[tied] Re: Pre-Germanic speculation

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Piotr Gasiorowski"
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:

> Grapevine --> grape --> beverage. The consonantal stem

*wih1é:n 'grapevine'

> is marginally attested in Greek, and *wih1nom ~ *woih1nom are just

its

> thematised relatives.

Interesting.

> > Wine wasn't a product of steppe, it was simply
> > unknown to proto-IE speakers in the time preceding the spread of

the

> > IE linguistic family. They can only know wine in late times by

trade,

> > importing it from some southern country.
>
> I'm not worried by the absence of _Vitis vinifera_ from the steppe

zone. I

> happen to favour the Danubian homeland theory, and the the Danube

valley

> lies within the native range of the wild grapevine.
>
> > We have an unique evidence
> > of a proto-IE word for an alcoholic drink: *medHu-.
> > The *medHu- (English mead, German Met) is a drink based on honey,
> > water and yeast. I home-brew it with success, and I like it. It

looks

> > like a sweet white (an powerful) wine.
>
> I like it too, but familiarity with mead doesn't exclude

familiarity with

> other drinks. As the IEs said, "Mead on wine makes you fine; wine

on mead

> gives you speed."

I'm familiar both with mead and with wine, and what you say is true.
But mead is surely more ancient than wine. Mead production is very
simple and requires less care than wine production. I product 5
liters of mead in a single fermentation bottle. It is impossible to
product only 5 litre of wine. Within 15 days mead is ready, for wine
there is much more difficulty. It is hard to home-brew a good wine.
Honey is found even in area with no good fruit or cereals to ferment.
So it is possible that the word for "wine" is a loanword in IE.
Perhaps a Western IE *woih1nom and a Proto-Semitic *waynu- are
loanword from a third unidentified and pre-IE language. I think that
the Danube valley was not the homeland of IEs, but the first area
invaded by them in their western migration. In that area a new
culture arose, the first of IE langugae in Europe, then secondary
migration in many different direction took place.

> > Within IE, as far I know, we have evidence of *woy(h1)nom only in
> > Greek, Italic, Armenian and Anatolian (Hittite wiyana-, wayana-).
>
> Don't forget Albanian venë ~ verë < *woino-, which, whatever it is,

can't be

> a Latin loanword.

I've forgotten it, sorry. Albanian venë ~ verë < *woino- cannot be a
Latin loanword. So I would add Illyrian to the list.

> It stands to reason that the word would have survived in
> the southerly branches (not in Indo-Iranian, though, since they

_did_ come

> from the northern steppes).

Perhaps Indo-Iranian never had *woh1nom, this Wanderwort never
reached it.

Sincerely

Marco