Vandalic was the Germanic language spoken by the

Vandals The Vandals were a Germanic peoples, Germanic people who first inhabited what is now southern Poland. They established Vandal Kingdom, Vandal kingdoms on the Iberian Peninsula, Mediterranean islands, and North Africa in the fifth century. The ...

during roughly the 3rd to 6th centuries. It was probably closely related to

Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

, and, as such, is traditionally classified as an East Germanic language. Its attestation is very fragmentary, mainly due to the Vandals' constant migrations and late adoption of writing. All modern sources from the time when Vandalic was spoken are

protohistoric Protohistory is a period between prehistory and history during which a culture or civilization has not yet developed writing, but other cultures have already noted the existence of those pre-literate groups in their own writings. For example, ...

. The

, Hasdingi and

Silingi The Silings or Silingi ( la, Silingae; grc, Σιλίγγαι – ) were a Germanic tribe, part of the larger Vandal group. The Silingi at one point lived in Silesia, and the names ''Silesia'' and ''Silingi'' may be related.Jerzy Strzelczyk, "Wand ...

established themselves in

Gallaecia Gallaecia, also known as Hispania Gallaecia, was the name of a Roman province in the north-west of Hispania, approximately present-day Galicia (Spain), Galicia, Norte, Portugal, northern Portugal, Asturias and León (province), Leon and the lat ...

(northern

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of th ...

and

Galicia Galicia may refer to: Geographic regions * Galicia (Spain), a region and autonomous community of northwestern Spain ** Gallaecia, a Roman province ** The post-Roman Kingdom of the Suebi, also called the Kingdom of Gallaecia ** The medieval King ...

) and in southern Spain, following other Germanic and non-Germanic peoples (

Visigoths The Visigoths (; la, Visigothi, Wisigothi, Vesi, Visi, Wesi, Wisi) were an early Germanic people who, along with the Ostrogoths, constituted the two major political entities of the Goths within the Roman Empire in late antiquity, or what is k ...

Alans The Alans (Latin: ''Alani'') were an ancient and medieval Iranian nomadic pastoral people of the North Caucasus – generally regarded as part of the Sarmatians, and possibly related to the Massagetae. Modern historians have connected the A ...

and

Suebi The Suebi (or Suebians, also spelled Suevi, Suavi) were a large group of Germanic peoples originally from the Elbe river region in what is now Germany and the Czech Republic. In the early Roman era they included many peoples with their own name ...

) in c. 410 before they moved to North Africa in the 430s. Their kingdom flourished in the early 6th century, but after their defeat in 536 they were placed under Byzantine administration and their language likely disappeared before the end of the century.

Attestation

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 Andalusia (, ; es, Andalucía ) is the southernmost autonomous community in Peninsular Spain. It is the most populous and the second-largest autonomous community in the country. It is officially recognised as a "historical nationality". The ...

is traditionally believed to have derived from Vandalic, although this claim is contested. When the

Moors The term Moor, derived from the ancient Mauri, is an exonym first used by Christian Europeans to designate the Muslim inhabitants of the Maghreb, the Iberian Peninsula, Sicily and Malta during the Middle Ages. Moors are not a distinc ...

invaded and settled on the

Iberian Peninsula The Iberian Peninsula (), ** * Aragonese and Occitan: ''Peninsula Iberica'' ** ** * french: Péninsule Ibérique * mwl, Península Eibérica * eu, Iberiar penintsula also known as Iberia, is a peninsula in southwestern Europe, def ...

from the 8th century to the end of the 15th, the region was called . In one inscription from the Vandal Kingdom, the Christian incantation of is given in Vandalic as "" ("Lord, have mercy!"). The same phrase appears in 15 by

Pseudo-Augustine Pseudo-Augustine is the name given by scholars to the authors, collectively, of works falsely attributed to Augustine of Hippo. Augustine himself in his ''Retractiones'' lists many of his works, while his disciple Possidius tried to provide a comple ...

: "". The epigram in the

Latin Anthology The ''Latin Anthology'' is a modern name given to a collection of Latin verse, from the age of Ennius to about 1000, formed by Pieter Burmann the Younger. Nothing corresponding to the Greek Anthology is known to have existed among the Romans, tho ...

, 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 Procopius of Caesarea ( grc-gre, Προκόπιος ὁ Καισαρεύς ''Prokópios ho Kaisareús''; la, Procopius Caesariensis; – after 565) was a prominent late antique Greek scholar from Caesarea Maritima. Accompanying the Roman gen ...

refers to the

Goths The Goths ( got, 𐌲𐌿𐍄𐌸𐌹𐌿𐌳𐌰, translit=''Gutþiuda''; la, Gothi, grc-gre, Γότθοι, Gótthoi) were a Germanic people who played a major role in the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the emergence of medieval Euro ...

, Vandals,

, and

Gepids The Gepids, ( la, Gepidae, Gipedae, grc, Γήπαιδες) were an East Germanic tribe who lived in the area of modern Romania, Hungary and Serbia, roughly between the Tisza, Sava and Carpathian Mountains. They were said to share the relig ...

as "Gothic nations" and opines that they "are all of the

Arian Arianism ( grc-x-koine, Ἀρειανισμός, ) is a Christological doctrine first attributed to Arius (), a Christian presbyter from Alexandria, Egypt. Arian theology holds that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, who was begotten by God ...

faith, and have one language called Gothic". The fragment reads: Other surviving Vandalic words are , "master" and , "King of the Vandals". The tables below show various Vandalic words, phrases and forms that survive in (or as) names and various Latin texts. The majority of these were taken from Onesti's "Tracing the Language of the Vandals" (2015).

Grammar

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

Phonology and sound changes

The phonological features of Vandalic are similar to those of Gothic.

Vowels

The Proto-Germanic long vowel *ē is often preserved in Vandalic names (, ), but it could become ''i'' when unstressed: , . The Proto-Germanic short vowel *e turned into ''i'' in Vandalic when it was not preceded by *. For example, contains -''i'' because ''g'' precedes the vowel, but retains the *e since ''r'' precedes the vowel. Proto-Germanic *ō turns into in Vandalic, while it is retained as in Gothic: (compare Proto-Germanic *blōmô), . The Proto-Germanic diphthong *eu tends to come down to Vandalic as ''eu''. Take for example the form - ('people'), as opposed to the Gothic (), where it has changed to . The Proto-Germanic diphthong *ai is preserved as , but tends to become later on. For example, the name changes to in later documents.

Consonants

The Proto-Germanic *z is also preserved in the language as a

sibilant Sibilants are fricative consonants of higher amplitude and pitch, made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the teeth. Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the English words ''sip'', ''zip'', ''ship'', and ...

(always found written ''s'' or as part of ''x''), as opposed to having undergone

rhotacism Rhotacism () or rhotacization is a sound change that converts one consonant (usually a voiced alveolar consonant: , , , or ) to a rhotic consonant in a certain environment. The most common may be of to . When a dialect or member of a language ...

as it has in

North North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography. Etymology The word ''north ...

or West Germanic. For example, compare the Vandalic form (as in ) 'spear' to Old English . The word-initial inherited from Proto-Germanic seems to have been lost early in Vandalic (e.g., the element in and , from Proto-Germanic 'army'). However, royal names on Vandal coins use a conservative official spelling, with the ''h'' always being written. The Proto-Germanic cluster *-ww- can be found strengthened to -''g''. The Proto-Germanic cluster *-tj- can become , as in from Proto-Germanic .

Declension and word-formation

The original Proto-Germanic *-z used to mark the nominative masculine singular in nominals, which was lost in West Germanic early on, is attested within some preserved Vandalic forms as -''s'' or as part of -''x'' (occasionally found

Romanized Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and ...

in some name attestations as ''-us''). This marker is potentially to be deemed an archaic feature since it is lost in most words, with complete lost within

Ostrogothic The Ostrogoths ( la, Ostrogothi, Austrogothi) were a Roman-era Germanic people. In the 5th century, they followed the Visigoths in creating one of the two great Gothic kingdoms within the Roman Empire, based upon the large Gothic populations who ...

names from the 6th century onward. Similar to Gothic, Vandalic does not seem to have

i-umlaut The Germanic umlaut (sometimes called i-umlaut or i-mutation) is a type of linguistic umlaut in which a back vowel changes to the associated front vowel ( fronting) or a front vowel becomes closer to ( raising) when the following syllable cont ...

. One example of items that demonstrate the lack of umlaut are names that contain the form * (< Proto-Germanic 'army'): , , , vs. Old English , the latter of which does does show umlaut with the Proto-Germanic *''a'' having shifted to ''e''. The epithet 'king of the Vandals' gives possible attestation of a genitive plural ending (cf. Gothic -ē), albeit written as ''i'' within this form. Old Germanic languages outside of East Germanic have -''a'' (as in

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th ...

and

Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlement ...

) or -''o'' (as in

Old Dutch In linguistics, Old Dutch (Dutch: Oudnederlands) or Old Low Franconian (Dutch: Oudnederfrankisch) is the set of Franconian dialects (i.e. dialects that evolved from Frankish) spoken in the Low Countries during the Early Middle Ages, from aro ...

Old High German Old High German (OHG; german: Althochdeutsch (Ahd.)) is the earliest stage of the German language, conventionally covering the period from around 750 to 1050. There is no standardised or supra-regional form of German at this period, and Old Hig ...

) as their equivalents of this ending instead; compare Old English against the potential Vandalic form *. Some elements found within names are attested in declined forms. For example, the genitive of * is attested as .

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 or otherwise represented distinctly: , . * Initial ''h''- was also lost under Latin influence; however, it is still found included in the spelling of some royal names on Vandalic coins. * Initial ''w''- sometimes changed into (, < Proto-Germanic , , < ); in other instances, it is spelled as ''v'' (pronounced ): (from Proto-Germanic ). * Vandalic names could contain Latin elements or suffixes (, , etc.)https://www.academia.edu/1516556/THE_LANGUAGE_AND_NAMES_OF_THE_VANDALS, Nicoletta Onesti, "THE LANGUAGE AND NAMES OF THE VANDALS", https://www.academia.edu, 2009, 3, 22 February 2015

References

Sources

*Francovich Onesti, Nicoletta,
Tracing the Language of the Vandals
', excepted from: Francovich Onesti, ''Goti e Vandali'' (2013), 179ff. {{Germanic languages East Germanic languages Extinct Germanic languages Extinct languages of Africa Languages extinct in the 6th century

Language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...