Re: Proto Germanic

----- Original Message -----

From: David James

 

I 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.

 

I suspect others will also respond. Rick McCallister maintains a web site giving what is close to an exhaustive list of all non-IE words found in ancient Germanic:

 

http://www.muw.edu/~rmccalli/subsGerIntro.html

 

Many of these words occupy some interesting semantic areas. The seafaring words and certain words relating to kingship, e.g., the ancestors for the English words 'king' and 'ship', are particularly intriguing.

 

The literature usually identifies Denmark and the adjacent coastal areas along the Baltic and North Sea in Germany, and often, also the southern tip of Sweden as the proto-Germanic homeland.

 

The story usually goes that pre-proto-Germanic was a minority language which replaced the original language of a more numerous autochthonous group. A substantial amount of the original language's vocabulary was retained, and perhaps, even at little grammar. Depending on what school you follow, the phonological peculiarities found in Germanic are probably related to the substratum language. In other words, what became Germanic was spoken with a foreign accent.

 

There is no good evidence for what language this substratum was related to, though Uralic and Vasconic have definitely been ruled out.

 

Mark.