Re: Non-Indo-European in Germanic

From: tgpedersen
Message: 27873
Date: 2003-12-01

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "studey22" <lookwhoscross-
eyednow@...> wrote:
> Torsten, what is your opinion as to the origin of the 28% non-Indo-
> European in Germanic? What would a more plausible theory than the
> Nordwestblock be? And if the Nordwestblock area is not non-Indo-
> European, then what else can it be shown to be? Can it be shown
that
> it was more likely to have been Germanic or Celtic? In Times
> Historical Atlas the Nordwestblock was suggested to be Indo-
European
> but not Celtic or Germanic.
>

In a footnote Udolph mentions a rumour (1988) from a colleague of a
dissertation being written in Minich (but not heard of again in 1993)
according to which the Jastorf culture might have come from the south
(which would fit in with Cimmerians > Cimbri etc). On might imagine
an alternative scenario in which the language of the Jastorf culture
was (pre-)Germanic and the 28%-language was the one it ran down
(around 600 BCE then).

Another thing pointed out by W. P. Schmid is:
Caesar: Vacalus, Tacitus: Vahalis for the river Waal (branch of the
Rhine on the Netherlands), which means that somewhere between 50 BCE
and 100 CE the Germanic sound shift took place there. On the other
hand:
Tacitus: Caesia silva = Heissi-Wald, Heisingen south of Essen in the
Ruhr district, so the Germanic sound shift took place here after 100
CE.

Other than that, if Germanic replaced the Nordwestblock, why should
it politically important enough to supply 28% of the vocabulary? And
shouldn't we expect more dialectal variation in the distribution of
28%-language words in the Germanic languages? Udolph shows,
convincingly to me, that the distribution of placenames follow either
a north-south (example: the -leben, -lev names) or an east-west
(example: -horst, -hurst) consistent with two expansions from
Germany, one north, one west. The latter would have been the one that
ran down the Nordwestblock. Note that Odin set Balder to run
Westphalia (and Ostphalia?), and according to the Merseburg charms,
Odin and Phol (same guy) rode together (in his wild hunt to conquer?).

Si non c'e vero...

Torsten