Re: Germanic 'bear'

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

>
> > If I understood you well, you said Germanic "replaced" the inherited

IE

> > word by another one, is that right? Well, I think it was rather the
> > other way around, that is, it was the IE word which didn't "catch"

in

> > Germanic.
>
> I didn't say anything like that. I said that Baltic and Slavic used
> deescriptive epithets instead of the inherited 'bear' word. What

likely

> happened in Germanic was the replacement of the inherited word for
> 'bear' by the equally inherited but less specific word meaning 'wild

beast'.

>

I don't think these two words were "equally inherited" in Germanic
because I don't think they actually belonged to the same proto-language
(i.e. "PIE").