Re: Uralic Loanwords in Germanic

> First, Fin kantele was borrowed from Baltic *kantle: (a feminine form < *kantliya: <mix *kantli:x + *kantla:x, not the neuter referenced above, like Lith kañkle:s) with a final long V > short, then V-insertion in a non-native cluster.
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> Also, I was absolutely stunned when I saw "I was joking myself". There was no reason he, or I, would think you were joking. The reason? Because kantele and *kantlo- are so obviously related that no one with any knowledge of linguistics and of right mind could think otherwise (I wouldn't even expect anyone who connected them to make an argument, just showing the two words should be enough, as in Piotr's message).

Well, there does happen to be a contesting etymology as a derivativ from the common Uralic *kamti > BF *kanci (stem *kante-) "lid".

Also the original BF form is *kantel, suffixed only in F/Kar as *kantel-eh. If this is an IE loan, it would have to be quite old to have participated in loss of final vowels.

I don't recall other examples involving vowel insertion as a nativization strategy either - what usually occurs in nCC clusters is loss of the nasal (cf. the derivativ *kant-tta- > *katta- "to cover") Also, *tl is forbidden (*neekla "needle", < Gmc). Straightforward from *kantle: I would expect a development > **kankli > **kakli > **kauli.

OTOH the existence of "lid" offers an opportunity to reform or reanalyze a potential loan *kantle: as *kantel anyway.

John Vertical