Perhaps the Huns can quickly pass through the Pontic Steppe and into Europe while the Greuthungi stayed behind?
I'm not sure how it would work, to be honest.
It depends on where exactly the Huns passed thru. How long the Huns stayed in different areas. What the Huns wanted. What the Huns Knew, did they know of and seek out the Roman Empire? Would the Huns pursue fights that was unnecessary? If the Huns goal was the Roman Empire, would they then go for a fight they did no need or have to fight. Also what land areas the huns ruled at different points in time.
Well they passed the Volga as your map depict, but it forgets an important parts as Huns briefly stayed in Caucasian region, forcing Alans to either move or be part of Hunnic ensemble, which brang another pressure on Greuthingi.
It's generally assumed Huns went on the western side of Volga around 375, raiding up to the shores of Black Sea and crossing Caucasus around 395 having emptied their neighborhood. Then another Hunnic wave from modern Ukraine led to Hunnic presence around 400 up to Lower Danube, and from there a slow move leading their power centers being more localised in Middle Danube.
Huns seems to have adopted, as most Barbarians, a hugely militarised way-of-life since the IVth century at least, meaning their lived on pastoralism and raiding alike. What they wanted leave little doubt to imagination : it was either loot, subside or tribute. And these weren't mutually exclusive.
It would be quite fantastic they wouldn't know about it: we're talking of the great superpower of the time, whom rumors touched as far as China. Even if Huns, by some happenstance, ignored everything about it, they quickly realized it existed and raided Armenia and Anatolia in the late 390's trough Caucasus.
They weren't unecessary : it was how they lived in search of loot and power build-up, without really being a departure from other steppe chiefdoms.
Less the Roman Empire itself, than the wealth it provided directly or undirectly : other Barbarians were either easy targets or rivals to be dealt with. Note they could do both, as hinted by the raids of the 390's both in Danube and Caucasus.
Many groups of Greuthingi did moved out IOTL, probably leading up to groups as Radagast's Goths. It's just that if you were to refugee yourself, while keeping enough of your way-of-life, you'd rather go to the place that looks richer and safer, rather than some God-forgotten place closer to your ennemies.
We're talking of settled chiefdoms seen as easy targets by Huns. Not nomadic Goths that just had to take their tents and wagons with them.
With what? Their wealth came in no small part from the relations with Romans : if Huns deprive them of this, their only tribute is...well, themselves and entering in Hunnic hegemony.
Some likely did, but I wouldn't see this happening in a large scale : Huns didn't integrated Goths in their own complex networks and chiefdoms for the kick of it, but as well as part of a general reinforcement of their military resources : Goths moved with them.
That and raiding results as well perpetuation of a militarized way-of-life.
While I mostly *agree with you about Goths (see the other thread about Barbarians in Romania) Huns didn't went trough such institutional and social build-up trough beingf ederation status but trough Roman subsides and tributes, allowing a devellopment of mobilisation devices (trough reinforcement of a militarized aristocracy and redistribution among dominated hierarchies) thanks to decades of raiding and mercenariate in service of Rome against foederati. When this ended up, Hunnic hegemony quicky collapsed and the Hunnic foedi in Byzantium didn't really outlived Hunnic chiefdoms north of Danube.
That seems excessively debatable : I never went into a sole occurence of Hunni to name anything other than Huns. If anything it might be a borrowed name from old Persian trough Greek.
The Crimean Goths of OTL did descend from Greuthungi. They also existed as lingusitic culture in Crimea for centuries after the Huns had passed through. Perhaps there could have been more holdouts like the Crimean Goths?
Could the Greuthungi or part of the Greuthingi adopt a nomadic steppe lifestyle?
It's really hard to know if we can consider Crimean Gothic as a linguistical culture : there's no real sign of its survival past the Xth century altough it remained as a social identity much later until the Late Middle-Ages (Busbecq's account being possibly misleading there, calling Gothic what might quite possibly having been a western Germanic speech carried by medieval settlers, with a possible Gothic substrate).
I don't really see this happening for all of Greuthungi, not without a major catastrophe forcing them to do so : one could argue that their movements within Romania had a nomadic character it's true, but we're more talking of a long migration between various provincial settlements where they could enjoy revenues from (there's the case of Vandals effectively settling not as much from revenues but landowning, but that's a marked exception).
What made them distinct was probably more a political differenciation (possibly built on lineages and their cultural substrates/adstrates) that was increased trough their integration within Hunnic ensemble, I'd rather think.
According to Jared Diamond there really was a East Germanic language in Crimea that was recorded by Busbecq.
Both aren't hugely reliable sources, really.
Mostly nationalist or, in the kindest interpretation, romanticist hogwash.
All we have as clear evidence doesn't go further than Xth : everything past it is at best debatable IMO.
Busbecq reportedly had contact with and L2 Crimean Gothic speaker. This speaker was a Greek who had learned the language. The Greek Gothic speaker was also accompanied by a Goth who did not speak Gothic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_Gothic#Extinction
He didn't: he spoke with a Greek that spoke a Germanic language practiced in the region, and the Goth that spoke Greek.
Gratituous affirmation, and that's not exactly what the text says (altough there's certainly a connection made by the author).
I know. I misspelled 'speaker', instead i worte 'speak', maybe that is why you mistook it. That Greek was a L2 Gothic speaker or L-something Gothis speaker as he had learned Gothic, Gothic was not his L1 tongue.
There is not much information regarding the Crimean Goths, but most do seem to believe that they existed.
Just because there is mutual intelligibillity between two languages does not mean that they are the same. It could mean that they have common lingusitc roots.
Crimean Gothic may have diverged from other Gothic languages early or late. The divergence might have started before the Gothic migrations, during the Gothic migrations, in the early medieval period, in the high medieval period, in the late medieval period, etc. Languages do evolve, therefore it is not unreasonable to think that Crimean Gothic has evolved too. If a Gothic language were spoken in Crimea during Busbecq's lifetime, it would probably have some similarities to Gothic languages of the past, while still being somewhat different.
If the so called Crimean Goths were descended from Low German West Germanic settlers who were influenced by Gothic, how would Gothic influence them in the first place? Would not the Low German speakers have to meet some Gothic speakers? Thus suggesting that there was some speakers of Gothic in Crimea.
https://benjamins.com/catalog/nowele.00013.vin
True, but the difference between western Germanic and eastern Germanic speeches were already clear by the Vth century: we're not considering an isolate from the same language somehow evolving in the same way than its cognates up to the XVIIIth century, we're talking about an Eastern Germanic language living in quasi-isolation from other Germanic speeches somehow ending up sounding like, not just German, but Low German and undergoing trough same evolution that West Germanic languages went trough.
Busbeq does provides records, not evidence; there's a huge difference. What he put looks really like a form of western Germanic spoken by people that identified themselves as Goths. Taking is as granted would be considering that medieval Sweden language was actually Gothic, because it was spoken by people identifiying themselves as Gutar.
To the point sounding and looking like a western Germanic language undergoing same evolution on its own, without contact from western Germanic's? It's really unlikely.
There's the legend of Nova Anglia, about late Anglo-Saxons fleeing Norman England to settle in Black Sea, for exemple. While the tale itself isn't to be taken at face value, it's known there was a tradition of military service not just from Scandinavians, but Englishmen or Germans increasingly from the Xth century (to the point Varangian guard was probably not as much Scandinavian than English in some regards).
Again, if you read my posts, you'd see that I never said there was no such thing as Crimean Gothic : just that assuming its survival beyond the Middle-Ages because Busbeq called what he recorded Gothic (when it's at best NOT obvious it is) is an act of faith, not a scientific demonstration.
All are more or less equally likely, tough it's possible the latter two could have something : an isolated German speech with strong and various substrates and adstrates (not just Gothic, but Turkic, Northern Germanic, Greek, Bulgarian, Russian, etc.) may have led to quite the interesting metissed speech.
