Re: [tied] Affects of immigrant communities in language change

> > >Lastly, when Germanic and especially Celtic venture further west, they
> >finally come across some truely exotic substrate languages beyond the
> >blazé Tyrrhenian fringe, like Vasconic, Iberian and Tartessian languages.
> >These quite different substrate languages help to alter these
> >IE languages in unique ways, thus explaining EVERYthing! Glen
> >
> >Glen, do you think some peculiarities of Germanic (initial stress, ü,
> >ö...?) could be explained by a Finnish-Estonian or so speaking people
> >adopting an IE language? Marc
>
>I agree with Glen, I think that there's a kind of "ö-zone" in
>Northern Eurasia, from Northwestern Europe to Central Asia, [...]
>of Uralo-Altaic languages (with exception of Tungusic, if I'm not
>wrong), some Germanic languages, lbanian, Athenian Greek.
>The only Romance languages
>to acquire round vowels like ö/ü are French and Rheto-Roman.
>Thus, in my humble opinion I think it points to a substratum.
>Joao SL

I don't know about Rheto-Roman, but in French ü/ö (and h, which diasppeared
again later) are probably due to Franconian influence (superstratum?). What
else?

Marc
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