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The language was in decline by the mid-sixth century, partly because of the military defeat of the Goths at the hands of the Franks, the elimination of the Goths in Italy, and geographic isolation (in Spain, the Gothic language lost its last and probably already declining function as a church language when the Visigoths converted from Arianism ...
The Ostrogoths in Italy used a Gothic language which had both spoken and written forms, and which is best attested today in the surviving translation of the Bible by Ulfilas. Goths were a minority in all the places they lived within the Roman empire, and no Gothic language or distinct Gothic ethnicity has survived.
The Gothic language is the Germanic language with the earliest attestation (the 4th century), [219] [175] and the only East Germanic language documented in more than proper names, short phrases that survived in historical accounts, and loan-words in other languages, making it a language of great interest in comparative linguistics.
Another type of evidence strengthening the case for a connection to the north is the language which the Goths used. The Gothic language, known from their bible translation and fragmentary evidence, is the only clearly attested member of what modern linguists designate as the East Germanic language family, because it was already distinct from ...
These Germanic people brought their name and language to the Gothic people who emerged in the 3rd century (associated with the Chernyakhov Culture). At the same time, other Germanic people of the Baltic Sea (associated with the Przeworsk culture ) followed other trade routes to the middle-Danubian plains (Vandals) or the Main river ( Burgundians ).
The only East Germanic language of which texts are known is Gothic, although a word list and some short sentences survive from the debatedly-related Crimean Gothic. Other East Germanic languages include Vandalic and Burgundian , though the only remnants of these languages are in the form of isolated words and short phrases.
Though most scholars agree that the peoples must have been of Gothic origin, [5] [6] some others have maintained that the so-called "Crimean Goths" were in fact West or even North Germanic tribes that had settled in Crimea, culturally and linguistically influenced by the Ostrogoths. [7] [better source needed]
The name is derived from the Gothicists' belief that the Goths had originated from Sweden, based on Jordanes' account of a Gothic urheimat in Scandinavia ().The Gothicists took pride in the Gothic tradition that the Ostrogoths and their king Theodoric the Great, who assumed power in the Roman Empire, had Scandinavian ancestry.