From: tgpedersen
Message: 54654
Date: 2008-03-04
> A loan Semitic *H > Germanic *h could not plausibly have taken placeTorsten
> before the Germanic Grimm-shift by which i.a. *k- > *h-. That means
> that the Germani could not have come into contact with a people that
> used that word for "sacred grove" before the Grimm-shift had taken
> place. The Grimm-shift, by communis opinio (pretty much) took place
> no earlier than the first century BCE. Sacred groves don't move,
> they stay. The PGmc. root *harugaz is isolated in Germanic, it has
> no cousins elsewhere in IE languages.
> All in all your theory is compatible with a scenario where the
> Germani arrived late in a (coastal?) area which had earlier been
> influenced by a Semitic-speaking people. Now you know why you are in
> trouble in linguistics.