É. Apor (ed.): Codex Cumanicus. Ed. by Géza Kuun with a Prolegomena to the Codex Cumanicus by Lajos Ligeti. (Budapest Oriental Reprints, Ser. B 1.)
L. Ligeti: Prolegomena to the Codex Cumanicus
PROLEGOMENA TO THE CODEX CUMANICl'S 47 Crimean Gothic glosses in the second appendix of his book (cf. Kuun, pp. 239 — 244). 8 3 Grönbeeh also published an index of the German glosses of the Codex (Wb., pp. 302-309). Dagmar Drüll dwelled upon the German glosses of the Codex in her book. It is an indispensable work for Germanista, and some of its conclusions may be of interest to Turcologists as well. The second, so-calid German part of the Codex has been examined more thoroughly by Turcologists, for unlike the first, it contains longer texts as well as words and grammatical material. Only on the basis of this German part it became possible to form a more or less satisfactory picture of the structure of the Coman language. Let us see first some facts and figures before discussing this topic. The first, Italian part contains 110 pages, while the second or so-called German part contains 54, two of which are blank (134, 135), and one of which (152) 6 3 It is well known that Ogier Ghislain Busbecq, a nobleman of Flemish origin, in the service of Ferdinand I of Austria as Imperial Ambassador to the Ottoman Porte, met with two envoys from the Crimea in Constantinople, one of whom knew the Crimean Gothic language. Busbecq included excerpts from this language in his fourth «Turkish letter»: two glossaries and sentences, and 18 cardinal numbers with Latin translation The beginning of a song (cantilena ) was also added to this, without any translation or comment. Many scholars have dealt with this famous record of the Crimean Gothic tongue, most recently: MacDonald Stearns, Jr., Crimean Gothic. Analysis and Etymology of the Corpus. Anma Libri 1978 (USA). This is a dissertation submitted at the University of California, Berkeley. Not only Germaniste, but also outsiders interested in the migrations and linguistic conditions in the Crimea can greatly profit from it. The author gives a precise survey of the history of research. Also aware of Kuun's edition, he mentions that Kuun was the first scholar to trace the text of the mysterious Cantilena hack to Turkish. No doubt his attempt is indefensible though he had followers. Stearns wisely refrains from interpreting this really enigmatic text. The comments of the Flemish Rubruk, on Crimean Gothic are well worth looking at in his paper also (Wyngaert, Sinica Franciscana I, p. 170: Goti quorum ydioma est teutonicum). It is of greater import here that Ioeaphat Barbaro, a Venetian merchant and traveller wrote in his book, entitled Viaggio alla Tana, that while living in Tana between 1436 and 1452, he visited the Crimea end noticed that the Goths living there spoke German. As evidence of this, he refers to his German servant's conversation with these Goths which sounded like two dialects ol the same language, like Friuli compared with Florentine (Gothi parlano todesco ; so questo perche, havendo un fameglio todesco con mi, parlavano, insiene et intendevansi assai rasevolmcnte, cusi corno se intenderia un furiano co fiorentino). MaeDonals Stearns (p. 7) quotes Barbara's text from the edition of E. C. Skríinskaja. E. Schütz, The Tat people in the Crimea: Acta Orient. Hung. XXXI (1977), p. 93 is sceptical of Barbara's report and the traditions related to the Gothic language in the Crimea. Geoigius Torquatus, a German historian and theologian made a striking statement around 1560, referring to earlier sour ces. He said that the Crimean Goths used their native tongue only among themselves, otherwise communicating with foreigners they used Greek, Tatar or Hungarian (foris autem et ad alios vel graeca vel Tartarica sive Ungarica utuntur lingua ; MacDonald Stearns, p. 9).
