[tied] Re: Non-Indo-European in Germanic

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:

> 01-01-04 23:04, Anthony Appleyard wrote:
>
> > "studey22" <lookwhoscross-eyednow@...> wrote:
> >> Torsten, what is your opinion as to the origin of the 28% non-

Indo-

> >> European in Germanic? ...
> >
> > How many of these words can be traced to Saamic / Lappish?
>
> Hardly any, as far as I know. It's one of the puzzling aspects of

the

> putative pre-Germanic substrate that it doesn't seem to have been
> Sámi-Finnic.
>
> > Perhaps
> > there was a time when Saamic or similar was spoken in all

Scandinavia

> > and into Schleswig-Holstein and perhaps all round the Baltic Sea,
> > before the Indo-Europeans came.
>
> That would please the proponents of "a new look" at Uralic

prehistory,

> but there's no linguistic evidence known to me that would point in

that

> direction.
>

Which is all true. Apart from that, there's a Samland peninsula in
East Prussia, and there's the Danish island of Samsø in Kattegat, if
one wants to speculate on the basis of that. Some church-smashing
trolls in legends are named Finn.

Torsten