Re: [tied] Re: Non-IE elements in Scandinavian

From: João Simões Lopes Filho

A clue for Pre-Germanic people from Scandinavia could be the phonetic shifts from Proto-Germanic to Nordic. What phonemes were lost? What phonemes were added?

PG (Proto-Germanic) didn't have vowels o"(oe), u"(y) (French u), but Nordic got them. So, I presume Pre-Nordic people had these sounds. Nordic didn't have Z (voiced sibilant), and didn't have X (German ch, Spanish j).

Joao SL

 

A problem with this is that the proto-Germanic homeland is usually said to be Scandinavia -- Southern Sweden and Norway, Jutland, and a sliver of territory just to the south of Jutland approximately from the mouth of the Weser to the Schweriner See.

 

Of course, you end up arguing just what proto-Germanic is. Supposedly, we are not allowed to speak of Germanic until the first Germanic sound shift, sometime ca 500 BCE -- which makes the Jastorf culture THE proto-Germanic culture. As a practical matter, since the first sound shift is perhaps the biggest thing that separates Germanic languages from all other IE languages, you have to have pre-proto-Germanic in strong unity through the sound shift.

 

The point is whatever date you assign, the formal emergence of proto-Germanic, and its various subdivisions is VERY late, compared to the other branches of IE.

 

North Germanic probably does not distinctly emerge until after AD 500, when the West-Germanic speakers mostly departed Jutland for Great Britain, and the Scandics to the north expanded to fill the vacuum.

 

Certainly, when North Germanic encountered West Germanic in the north of England, the Icelandic sagas assure us that these peoples reasonably understood each other. Modern English is descended from the convergent dialect which emerged consequent to this encounter.

Mark.