Vandalic language

Evidence

By the first century AD, the writings of Pomponius Mela, Pliny the Elder, and Tacitus indicate a division of Germanic-speaking peoples into large groupings who shared ancestry and culture. (This division has been appropriated in modern terminology about the divisions of Germanic languages.)

Surviving Vandalic

Very little is known about the Vandalic language other than various phrases and a small number of personal names of Vandalic origin, mainly known from documents and personal names in Spanish. The regional name Andalusia is believed to be derived from the Vandals, according to the traditional view. When the Moors invaded and occupied Spain from the 8th century to the end of the 15th, the region was called "Al-Andalus".

In one inscription from the Vandal Kingdom, the Christian incantation of Kyrie eleison is given in Vandalic as "Froia arme".

The epigram De Conviviis Barbaris in the Latin Anthology, of North African origin and disputed date, contains a fragment in a Germanic language that some authors believe to be Vandalic, although the fragment itself refers to the language as "Gothic". This may be because both languages were East Germanic and closely related; scholars have pointed out in this context that Procopius refers to the Goths, Vandals, Visigoths, and Gepids as "Gothic nations" and opines that they "are all of the Arian faith, and have one language called Gothic". The fragment reads:

Inter "eils" Goticum "scapia matzia ia drincan!" non audet quisquam dignos educere versus.

Translation:

Amid the Gothic "Hail! Let's get [something to] eat and drink" nobody dares to put forth decent verses.

Another Vandalic phrase is found in Collatio Beati Augustini cum Pascentio ariano 15 by Pseudo-Augustine: Froja armes, "Lord, have mercy!"

Other surviving Vandalic words are Baudus, "master" and Vandalirice, "King of the Vandals".

A table with Vandalic words which survived in Vandalic names and texts can give us some clues of the Vandalic language by comparing them with Proto-Germanic, in this list words of the second part of names were used because the first part might have been under influence of a connecting vowel, therefore those are unreliable:

Grammar

Very little is known about Vandalic grammar, but some things can be extracted from Vandalic names.

Phonology and sound-change

The phonological features of Vandalic are similar to the ones of Gothic.

The Proto-Germanic long vowel *ē is often preserved in Vandalic names (Gunthimer, Geilimer), but it could become i when it was unstressed: Geilamir, Vitarit. The Proto-Germanic short vowel *e turned into i in Vandalic when it was not preceded by */r, h or w/, Sigisteun contains -i because g precedes the vowel, but Beremut retains the *e because r precedes the vowel. The Proto-Germanic *z is also preserved in the language but is written as s in the Latin names (Gaisericus).

Proto-Germanic *ō turns into /u/ in Vandalic: Blumarit (Proto-Germanic: *blōmô), Vilimut, while it is retained as ō in Gothic (blōma).

The Proto-Germanic diphthong *eu tends to remain the same in Vandalic: Theudo- (people), while it changes to /iu/ in Gothic (þiuda).

The original diphthong *ai is preserved as /ai/, but tends to become /ei/ later (Gaisericus changes to Geiseric in later documents).

The original h- was also lost early in Vandalic when compared to Proto-Germanic (Arifridos, Guntari, Proto-Germanic: *harja- 'army'). When royal names are spelled on Vandal coins, a conservative and official spelling is used and the h- is never omitted.

The Proto-Germanic cluster *-ww- can be strengthened as -g-.

The Proto-Germanic *-tj- can become [tsj] (matzia < *matjana).

Declension and word-formation

The original Proto-Germanic *-z endings of the nominative masculine singular which was lost in West-Germanic languages early is preserved in the Vandalic language, but it is an archaic feature because the *-z is lost in most words and in 6th-century Ostrogothic names it was lost completely. The *-z is rendered both as -s and -x in Vandalic. Some of the Vandalic names have a Romanized ending with -us. Vandalic also didn't have an Umlaut, which can be observed in names which contain the word *ari (Ariarith, Arifridos, Guntari, Raginari, Proto-Germanic: *harjaz 'army'), in comparison to the Old English form here, which does show umlaut.

The epithet Vandalirice could possibly mean that there existed a genitive plural ending -e (Gothic -ē), if this is correct the -e is written as i here. Non-East Germanic languages like Old English and Old Norse had the genitive plural ending -a.

Some of the names also occur in other declinations. The genitive of *rith is ridos.

Latin influence

The Proto-Germanic fricatives *þ and *ð often turned into t or d, but there are also some names in which they were retained (Thrasamundus, Guntha).

The original h- was also lost under Latin influence, though it was still included in the spelling of some royal names on Vandalic coins.

The initial Proto-Germanic *w- sometimes changed into [gw-] (Guiliaruna, < Proto-Germanic *wilja-, Guitifrida, < *wîti-), but, in some instances, it is spelled as /v/ (pronounced [w]): vult- (< wulþuz).

Vandalic names could contain Latin elements or suffixes (Mauritta, Bictoricus, etc.)

Slovenian legacy

Although the Vandals did not survive as an ethnic group, in the 16th, 18th, and 19th centuries the Prekmurje Slovenes of Prekmurje, Somogy, and Vas were believed to be the descendants of the Vandals, and their language the Vandalic language. This caused Hungarian, Latin, and other documents to call the Prekmurje Slovene (a dialect of the Prekmurje and Hungarian Slovenes) "the Vandalic language". However, the Prekmurje dislect is a Slavic language and is a variety of Slovene.