From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 1758
Date: 2000-03-03
----- Original Message -----From: David JamesSent: Thursday, March 02, 2000 12:40 AMSubject: [cybalist] Proto GermanicI recently read that approximately 30% of the Proto Germanic vocabulary
was of non IE origin and that much of this non IE vocabulary is
retained in modern Germanic languages. Does this indicate that the
original Germanic tribes did not speak a IE language and that perhaps
they were conquered by or mixed with IE speakers, eventually adopting
their language whilst retaining a large part of their non IE
vocabulary. Alternatively was the non IE element due to borrowings from
non IE neighbours.
Finally, would anyone like to speculate as to the original homeland of
the Germanic tribes. My own guess is that they inhabited the Baltic Sea
area or southern Sweden.
Enough questions for now!
Thank you in advance.
Regards David.
As for the Germanic homeland, Southern Sweden and Denmark plus perhaps a piece of Northern Germany is most specialists' educated guess. From rather early on some Germanic groups expanded southwards across modern Germany and southeastwards (the southern coast of the Baltic, central and southern Poland), reaching the Danube already in deep antiquity. They were strongly influenced by the Iron Age culture of the Central European Celts and are sometimes difficult to distinguish from the latter. The extreme geographical position of the Germanic branch is responsible for a large proportion of substrate loans. The classification of the "donor" language(s) is a moot question. You can have a look at this site:for a large glossary of potential substrate words in Germanic. Don't believe everything you will find there (about Vasconic and Afroasiatic being the main sources of borrowings), but the list is instructive.Piotr