Re: Skiri Bastarnae

--- In cybalist@..., malmqvist52@... wrote:

> Hi Torsten,
>
> I think I read on this list that one of the substrate languages of
> Albanian was Thracian, is it possible to find some information
> anywhere in what parts of Albanian this is? What is the other
> substrate language?

Perhaps you mean ancestor language? In which case the answer is
Illyrian (so many think, but some don't).

>
> If some of the Thracian dialect had survived, we might now have
> > had a Thracian group of languages, just as we have a Germanic

group

> > now, but they didn't.
>
>
> If I interpret this hypothetical sentence correctly, could I take

it

> as that You mean that all IE languages are equally related to
> eachother and to proto-IE, and that we are not to see that some of
> the language families are more related to eachother and also in a
> different degree related to PIE?
>

That is a complicated sentence. I'm not sure I understand it.

> I really suppose not, since I normally understand your standpoint

as

> that the Germanic languages has a non-IE substrate language
> consisting of something like a third of the lexical items.
>

Maybe I should clarify. If a population changes to a new language
(let's call language A), they might keep some words from their old
language (call it language B). But we still say that the population
speaks language A (although they may modify it, speaking with an
accent etc). In the example you mention, Germanic is a IE-language.
But about 30% of the words of the Germanic languages cannot be found
in other IE languages. Therefore it is assumed (by some) that those
words are from the language the (now) Germanic-speaking peoples
spoke, before they changed to speak (proto-)Germanic.

>
> Best wishes
> Anders

Torsten