Sorry, my response was to Wendell Wagner not Jkellymap.
Doobieous writes:
> Sorry, my response was to Wendell Wagner not Jkellymap.
No, it wasn’t. The things that you were quoting in your post were originally said by JKellyMap. I only quoted them in my post. Please be careful about attribution.
I wrote:
> Interesting hypothesis is a good description for this theory. What’s known is
> that the proto-Germanic peoples were living in the area of either present-day
> southern Sweden or Denmark around 1000 B.C. If you look at the words in
> proto-Germanic that don’t derive from proto-Indo-European (and that’s about a
> third of them), there are some resemblances with Semitic languages. For that
> reason, some speculate that a Semitic group of sea-traders just before 1000
> B.C. traveled around the coast of Europe and some of them settled in
> Scandinavia. These Semitic sea-traders were thus there before the proto-
> Germanic peoples arrived and were conquered by the proto-Germanic peoples.
> Hence, there was a group of Semitic peoples learning proto-Germanic and thus
> serving as the substrate for proto-Germanic.
In response, Eurograff writes:
> The Finnish minority theory also agrees that there is a Semitic influence in
> Germanic, quite strong in fact. However what you just described is a bit off.
> That would require the whole southern Scandinavia to have been essentially an
> empty land to around 1500 BC. Just look at any good atlas of old history and
> you’ll see how wrong that premise must be. In fact, the pre-neolithic
> Maglemose culture existed in Denmark and surrounding areas before the year
> 6000 BC, and the region was relatively densely populated even back then.
> People had come there from east as quick as the area was fertile enough for
> their hunting. And why wouldn’t they? Scandianvia had everything: steppes,
> water, game, fish, nearby ice shelf, beautiful women, weird politics… Ehm, and
> it wasn’t so far away that you couldn’t get there in less than few hundred years
> even across the whole continent. No, around 1000 BC those Semitic sea-
> traders would’ve been nothing more than a drop of water in a lake.
Please note that I wrote:
> I learned this recently while listening to the one of the courses on tape offered
> by The Teaching Company, The History of Human Languages, which is taught
> by John McWhorter. McWhorter is a linguist, so this isn’t just a random nut
> theory. It is though rather speculative.
As you can see, I’m quoting (almost word for word) from a lecture given by a prominent linguist speaking to what’s more or less an undergraduate-level audience, but I don’t know anything about it beyond that. I presume that it’s at least informed speculation. I have a master’s degree in linguistics, but I’ve been out of the field for a while. Could you give us a cite on the theories you offer, Eurograff?
I’m no expert, but it seems there is contention whether the Basques borrowed the root word of “vega” (“baika”) from the Celts, or vice-versa:
From www.celtiberia.net/verrespuesta.asp?idp=2052&cadena=vega :
But now I see that more people agree with you, and that I was probably wrong.
So, no more hijack, I promise!
Translation of previous quote:
- There are 31 ancient, pre-roman toponyms that you can consult in www.celtas.org that contain the root pae- or bae-, meaning “river”. Of these only 2 are in the ancient or present-day Basque-speaking territory. The rest are in the Hispano-Celtic zones.
- There is a Spanish word, “vega”, which all linguists derive from the pre-roman “baika”, which according to my interpretation would be bai- “river” + Hispano-Celtic “-ka”. The meaning would be “the land of a river”, which is just what vega means.
- It seems much more logical that the Basque word is borrowed from the Hispano-Celtic than the contrary.
But, as I said, Doobieus is likely right. Either way, it’s interesting to find early borrowings such as this one between pre-IE language groups – like the Munda/Dravidian examples mentioned by others.
The Celtic languages are Indo-European, so this would be an example of a non-IE language borrowing from an IE language that was later displaced by another IE language.
Right – my bad. Even more interesting!
[QUOTE=JKellyMap]
Translation of previous quote:
There is a Spanish word, “vega”, which all linguists derive from the pre-roman “baika”, which according to my interpretation would be bai- “river” + Hispano-Celtic “-ka”. The meaning would be “the land of a river”, which is just what vega means.QUOTE]
You ask a Spanish speaker to translate “riverbank” and they’ll say “ribera” (and possibly orilla or margen), not vega. I’ve never heard anyone say vega means riverbank, only fertile plain or meadow.
I looked this up in:
http://diccionarios.elmundo.es/diccionarios/cgi/lee_diccionario.html?busca=vega&diccionario=1
and it seems we’re both right (see below). The word originally meant the green strip of land watered by a river, but in the Americas came to mean any fertile valley, loseing its direct connection to a river. (Maybe because parts of Spanish America, such as around Las Vegas, are relatively river-free).
Translation:
- Lowland area, flat and fertile, generally irrigated by a river.
- (American Spanish) tobacco field
- (American Spanish) wetland
Thanks so much for the detailed explanations, Eurograff. That was fascinating and well worth reading. Actually, I had posted what I did above because I had found that web site while I was studying Finnish last month. I read the theory and found it quite interesting. Your explanation of it makes it quite clear, and your English is pretty good, too.
Do you think those Semites who went to Scandinavia were looking for tin? They went to Britain for tin and just kept going?
Does the idea of Semites in Sweden remind anyone else of The Thirteenth Warrior? (In which the Arab traveler Ahmad ibn Fadlan makes friends with Beowulf and goes to Sweden to help the Vikings fight the monsters.) The real Ahmad ibn Fadlan in the 9th century wrote the first recorded account of the Magyars on the steppes, speaking of Uralic languages.
The same thing has happened in Gascon, the Occitan dialect spoken in France in the former Roman province of Aquitania, between the Garonne river and the Pyrenees. The words Gascon and Gascogne (the name of the French province) were formerly (in Old French) Guascon and Guascogne (from Latin Guasconia), and the guasc- part (= [gwask]) corresponds exactly to the root bask- (in Spanish vasc-). Only a small remnant of the original population of this territory did not shift to Latin and kept the Basque language.
There might be some other peculiarities of Gascon due to the Basque substratum, as it is rather different from other varieties of Occitan.
You mean SouthWESTern France.
Zombie thread. Run for your lives!!!