background as some say they didn't, but more importantly the overall context was in an administration dominated by Arabic, and they'd have likely used Arabic in their official roles.

That's the opposite of our situation here, where no matter whether you spoke gothic or romance in daily life, you'd write in Latin if you had a government job.

 

[Evil Crusader]

Arabic didn't immediately become an administrative language, it took generations for the switch to happen in Roman owned lands.

It really doesn't seem as simple as "language is valued religiously -> it takes over entire communities"

It actually is that simple, but it still requires a couple generations' time for the effects of conversions + political convenience to kick in while being much faster than, say, the emergence of Romance languages in the same timeframe.

 

[Jürgen]

Maybe we could see something like Slavonic, where Gothic scripture are used in Germanic speaking lands. Gothic was likely mutual intelligible with Frankish, Saxon and Danish in the Germanic Iron Age, the split between the three branches was less than a thousand years ago and we saw the transfer of East Germanic myths, sagas and history to other Germanic people, who integrated it into their folklore.

 

[Mario]

I think that if Gothic eventually had passed to the Romance-speaking class it would have been pretty transformed to the point of becoming like a different language to the liturgical one, in a model like the classical Arab vs i.e. Moroccan Arab.

 

[Gloss]

I think that if Gothic eventually had passed to the Romance-speaking class it would have been pretty transformed to the point of becoming like a different language to the liturgical one, in a model like the classical Arab vs i.e. Moroccan Arab.

Not sure about Moroccan specifically, but as far as I know for Egyptian there is barely any Coptic influence on the language.

 

[Mario]

Not sure about Moroccan specifically, but as far as I know for Egyptian there is barely any Coptic influence on the language.

I was thinking more about oversimplification of the structures of the language (loss of inflections and so) rather than a direct Romance influence.

 

[Gloss]

I was thinking more about oversimplification of the structures of the language (loss of inflections and so) rather than a direct Romance influence.

It's questionable, some people argue English simplified because of foreign influence but other Germanic dialects did as well and when taken together High German is argued to have had more contact with other non-Germanic languages than Low German, Scandinavian or Frisian and did lose cases as much.

 

[Mario]

It's questionable, some people argue English simplified because of foreign influence but other Germanic dialects did as well and when taken together High German is argued to have had more contact with other non-Germanic languages than Low German, Scandinavian or Frisian and did lose cases as much.

Normally, oversimplifaction of language structures happen when one language comes into contact to others who are not fully familiar to them.

Old English got grammarly simplified when it endured a situation of diglossia with Old Norse in the Danelaw, as it 'needed' to get simplified in order to Danes be able to communicate with their English subjects there. Simplification of High German happened when it spread into other territories which did not use the standard form or spoke other languages like the Slavic ones. This is the reason why isolated languages like Icelandic had no pressure to simplify its grammar.

If eventually the Gothic language had spread out of its core, it would have been probably simplified (the higher the pressure, the higher the degree of simplification).