Germanic origins.

From: Piotr Gasiorowski

Most of the etymologies offered by Cybalist members are quite good, if not absolutely certain. They don't prove that the words are IE; they only show that they may be IE and therefore the assumption of their extra-IE origin is not necessary.

Piotr

One idea I've come across (I can dig up the reference if you nag me) is that the Germanic substratum is, at least in part, an IE-substratum. If one allows sound-changes by another language's rules before the language is absorbed/converged into what becomes Germanic, some of the problems go away. This, though, seems to be special pleading. Someone would have to come up with a list of words that followed predicatable patterns of sound change before being absorbed by Germanic.

 

I cannot chapter and verse all the peculiarities and difficulties presented by Germanic, but from my reading, they seem to be mostly phonological, combined with evidence that Germanic was isolated from other IE languages for a long period in its earliest history. Until it extended itself south, the only IE language it had relations with seems to be Balto-Slavic.

 

On the other hand, Scandinavia, to include Jutland and Finland, is neither an 'invasion route', nor even really a destination for migrations. Those who got their first seem to still be there. I've not read a definitive explanation of the entry of Uralic into nothern Scandinavia, but the reality seems to be that the Uralic-speakers followed a different economic strategy, mostly that of hunter-gatherers well into historic times; they kept apart. What you get is a territory conducive to extreme linguistic conservatism -- and extreme linguistic innovation.

 

I've seen articles with maps locating the Neolithic locations of flint deposits. The best were the islands off Jutland. This reality is probably directly related to the genesis of Germanic. This gives you a compelling reason for having people living in a region at a very early time, where conditions were otherwise less than optimal for the technology of the time.

 

Mark.