Re: Urartu.

--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:

>
> As for a Celtic linguistic stratum in Denmark, I wish we knew what

to

> make of it. My guess is that is represents lateral linguistic
> influence (during the early Iron Age the Celts were by far the most
> prestigious linguistic group everywhere north of the Alps) rather
> than a substrate. There are many Germanic/Celtic lexical

isoglosses,

> often words to do with social structure and Iron-Age technology
> (*gais- is one of them). Many of them certainly diffused from

Celtic

> to Germanic. Sometimes (as with the Teutons) it is very hard to

tell

> if we are dealing with a Celtic name or (a Celticised version of) a
> Germanic name (maybe in its pre-Grimm form), since the root *teut-

is

> amply attested in both branches. And, of course, who is to

guarantee

> that "tribes" like the Teutons or the Cimbri were linguistically
> homogeneous?
>

This is what I have for a specifically Jutland Celtic substratum:

1) The Danish decades, found originally only in Jutland:
halvtreds(sindstyve) 50
tres(sindstyve) 60
halfjerds(sindstyve) 70
firs(sindstyve) 80
base 20, show Celtic influence (supposedly).

2) English has a Celtic substrate and has lost the genders. Jutish
has lost the genders. (If you learn a new language, genders cause
problems, at least if they are not marked in the word itself, as
(partially) in Spanish, Italian and Russian, but not much in German,
Anglo-Saxon or Old Norse. You drop the genders.

3) Someone pointed out once that only the once Celtic areas of Europe
had the high rounded vowel series -ü-(-y-), -ø-, -ö-. He forgot
Scandinavia (but this argument goes for all of Scandinavia).

>
> The historical Gautar (i.e. Gauts, Geats, OE Ge:atas) had their
> homeland in Sweden; the Goths are also supposed to have arrived in
> Poland from the north, and I can't see anything speculative about

the

> derivation of their names from something Germanic. The question
> remains, "what from?". The nost obvious possibility that presents
> itself is the attested Germanic root *giut- (ablaut variants *gaut-

,

> *gut-) 'pour, mould, cast' (German giessen, Guss-,

or Swedish gjut-
for example) < PIE

> *g^Heud-, an extension of *g^Heu- 'pour, spring forth'. Anyways,

the

> Gautar's name represents the thematic stem *gaut-a-, and that of

the

> Goths, a weak (nasal) stem *gut-o:n-; both can well be deverbal,

and

> the brilliant idea has just dawned on me that they might

mean "(Iron-)

> Founders" (Lat. fundo: 'melt, cast' comes from the very same root,
> with a nasal infix, *g^Hu-n-d-).
>
>

Ah, the Goths were the Iron people. Inneresting.

>
> Piotr
>
>

Torsten