From: Mark Odegard
Message: 1961
Date: 2000-03-30
----- Original Message -----From: Piotr GasiorowskiSent: Monday, March 27, 2000 3:45 PMSubject: Odp: [cybalist] Odp: NordwestblockAs Piotr suggests, the idea of a "Northwest Bloc" is beguiling. But, of course, like so much that gets posted here, it is unproveable.No one is going to deny there are first-level branches of IE which were born, then flourished and then died, entirely undocumented to us today. At 100 BCE the western languages seem to have still been relatively close together: Germanic had just done the 1st sound-shift, of course, but someone really good with languages could have figured it out quickly enough and still have half-understood it. I'm still looking for the reference I remember reading about how a Latin-speaker could figure out Celtic far more easily than a Celtic-speaker could figure out Latin. It's like a modern Brazilian figuring out Spanish, or maybe, Piotr or Alexander puzzling out the dialect of Carniola.--Mark.From: Piotr GasiorowskiWho knows if the Teutons who joined the Cimbri in their southward raid in the late 2nd century BC weren't NWB-speakers rather than Germani proper. The unshifted stops of Teut- might suggest that (the usual story is that the name is of Celtic origin). Just a loose thought, don't take it too seriously.PiotrMark here.I don't take it too seriously either, but admit to liking it. Oh, the stuff I read, and don't remember where I read it .... but: there seem to be some who argue for a later date for the 1st Germanic sound-shift, or at least, say it did not become complete until sometime past AD 1.There is also the division of Low/High German. Low German's stamping ground is essentially what is posited as the NW bloc, plus the additional Hallstedt-Culture (and previously, the non-Jastorf-Culture) region to the east of it. Such limes tend to persist. Germanic is Germanic, but perhaps Low Germanic has an additional IE substratum in addition to the undoubted non-IE substratum.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.