Re: Odp: Nordwestblock

From: Piotr Gasiorowski

"Nordwestblock" is a name coined by Hans Kuhn (1962, "Das
Zeugnis de Namen", in: Rolf Hahmann, Georg Kossack & Hans
Kuhn [eds.], Völker zwischen Germanen und Kelten,
Neumünster: Wachholz, 105-128) for a hypothetical,
historically unattested Indo-European group. Traces of their
language are said to survive in the toponymy of the Low
Countries (as well as North Rhein-Westphalia), and as a
substrate element in Germanic. Kuhn's hypothesis was
discussed by Wolfgang Meid in 1984 ("Hans Kuhns
'Nordwestblock'-Hypothese", Anzeiger der österreichischen
Akademie der Wissenschaften, philologische-historische
Klasse 121: 2-21) and is popular especially with
German-speaking placename experts.

The "Nordwestblock" [NWB] language is taken to have occupied
a position intermediate between Celtic and Germanic, being
different from both as well as from the equally hypothetical
Pre-Celtic ("alteuropäisch") IE substratum of England and
Wales (as reconstructed e.g. by Wilhelm F. H. Nicolaisen on
the basis of British river-names). Characteristically NWB
traits include the retention of *p- (unlike Celtic or
"Proto-British"), no consonant shift (unlike Germanic), the
frequent occurrence of *apa- 'river' as an element forming
stream-names (its British and Italo-Celtic counterpart is
*ab-, visible in Welsh _afon_ and Latin _amnis_), and of the
suffix *-st- (as apparently in Venetic).

Typical examples of NWB placenames: Plor ('field, flatland,
meadow' : Old Irish _lár_ , English _floor_, German _Flur_),
Paderborn (*p-), Seeste, Riemst (*-st-).

 

My main source is Mallory (In Search of the IEs). He does say it is IE-speaking, but my memory failed me.

 

A few linguists suggest that the territory between the Oise and Aller may have been occupied by a linguistic group which was neither Celtic nor Germanic, but which has been termed the Nordwestblock. Althought he existence of such a grouping in the first centuries BC is not universally agreed, the hypothesis at least poses a salutary reminder that some historically anonymous groups may have survived to the dawn of historical records and we would be ill-advised to imagine that all of Europe or Asia was occupied by only those branches of the Indo-European languages recorded in history. [pp.85-86]

 

As I recall, certain Germanic borrowings are attributed to this group, certain words which neither fit a Celtic nor Germanic origin, but which are indubitably IE.

 

There is a nice map in Mallory, on p. 87. It shows the Harpstedt Culture occupying the Low Countries in the west and having expanded to the Vistula in the east, ca. 100 BCE, together with the expanse of the preceding Jastorf Culture.

 

One thought I have had recently is that Gaius Julius himself may have had a hand in rearranging the linguistic landscape Germany, Northern France and the Low Countries. The body counts he gives for his campaigns are genocidally awesome. Later Roman activities in Hungary seem to have had a similar impact (Romanian might have developed in Transylvania and only later moved over the Transylvanian Alps and past the Iron Gate).

 

Mark.