Venet(d)ic issues Was Re: [tied] Clonix, Clondicus

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, george knysh <gknysh@...> wrote:

>
>
> --- On Mon, 8/17/09, tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
>
>
>
> My Armorican conjecture needs for the Veneti and Osismi to be
> non-Celtic, at least in language. And sailing the sea is not really
> a Celtic thing.
>
> ****GK: That's one of the problems with Tacitus' "Venedi". There is nothing "maritime" about them. Not even "riverine" as with the later Vikings.****

Tacitus' Veneti is a 'Volkssplitter', an ethnic group on its last legs (and later it got even worse
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vends
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wends
) living by brigandage. You can't take that as an indication of who they 'really' were. The Wends OTOH were a piratical scourge on the Danish coasts, which is one of the reasons for the Danish campaigns against them.

> > > But the Aestii, as related here
> > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aestii
> > > might be related to the Osismi/Ostimoi
> > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osismi
> >
> > GK: Have you checked this in Caesar, Pliny, and Strabo?
> It's a conjecture. They don't mention any connection.
>
> Why would Tacitus' spelling differ ?

For the same reason as foreigners have a hard time keeping Russian -sti-, -s^c^i- and -s^i- apart? Cf. Polish ujs´c´ie "mouth of river".

> ****GK: The reason I ask is that Tacitus usually followed Caesar's
> "peoples" spelling. Non-Russians trying to write down Russian words
> usually get them right most of the time when the phonemes in them
> correspond to Latin letters. But when it comes to /s^/, /s^c^/ and
> the rest they falter.

Torsten