--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Arnaud Fournet"
<fournet.arnaud@...> wrote:
> I go as far as stating that proto-Germanic is not a western IE
language but
> a far-eastern language, that was originally spoken east of Indo-
Iranian and
> in the neighborhood of Yeniseian, Tokharian and Uralic people, in
western
> Siberia.
>
Dear Arnaud (never too late to become friends),
I'd be interested to hear your arguments for this. Are they any other
than (1) the purported exchange of a few words, like "house", with
Yeniseian Ket; and (2) the presence of IE and specifically Germanic
words in Chinese?
About the latter: a handful of IE words in Chinese pertaining to
cattle-raising have never been controversial, e.g. "quan" for dog
(Gk. kuon), "mi" for "honey", "ma" < "*mra" for "horse" (mare). But
in V. Mair's series Sino-Platonic Papers, a few Chinese scholars have
argued for a much larger presence of IE words in Chinese, effectively
distinguishing Chinese from the other Sino-Tibetan languages by its
IE component. The most accomplished contributor was the late Chang
Tsung-Tung, who ends up with over a thousand IE words, on closer
inspection most of them Germanic. Was he biased by his own life in
Frankfurt with a German wife? At any rate, other Chinese scholars
(and their nationality deserves emphasis, for Chinese scholarship
tends to be chauvinistic, e.g. resenting the European presence in the
Tarim mummies) have built on his theory and argued e.g. that the
Yellow Emperor, the legendary founder of Chinese culture, was an IE
immigrant. I am not aware of much critical review of this body of
theory/speculation. Anyone?
Kind regards,
KE