From: tgpedersen
Message: 49719
Date: 2007-08-31
>Me too.
> The proto-Germanic homeland usually is considered
> to be found in Northern Europe,
> especially Scandinavia.
> I now have very strong doubts about such a supposed home-land.
> Here are my reasons in order of increasingly unacceptability :Italic older than Celtic.
>
> 1. Germanic displays some morphological affinities with Balto-Slavic
> 2. Germanic shares some lexical innovations only with Tokharian
> such as *skalm "boat"
> 3. Germanic displays very few affinities with Celtic and Italic
> Contacts seem to be fairly recent.
> 4. Germanic displays apparently Kartvelian Loanwords :cf
> saxli "house", zghva "sea", tsvari "sheep", dzixgi "goat"
> to cite the most obvious ones
> 5. Germanic displays Uralic loanwords :
> hunt = Cf. Moksha kunda-ms "seize, capture"
> hand = Cf. kem-t, kum-t "five, ten, hand"
> s-wi-m = Cf. Uralic uje-ms
> Morphemes -t plural and -m- infinitive are now parts of the root.
> 6. Germanic displays apparently Sino-Tibetan loanwords :
> Tib phag = pig
> Tib bya = bird < brid (r > y is frequent in ST)These two are exclusively English
> Tib smug = fog (Cf. smoke)This has some cognates in Low German.
> Tib skjag = shitSome Germanic verb morphology (preterite/ppp) looks Iranian, I've
> Chin pok = back
> Tib rtsib = rib
> Tib sme = mole
> I do not take into account some other words :
> bru = eye-brow
> sna = snout
> that look like loanwords into Tibetan.
>
> On account of this, Germanic displays a very strong eastern (and not
> northern) tropism. Somewhere in the middle of Kazakhstan seems the
> right place ?!?