Germanic 30% foreign

From: Glen Gordon
Message: 8415
Date: 2001-08-09

Chris Gwinn:
>Yes - and quite a few scholars think that number is completely
>exaggerated, and that many of so called substratum words have
>perfectly good PIE origins that simply were not recognized as such by
>the linguists that favor such a large percentage of non-IE words. I
>would tend to agree that the number is way too large.

I don't believe that Germanic was completely pure either but I
agree with Chris. The word for "drink" for instance looks like
a normal n-infixed verb that you'd find elsewhere in IE.
Unfortunately, last time I checked, McCallister's list of suspected
foreign roots in Germanic was obliterated. Oh well, it was a messy
list anyway but still, it's a worthwhile activity. It would
be more informative if the list consisted of Proto-Germanic roots
*only*, instead of the hodgepodge way this list had been presented.

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