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.
Thanks Mark and David for raising this point. A couple of extra
cultural factors that people may find interesting.
Firstly, in the cultures of the area, the area considered to be the
homeland of Proto-Germanic was from about 7,000 BCE until 5,000 BCE the
homeland of a very destinctive Ertbolle culture, which although they
were pottery making are frequently described as "sub-neolithic" - being
largely if not entirely a hunter gatherer people.
The Ertbolle culture is considered to be a culture derived from the
earlier mesolithic Maglemosian culture, which stretched from Britain to
Denmark and the Baltic at the time the ice sheats were melting and the
North Sea was disappearing.
There was a megalithic culture that spread through Denmark and North
Germany, part of the first western group of Neolithics, and the route
taken for the spread of megaliths in the area seem to be up the Irish
Sea, around the west coast of Scotland and across to Scandinavia (a
reverse Viking route).
IE appearance in the area has been linked to the spread of battle axe
cultures through the forested region north of the Eurasian Steppe.
Linked by traditional pottery, and associated with the spread of
ploughs, horse and cart, and later with the introduction of metals, the
"Northern" culture which was exclusively found in the area of the
supposed Germanic homeland, was independent fo Urnfield and later
Haalstaat cultural distributions although they seem to have borrowed
heavily from these directions.
Given this scenario, I would suggest that the 1st Northern culture be
recognised as Protogermanic. The Ertbolle culture then would have in
all likelihood been the source of proto-Germanic loan words. Three
sources occur here
1. Megalithic first farmers via Scotland (if megalithic was a culture
not a religion)
2. Magdaleinian --> Maglemose --> Ertbolle (hence Vasconic if
Magdaleinian was a Basque related language)
3. Ertbolle related to Saami (hence Uralic - perhaps, if Saami did not
later adopt a Uralic language from Finnish neighbours).
4. A wholly extinct substrata unrelated to 1-3 (my favourate theory
given the lengths of time we are talking about (eg Magdaleinian to
Saami = 18,000 years)
Hope this helps
John
>