Chris Gwinn:
>I really wish that people would stop quoting this "30% non-IE
>vocabulary in Germanic" as if it was an established fact. Where are
>the scientific proofs for this?
Here, here. I second the motion. It _is_ absurd, isn't it? The only
way my little brain can see this being established as fact is if
we managed to somehow, miraculously, reconstruct _100%_ of the IE
vocabulary... but how do we know when we've reconstructed the
*entire* IE vocabulary?? Does anyone know the entire vocabulary
of ANY language?? I certainly don't know the entire vocabulary of
my native English (Those damn rappers keep on coming up with new
slang and I can't keep up!).
It's total nonsense, I agree. It's an impressionistic estimate and
too vague to properly calculate. This is not to say that Germanic
is void of loans, but rather that Germanic is no different than
any other language. I'm not convinced of any de-satemisation
either.
- love gLeN
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