Re: Afro-Asiatic substrate

From: etherman23
Message: 64410
Date: 2009-07-24

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "mytoyneighborhood" <mytoyneighborhood@...> wrote:
>
> Several years ago there was a brief discussion here about potential evidence indicating a possible Afro-Asiatic Substrate to Northern European Germanic and Celtic languages in Continental Europe and the British Isles (possibly explaining the non-Indo-European lexicon within Germanic?-which is 1/3 according to Hawkins) , and I don't recall anyone outright refuting the notion. I was wondering if there's been any change of opinion regarding the matter or new evidence?
> -Michael
>

Sounds like you're talking about Theo Venneman's work. From what I've heard there are basically two problems with his argument. First, it's based primarily on typological arguments, like word order in Celtic. Second, much of the non-IE words in Germanic have been found to have IE roots. I've heard, but can't justify, that some of the non-IE vocab in Germanic is from Chuvash.