Dear Alexander
A few more points about borrowing from Germanic to Balto-Finnic.
As Piotr points out borrowing has been going on since proto-Germanic
times and is still going on. Since Finnish is extremely conservative
phonetically it has acted as a sort of archive of (north) Germanic
phonetic change. A few examples:
Fi kuningas 'king' from Common Germanic *kuningaz.
Fi kaupunki 'town' from Old Norse kaupung.
Fi tykki 'gun' from Early Modern Swedish stycke.
As for borrowing from Germanic to Finnish and Saamic, they seem to have
taken place separately, i e different words have been borrowed at
different times and have changed independently in Finnish and Saamic. A
possible explanation is that the borrowing to Finnish has taken place
in an East Nordic/Baltic context and borrowing to Saamic in a West
Nordic/Atlantic Coast environment. It should be noted that Norwegians
call the Saami "Finnar" while in Swedish "Finnar" means Finns while the
Saami are "Lappar" (a word probably itself borrowed from Finnish
(lappi) by the way).
Another difference in the relationship between (North) Germanic and
Finnish/Saamic is that while there has been a number of borrowings from
Finnish to Swedish/Norwegian there are virtually none from Saamic. The
most striking borrowing from Finnish is Swedish pojke ´boy´ from
Finnish poika. Even the Swedish word for the traditional Saamic
dwelling "kåta" is oddly enough borrowed from Finnish kota, not the
Saamic cognate guodde.
Altogether it somewhat surprisingly seems that (North) Germans have
been in closer contact and for a longer time with Finns than with the
Saami.
Tommy Tyrberg
"alexander stolbov" <
astolbo-@...> wrote:
original article:
http://www.egroups.com/group/cybalist/?start=81
> Dear Piotr,
>
> I have 2 particular questions to your message (fragments of interest
are made Bold):
> -- Original Message -----
> From: Piotr G±siorowski
> To: cybalist@egroups.com
> Sent: Wednesday, October 13, 1999 11:57 PM
> Subject: [cybalist] Odp: proto-Indo-European geography.
>
> ...
> [4] It all depends on your chronology. If you mean Bronze Age
Proto-Germani or Proto-Balto-Slavs, I'd say it's highly unlikely that
they lived in splendid isolation. The first really indigenous neolithic
culture of Northern Europe, the Funnel Beakers, already covered much of
the region, including almost all of modern Poland. The same is true of
the later Globular Amphorae; and the Corded Ware complex extended from
the Volga to Scandinavia and the Rhine. This testifies to the existence
of trading networks and lively contacts even before the advent of the
bronze axe. The Bell Beakers of the Bronze Age are found from Iberia to
the Ukraine.{1} The languages of Northern Europe (Germanic, Baltic and
Slavic) share a lot of vocabulary and display other similarities which
are apparently due to areal convergence. There are numerous early
loanwords from Iranian in Slavic, from Slavic in Baltic, from Germanic
in both, and from Iranian, Baltic and Germanic in Finno-Ugric.{2} The
so-called Old European hydronymy is also remarkably uniform. The North
European Plain must have been, in some sense, a single cultural area.
> ...
>
> {1} Is it really so, not a mistyping?! Could you point Bell Beakers'
settlements or burials on the territory to the East from Hungary? What
is age of them?
>
> {2} I'm very interested in information concerning contacts of
Finno-Ugric and IE (particularly Germanic) people.
>
> It is possible to divide Finno-Ugric languages into 5 geografical
(and apparently genealogical of different rank) subgroups:
> (1) Ugric, (2) Permic, (3) Volga, (4) Balto-Finnic and (5) Laponic
subbranches.
> In which of them can be found Germanic loanwords? I believe it is
possible to state when it happened (Eneolithic, Early Bronze, Late
Bronze, Iron Age, Viking time or later). Which of Germanic languages
(Proto-Germanic, East-Germanic, Hochdeutsch, Africaans etc.) were the
sources?
>
> Thank you in advance,
>
> Alexander
>
>