Re: Vanir,etc.

From: Marco Moretti
Message: 29432
Date: 2004-01-12

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

> Vani, vanir very rough resemblance?
> >
>
> Insist to your heart's content. You seem obsessed by calling
> everything I find a chance resemblance.

If I'm not wrong, the Caucasian people of Kartvelian origin is named
Svani. Now, there's nothing in Germanic assuring the presence of an
old initial sibilant in Vanir (< *wani-). So the matchup is rough.
It is a word with a plain structure, it can be found almost
everywhere.

You don't reconstruct protolanguages then trying to find links
between protoforms with regular or at least explainable phonetic
correspondence, you have a quite kinky methodology.
Without knowing something about a topic, you choose some match
looking only for chance resemblance, then you think it is the
evidence of something mysterious and deep, and you build up very
quickly a whole pseudo-history of Polynesian Vikings, alien
Cosmonauts and other funny things.

Marco